Life in the Space Biz

I got my first two Christmas cards of the year this week — one from Barbara on Tuesday, and one from Kelly and John on Wednesday. Man, you guys are really on top of things this year! I haven’t even’t made my Christmas cards yet, much less mailed them. And I do plan on doing them. Last year was not a one time thing! If you want one and you’re not sure that I have your address, make sure to email me.
Jose is in D.C. for the rest of the week visiting the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter team, since he’s done some work for them over the past few months. LRO was supposed to launch this fall, but it’s been postponed until spring. Thankfully, when you’re going to the moon you have the luxury of pushing things back on a month-by-month or even week-by-week basis, since the moon is so close. Unfortunately it’s different when you’re trying to go to Mars. The Mars Science Laboratory, JPL’s next giant mission, was officially postponed until 2011 — instead of launching next year. The launch window available to get to Mars in a reasonable amount of time without spending an impossible amount of fuel to get there only exists for a few weeks every two years. It was extremely unlikely that MSL would make the October 2009 window, so it will have to wait until 2011. It sucks for all involved.
Sometimes it is really frustrating to work for NASA.
Then there is also today’s news that Miles O’Brien — long-time CNN reporter and anchor who covered space and science news — is leaving the network along with a handful of others because CNN is entirely shutting down its science, technology, and environment section. Say WHAT? The only justification I’ve seen is that environmental news is already covered by some part of Anderson Cooper’s show. Ok, even if I buy that, where will they get their science and space news? A huge news outlet like CNN should not be relying on wire services to get news applicable to an enormous and very important sector of the country — not to mention that CNN just announced that they plan to start their own wire service! How the heck do you start a well-rounded wire service when you have no staff dedicated to science, space, technology, and environmental news?? Just another sad sign of the times. I bet they didn’t cut their entertainment news staff, that’s for sure.
Sometimes it is really frustrating to, I dunno, want to learn about science.
But anyway, my point was really that Jose is out of town, which makes me feel all discombobulated. We spend so much time together (cue awwing or eye rolling or whatever you want) that it’s weird to find myself alone. Yesterday was super busy — I had a sim that lasted all day, then 3 hours of class last night, with 2 hours of frantically finishing the project I procrastinated on in the middle — so I didn’t really feel it until I got home after class. There was no one to eat dinner with, and no one to watch TV with. I settled in on the couch and distracted myself by finishing “Twilight.” It got pretty engrossing at the end, even though when I stepped back, I found the whole thing a little silly. I guess I’ll go buy the second book now.