[X] My Assistant

[TheChemist]

So you're forever forty-two?

I wish ! No, just a couple of months left. This is a privilege held briefly, and then duly passed on to the younger generations :-)
(Note that some members of the opposite sex choose to cross this barrier in a fuzzy, nondeterministic way and fail to get the Answer because of quantum uncertainties)

[nprev]

Followed by the dark age.

But now we're in the Renaissance!

(sigh)...Enjoy it while it lasts, kids. Unless a serious fire gets lit under NASA & ESA, the party's over around 2017 or so.

Gotta admit, though, this thread makes me feel good about my age; many of us forty-somethings or greater really did hit the sweet spot in a lot of ways. I got to see everything from the later Geminis on, as well as live coverage of the Viking landings & all of Voyager's encounters. It's nice not to envy the young, for once!

[ElkGroveDan]

Sure Nick but we had to wait for the next morning's newspaper and got to read one story written by one reporter on the previous days events. Then after five or six days the coverage began to drop off and we had to wait for the next month's Sky & Telescope or Popular Science magazine to get any details. Life was rough back then. These kids don't know how good they have it.

[Phil Stooke]

"live coverage of pieces of Challenger spiralling and fluttering down into the pacific.:"

It was the Atlantic. But I cried too.

Phil

[vjkane]

I appear to be just a bit older than Viking 1. Strangely, that makes me feel both very young and very old! I mean, like, how ancient is Viking?? That was totally the Medieval age of Mars exploration.

I was twenty the summer Viking landed. I was spending the summer painting a rental house for my parents. I remember sitting on the front door step and seeing that first picture (of one of the landing pads) and being amazed that we could see the surface of Mars. I was hooked from then on.

The late 70s were a great time for planetary exploration. And then the whole thing almost died in the '80s. I remember the then current director of the US federal budget saying that Jupiter will always be there when he announced the cancellation of Galileo. Since the early '90s, it's been one feast after another.

The only down side to being 52 is that you start to calculate how old you'll be when some of the mission under discussion would return science. I'll be in my young to mid 70s when the next Flagship mission enters orbit around either Europa or Titan.

As for my biography, I spent 25 years in high tech. Among other things, I planned microprocessor products and product lines, and hence my fascination with the planning process for future missions. (One of the processors, the Pentium Pro) had a development budget about the same a large Discovery mission. These days I'm trying to rectify an early career mistake by finally becoming a scientist. I'm getting my PhD in forest ecology, and it's not surprising that I'm using remote sensing to do my work.

[nprev]

Life was rough back then. These kids don't know how good they have it.

True dat. I remember walking a couple of miles to the former Montana School of Mines library (later Montana Tech, now a branch of the University of Montana) to check out the latest AWS&T or Science to get a clue about what was going on. Each little morsel of information was precious, believe me.

Oh, yes, and it really was uphill both ways...the hill dipped and rose between my house and the college. And, being Montana, there was frequently snow...

You whippersnappers have no idea...<mounts walker and shuffles off into the sunset...>

[dvandorn]

Ah, yes -- I do recall living from one edition of AW&ST to the next. It was the only regular publication that carried news of the aerospace industry, including the upcoming manned and unmanned space flights. (The magazine Missiles and Rockets, unfortunately, had gone the way of the dodo by the late 1960s.)

I can still recall Xeroxing the edition that had the first line drawing I had ever seen of the layout of instruments in Apollo 15's SIM bay. That must have been in April or May of 1971.

-the other Doug

[nprev]

...There was something magical about that, though; almost like the anticipation of Christmas.

I could hardly wait to see the new issue of any space magazine. AW&ST was great because it's weekly, but Sky & Telescope was always a biggie (lotsa pics!) There was one, count it, one, bookstore in my home town that sold periodicals, and fortunately this included S&T. Later, I found out that the college had a subscription since the mid-50s, and bound the mags by year...and you could check them out!!! Boy howdy, that was a blast...hard to balance those big bound volumes on your chest while you're trying to drink a Coke & eat Doritos, but I managed...

Almost started a new thread called "In Dog Years I'm Dead" for all us oldsters to reminisce, since there appears to be some reflex that hits us all once we pass 40 to tell tales...but, no need. In about 20 years, the younger of us will be regaling the next generation with stories of how you actually had to click on stuff in an internet browser to bring it up instead of willing it so...

[vjkane]

Ah, yes -- I do recall living from one edition of AW&ST to the next.

I used to have several notebooks with xeroxes of AWST articles. It was a milestone in my life when I finally earned enough to have my own subscription rather than go to the library each week.

I also remembering borrowing a co-workers Unix system so that I could look up a mission document posted on this new thing called the Web. In those days, the only Web browsers were on Unix. Us poor DOS users had to borrow Unix systems.

[Marco Frissen]

Hiya,

I joined Emilys' broadcast+chat last night and at the end this forum got linked. Pretty cool site.
Anyway, I'm from the Netherlands, 36yrs, married and 2 kids, have a degree in Computer Sciences, working in telecomms (Vodafone) and also studying to become a math teacher. And I like to photograph people and postprocess images
Interest in space and astronomy since about 1981, dreaming about those voyager saturn images. Been actively observing as an amateur astromer in the 90s.
In 2000 I was able to join the press for the STS-106 launch, which was quite an experience! Especially being inside the VAB and almost able to touch the shuttle and boosters..
About two years later I quit the whole astro hobby to focus on people photography, selling my telescope for more photo equipment and entering photography academy in 2002, finishing that in 2004 and (parttime) working as freelance photographer since then, focussing on people (from portraits to fine art nudes)

Still, my interest was piqued with each news article of mars missions and cassini results. Last year I decided to revive the whole thing, became a planetary society member (again) and last month bought a new telescope. I guess old habits (or more: passions?) never die.

I didn't know about this site until a day ago, but I'm already impressed by the high quality people are showing here, i hope I can add some value as well in the not too far future

I have a website at http://www.marcof.net where I post my mixed-language (english and dutch) blog about everything and nothing (recently mostly about my revived astro hobby), show some photography work and offer Bibble Pro expertise services in the netherlands.

cheers,

Marco

[Stu]

Welcome aboard Marco, good to have you here.

[Paolo Amoroso]

I'm only 19 years old, but I'm more interested in all things space than anyone I've ever met. Just out of curiosity, what are people's ages in this forum?

I'll give a clue on my age that young members of this forum will readily understand. I was born the day after Molly Brown didn't sink. I live in Italy and work as an astronomy/space educator.


Paolo Amoroso

P.S.
Who yelled "old fart!" at me?

[nprev]

I did, ya old fart! Welcome to the club!

[dmuller]

In about 20 years, the younger of us will be regaling the next generation with stories of how you actually had to click on stuff in an internet browser to bring it up instead of willing it so...

or how we had to manipulate images or write programs to get to see what we wanted when all they need to do it think about it and it pops up on their virtual HUDs. The YouTube - Viacom link-up will provide them with instant movie quality images for free automatic downloading because THEY know what YOU want

[imipak]

In the parallel universe where Viacom control space imagery, there's no DIY / "amateur" image manipulation / enhancement / stitches / pans / anaglyphs, because the carefully selected imagery released to the public would be locked up with DRM, and Doug's doing a 20 stretch for copyright infringement / DMCA circumvention for daring to publish such material. "Ha ha, only serious"...