I just joined this community last night, and I'm just curious about some of the people here. 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?

Probably a complete database do not exist, but you will find some hints from this recent tread :
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...topic=44&st=105

Thanks for the pointer. Interesting how a discussion of manned spacefight made it on UNmanned spaceflight! It's cool, though. After reading some of that, I guess a lot of people are younger than I thought.

I'm a sprightly youngster at 26, and I started this whole schbang


Doug

I'm a 36 year old dutch physical geographer (that also studied aeronautical designing), and find witnessing actual landings of hardware (and the science it produces) on other planetary surfaces one of the most fascinating aspects of my life, besides the existence of my wife and 2 year old twin girls...

Obsession ? No, it just IS great !

Oh heck - careers as well - I'm a medical animator for www.ocbmedia.com - I also begun to move into project management.

Doug

I'm 36, a software engineer in industrial robotics. I'm also an amateur astronomer and space nut, so the MER missions are right up my ally!

One other thing I do is coach a FIRST LEGO League team at our local elementary school - FLL is an organization that has yearly challenges involving LEGO Mindstorms Robotic Invention Systems for kids aged 9-11. Our team did not compete this year, but we did play around with the 2003 challenge called "Mission to Mars".

One of the missions in that challenge involved building and programming the LEGO robot to clear "dust" in the form of small LEGOs from a model of a solar panel. When Spirit had its panels scrubbed by wind last month, it gave the kids a clear example of how important and applicable the problem solving they're doing can be.

Now if only we can get the funding to launch one of our LEGO robots...

One of the lesser members (in number of posts), I'm a 53 year old paleontologist. Gray is the color of my hair.

I'm 36 (an Apollo baby!), my profession has nothing to do with space, but I've been following unmanned space flights with great interest since... um... Viking 1 & 2 in 1976. I come here to stare in awe at the technical skills and attention to scientific detail exhibited on this board. And to watch the maps of Titan and Saturn's other moons being assembled. And to look at pretty pictures.

I'm 43, worked as an exploration geologist in the 1980s but now I make short films and video promotions for punk bands. My day job is in the financial services industry but allows me to do my Mars research in between calls

I am 26. When not playing around with space images, I am a professor of philosophy and English.

Nice. Presentation time

I'm DEChengst, a 29 year old from The Netherlands. Yes, that's the country Hansje Brinker saved by putting his finger in the dike. Well not really as Hansje Brinker is just a story we tell to gullible tourists. Ofcourse after the tourists have gone the tourguide breaks down in laughter because they'll all believe it really happened. The city I live in is called Rotterdam and has the biggest seaport in the world. Other famous spots are the Erasmusbrug, the Euromast and ofcourse the Keileweg. If you're interested in the more liberal side of Holland you'll also find plenty of coffeeshops.

I earn my living by being a system administrator. The most important task I do is keeping all the UNIX boxen running. I'm also responsible for managing all Sybase database. Since a year or so I started supporting the OpenVMS boys. My final task is taking care of our SAN systems. It must be pretty clear now that my job is the geek's dream job. I get to "play" with huge and expensive enterprise class hardware while getting payed for it.

My first hobby is autosports. Ofcourse I like Formula One the most, with DTM being a good second. I'm totally not interested in American races that only drive on ovals. I really can't see what's so great about driving around in a circle. Ovals just pale in comparison with circuits like Spa Francorchamps. There is no greater sight than seeing the likes of Michael Schumacher and Senna drive a Formula One car at Spa in heavy rain. The car twisting and drifting at every corner as it's being driven around the track one or two seconds faster per lap than the entire opposition.

Ofcourse as a visitor of this forum I'm also a space geek. I like planetary missions the best. To be honest I always get nervous if an important event, like the MER landing, is about to take place. The night before the event I'll be so jumpy I hardly can get any sleep If the mission is a success you'll find me checking the web every five minutes to check if the first results are in. As soon as they are I quickly download them and try to out Photoshop NASA by creating mosaics out of them

Another hobby of mine is computers. I own a nice collection of old server hardware. Most people consider them junk but to me they are my treasures. As you may have gathered from my nickname the systems I like most were made by the Digital Equipment Corporation.

I own a nice collection of DEC computers:

-Alphaserver 1000A 5/500 running Tru64 UNIX 5.1B
-MicroVAX 3100/80 running OpenVMS 7.3
-DECsystem 500/260 running ULTRIX 4.5
-Infoserver 100 NAS box

In my spare time I'm a high priest of The Holy Church of DEC. Some of the daily rituals I have to perform, are praying while I face Maynard and geeking around with my serverpark. During my preaching you can hear me rant about how holy DEC is and how evil Compaq and HP are. This is one of my prayers I say on a daily base:

There is but one true laptop !
It's called the Alphabook One!
Bow before it's divinity!
And thy shall not commit blasphemy against it and insult it by using any other device which acts like a laptop but is not a divine Alphabook One !

Here you can see me pointing out one of the objects I worship:

Age: 35. Profession: Cabinetmaker.

My God! Is incredible to see all this non-specialist people so deeply spaceflight involved!
Anyway here my short presentation:
Age: 42 (definitely older than average!)
Profession: Process Engineer in a WaferFab...

I am 32 and a logitics manager at an electronics company in Kentucky. Though I went into business, I have always had a very keen interest in space and space exploration.

I'm a 23 year old ex-student and part-time lazybones living in Farnborough, Hampshire. In october I will be a grad student.

I´m now 33 and my interest in space mission goes back to Voyager 1 and its encounter with Saturn in Nov. 1980. I was only 8 by this time. This inspired me so much that I want to have a telescope to see this planet and the other ones with my own eye. My grandfather did fulfil my dream then !
In the following years I develop techniques in photographing the planets and stars (deep sky) with my telescope and camera (later digital) and have much success in it.
In normal live I construct parts for escalators as an engineer.
I live in Vienna/Austria and also like classical music.

I'm a 41 year old software engineer. I write software to control chambers of various sorts. I have a keen interest in planetary exploration.

My biggest claim to fame (with regard to this group) is that I actually saw MER being assembled at JPL. I was there to automate another chamber that was in the high bay with MER. The chamber is being used for the SIM mission. It was one of the greatest thrills of my life. I was no more than 30 feet from one of the vehicles. In fact, one of the people working on the rover came over to my group and pointed to the back shell that was behind us. He said we were TOO close to it and asked us to move farther away. I was actually TOO close to MER.

I have been following the mission closely since then. I only recently discovered this forum after the article on spacedaily.com referrenced it. I am very impressed with the quality of the posts. Thanks to all of you.

As I hang my head in shame, I'll reveal my place of employment, and job.

Overnight stocker at Walmart.
There, I said it.

I do hope to get back to college this year for engineering, probably mechanical or industrial. I hope it's the right line of work; I've always been good at fixing things I know nothing about. And then there's my Scanner PC project. I don't know if that shows skill or a mental illness, but there it is.
I already did 2 years at a community college, for Cisco networking. It turned out to be programming though, just on routers. I can't stand programming. That, and I'm like Michael in Office Space, for those who have seen it. Always missing some mundane detail - and when you're working on securing a network, that's not a good thing.
Oh yeah, I'm 23.

29, father of two children and two big displays; just to look at Mars and getting something out of it. I sleep about 4-5 hours a day between children and Mars. I do not work at this moment, I'm too busy with Mars.
Nice to meet y'all too!
Oh and I live in Belgium, that little country somewhere in Europe.
I'm having a beer in my hand right now.
Cheers!

Age : 42 Occupation: SW Engineer
Location: Mesa, AZ
Online status: Lurker
Vision for Mars: Advanced robotic explorers paving the way for human explorers with
in-site resource utilitization, habitat construction and general infrastructure development.
If man goes to Mars - he should stay. I don't want a repeat of the moon missions. If someone
in 1972 said we would not visit the moon again before 2015, they would have been laughed at -
but it's a sad and true fact.

Newton would have said:

"The size of Belgium is inverse to the proportion of the greatness of its beer."

I'm a 34-year old software engineer and occasional Zen student. I created some Mars viewing software because I wanted to see Mars in 3D, and because my day job is frustrating as all git-out (hi, guys!).

> As I hang my head in shame, I'll reveal my place of employment, and job.

No shame in having a day job.

Wow, there sure are a lot of software engineers on here.

48, red-headed MWF professional seeking... Oh, yeah, wrong forum.

One of my earliest memories: seeing Echo I (HUGE 100-ft. diameter mylar balloon) inflated a hangar in North Carolina in 1960, and then watching it fly overhead several months later. (see Echo I)

I was avidly interested in space ever since then. I remember watching Alan Shepard's flight, Ed White's spacewalk, and seeing the photos from the Mariners and Rangers come in on TV. I was in Okinawa in elementary school when Gemini VIII (with Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott) made its emergency landing near there.

On a 8th-grade school tour of the Smithsonian's Silver Hill aircraft restoration facility, I was introduced to a man at the Smithsonian who had heard from my teacher that I was one of the most space-savvy kids he knew. The guy had 4 Lunar Orbiter photos of the moon that he couldn't identify. To help him out, I earned money by doing odd chores (like chopping wood) so I could save up to buy what was then NASA's only book of Lunar Orbiter photos and thereby identify the pictures for the fellow. (Wish I had had the Internet and the helpful folks in this forum back then!!!) I asked him if he could recommend me for a tour guide position at the National Air & Space Museum, and I then became the youngest tour guide there. One of my favorite experiences there was watching the Apollo 16 moonwalks and film-retrieval spacewalk in the NASM library with Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot, who was at that time the NASM director.

Went to Carnegie-Mellon for a year, hoping to become a physicist or astronomer, but I wasn't able to cope with being a good student but still not being able to get my mind around some of the weirdness of physics.

Had my first professional brush with the space program 11 years later as the Contracts Manager on one of Boeing's contracts with NASA for what was then called Space Station Freedom, the predecessor of what eventually became ISS. Worked on a project to design a mentoring process at NASA Headquarters last year, and had the pleasure of interviewing Orlando Figueroa, who was heading up the Mars program...so that was my closest brush with MER, shaking the hand of a guy who had touched MER hardware.

I work now as an organizational effectiveness consultant and leadership coach in multinational companies. I live in Reston, Virginia, 7 miles from the final resting place of Space Shuttle Enterprise, which I visit regularly. When I'm not surfing unmannedspaceflight.com, I am a semi-professional singer. I am president of The Washington Chorus and have been on two Grammy-winning CDs. Last night I sang in a program at the Kennedy Center and met Julie Andrews!!

Cheers,
Jonathan

Nothing to be ashamed of, Jeff. It's honest work. What else can you ask of someone?

I'm 49, going on 16... I'm a career technical writer / documentation specialist / training developer / what-have-you, and since a) the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the continuing economic recession here in America (especially in the IT industry), I'm working as a manager at a Pizza Hut.

For now.

As I said, there's never any shame in doing honest work.

My first memories include astronauts, Mercury capsules and Sputnik satellites. I recall watching Ranger IX coverage on live TV -- for the *very first time*, you could watch on your TV as live pictures from the Moon flashed by.

I was hooked.

1969 was my favorite year. Of my entire life. Not just because of Apollo, but also because of Mariners 6 and 7.

I want to see new horizons, new vistas. I want to see what's beyond every horizon -- and I want to see all of the different horizons that are out there.

I guess I'm just a sense-of-wonder junkie...

-the other Doug

Well, I started this discussion I never said what I do. I'm 19, like I said, and I'm a sophomore physics major. I'd like to go to grad school to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy or astrophysics. After some time racking up experience and maybe one or two master's degrees, I plan on applying to NASA's astronaut corp. Yeah, I know that sounds super ambitious, but I've wanted to be an astronaut since I was three, and I can't let go of my dream; I'm just too passionate.

It's been interesting to see what diversity we have in this forum. I'm actually a little surprised; I thought the ages would be a bit higher. The younger ages is encouraging, though; that means the inspiration of space hasn't been lost in the 1960s.

I just turned 25 today (happy birthday to me )
I am an Electrical Engineer working on projects such as JIMO/Prometheus, CEV, Space Shuttle, etc in an aerospace company near Chicago. Being a part of some of these projects is a wonderful experience.

21 years old from Denmark
It is us who made the magnetic experiments that are on the rovers.

I finished High School last year and I'm now looking at what I can spend my future on

I'm very interessted in space and astronomy. I just started taking pictures with my telescope and digital camera. Need alot of practise though.

nasaman58 - Hope you ends up beeing the first on Mars

Thanks, dot.dk! Good luck in your future. Don't let up on your interest for astronomy/space!

Interesting to see all the masks coming off!

48 year old planetary scientist in Boulder, Colorado (but an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to Mars- the outer solar system is where I get paid). I've been a space nut since Apollo days. Actually even before that- I remember writing an essay about Jupiter when I was eight...

Farnborough eh - you should try and make it up to the BAA meeting on Sat

Doug

I got deeply interested in astronomy in my childhood after watching landmark TV series in (then) Czechoslovak TV. Since then I wanted to be an astronomer, but unfortunately I have no talent for maths, so I ended up with computers. I am interested in many other sciences ranging from biology to linguistics, but astronomy and unmanned spaceflight is my real passion. My other hobby, that consumes most of my time is photography.
I am 31, work as a network administrator for a Czech mobile operator.
BTW, my favourite space probe are the Voyagers.

Had to add to my post: Probably my favorite memory is watching the raw images come in from the Voyager Neptune encounter, on cable TV, for something like three days as I recall. Just like Star Trek: exploring new worlds - except in real life. But I don't know, MER may be my new favorite.

yet another software engineer here.
Age: 37
living in Europe (south-west Germany, not far from Switzerland

have been fascinated by and following all the space missions since childhood.
(One of those books I've read back in the early seventies predicted that
"by the year 1986, huge nuclear powered manned space ships will fly to mars and back" ... I've waited for it to happen ever since
well ´... so the MERs are the next best thing to that

I'm also interested in mathematics, philosophy, artificial intelligence and
writing image processing software ... also dabbling a bit in space art
(my Idol: Don Davis

And apart from all the "head-stuff" I'm also doing quite a bit
sports like mountain biking/hiking (especially love the swiss mountains) and snowboarding

I am 34 I have an ex-wife and 4 kids. I work as an electrician. Wiring everything from houses to industrial plants. I've been interested in space forever. I used to lie in my back yard at night and stare at the sky to observe the rare passage of a satellite usually 2 or 3 a night. Oh how times have changed. I followed voyager with national geographic. I am an avid computer buff. I tend to fix computers after the "profesional" works on my friends computers. The pro gets the money and then i fix the problem after they leave go figure. I taught myself to program BASIC when i was 8 on a c64/tsr-80/apple. Oh how times have changed. I am a ham (amature) radio operator. I also prospect for gold and my most recent endeavor is Wyoming opal...Boy did i let the cat out of the bag... I love this forum and thank all involved for the wonderful intelligent stimulating discussions on here and the huge investment of time. bringing about the great pictures from mars that you can't get anywhere else. You guys rock. mmb rocks. This universe is a fascinating place.

It blows my mind to fathom we have a rover on another planet millions of miles away and here we are playing with the pictures, each in our little homes, and via the internet we are connected to each other and jpl and the rovers.

fascinating.

scott

Hi all,

I'm 51, and remember in the early 60's, in elementry school, carrying our little wooden chairs from our classrooms to the All Purpose Room (i.e., the Gym) to watch the launch of the first few Mercury flights on a grainy Black & White TV. But what really got me interested in Space was when we did the same thing for a live Ranger moon (crash) landing. I recall seeing the images coming in as the craft closed in to its ultimate fate. I found out that all but the last 5 images were easily seen in a typical amateur telescope.... So at age 12, I saved up and bought a Criterion Dynascope... a 6-inch reflector with a clock drive popular at the time (for $195.00).

I wound up getting a degree in Physics & Astronomy at the Univeristy of Virginia.... (my father used to say I went to college to *take up space*) but while there, I saw too many astro grad students leaving in the early- to mid-70's with their their MS's and PhD's only to have to get jobs as *scientific applications programmers* (using FORTRAN and punchcards! for those of you who don't know the dark ages). Space interest had really slowed down in the mid-70's with Apollo 17, Skylab, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

So went to Gradschool and got an MS in Atmospheric Physics (i.e., meteorology), bringing the science from my astronomy days *down to earth*, so to speak. For the last 25 years, I've been working on Natural Hazards... developing models to estimate damage and losses from natural catastrophes (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquake, etc). for an insurance research firm.

Also just wanted to say how lucky we are today (compared to the 70's and 80's) for the internet. Do you know how data-starved we were to find out anything about the Surveyors, Lunar Orbiters, Vikings, Voyagers, etc., back then? You might see a short story on the national TV news or NY Times for a day or two... then have to wait a month or two for Sky & Telescope magazine to come out to show a few good pictures and the real story. Today its sooooo fantastic with almost real time status and pictures.

I moved from Connecticut to central Florida a few years ago... and the first launch I ever witnessed in person (albeit 40 miles south of the pad) was the final flight of Columbia. I've made a point of watching almost every launch since then... including Spirit and Opportunity!

John (RedSky)

hi, long time lurker came here from space.com forums, must say i like these better, im 24, 2 years into my phd in robotics, some of my work is done at jpl, but im too new to have worked on mer. i guess my claim to fame is that ive actualy tested some of my robots in the mars yard.
~mike

Ok, so I'm 28 and come from the land of concrete cows and roundabouts. However I'm now living at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia (slightly differenent!) and 'sometimes' come into work, where I'm paid to try and understand extragalactic radio jets like this...





JC

I'm 55-ish, geologist/hydrologist for the past 30-or-so years. I was a space-nut even back in the 50's. In my late teens I wanted to be an astronomer. By college (late 60's) I decided that I favored planetary "astronomy" most and went into geology with the intention of climbing the degree ladder. The economy tanked in the mid-70's and I got into geotechnical grunt jobs to pay bills instead of grad school. In the early 80's I started a career in environmental assessments and mitigation of the impacts of coal mining and reclamation in the southeast USofA, where I have worked for 25-or-so years.

I still like planetary geology, but have less of the Buck Rogers fervor that I had in the early years.

--Bill

It's been great reading about all of you...

I'm 42, my job is as a User Support Analyst for the Human Services Agency for a county in California...luckily I get a few hours each day at work to keep up on all things Mars / Space.
I became interested in astronomy around the age of 14, my first star map came out of a National Geographic. Somehow I managed to locate Saturn in the sky and it has finally gotten around to being is relatively the same spot in Gemini where I first saw it all those years ago with my department store 2.4" refractor.
Saturn was my first 'love', I even did a science project about it in 8th grade.
I became a Trekkie at age 15 and fully believe we are being prepared for eventual disclosure that we are not alone in the universe.
My interest in Mars actually started thanks to Richard Hoagland's book about the 'Face on Mars'. I have since discovered there are enough interesting things about Mars that you don't have to make stuff up about it. You could call me a reformed anomolist, much of it thanks to this board and it's practical level headedness.
While I wish our Space program was much further along (bases on the Moon and Mars by now...mining asteroids...that sort of thing), the Computer age is a great time to be alive. I've been able to say "Thank You" directly to people who have given me so much joy (Don Davis for his Space art, Gary Wright for his music, some authors for their books...), it's truly an amazing time!

Eric

Hey all....I'm 34 and I worked as a tech support rep (over the phone) for 7 years before moving into a quasi-supervisory position (listening in on other techs and coaching them) and am now in training for a pre-sales position answering questions about networking equipment. I got hooked on the space program by the Voyager flyby of Uranus and the Challenger disaster when I was in high school. I'd hoped to become an astronaut and/or get into a career in space science, but I had too hard a time with calculus

I live in Utah, but I've lived in some other places over the years as well. I've even been lucky enough to see a space shuttle launch in Florida (at night, no less, two miles from the launch pad) and I've seen the shuttle Enterprise in the Udvar-Hazy center. (Too bad the space hangar wasn't fully opened yet! I plan on going back to D.C. sometime and seeing that again, as well as lots of other spacecraft, planes, and things). And who knows, my dream of going into space may yet come true.

This board is awesome, and I enjoy keeping up on the Mars rovers, Cassini, and other space projects. I also enjoy building models of aircraft and spacecraft, and I built a paper model of the MER, which enjoyed a prominent place at my cubicle before I got transferred and sent to training for my current position.

As of the last post, the median age was 34 and the mean 35. There is quite a cluster of us in our mid-30s (birthdates 1968-1974). I wonder if being exposed to the Vikings and Voyagers at a young age had a lasting impact, or if it was something else. But none of us is old enough to remember the Apollo missions.

The 33 people who have answered so far fit neatly into 3 cohorts: eleven born before 1965; eleven 1965-1975 (actually 1968-1974, as above); and eleven born since 1975, who I guess are too young to remember Viking or even maybe Voyager at Jupiter. I wonder what differences in outlook that creates (if anything).

Dropping out of lurker mode:

Although I am absolutely incredulous over this fact, I’m 55. I work as a government technical information specialist with the library at NASA Goddard. I’ve mostly spent the last 15 years managing the book, journal, and database/search engine collections and resources. Before getting into the library field, I got an M.S. in geology, mainly dealing with planetary topics: impact cratering and lunar soils. Another grad student and I worked on soils from Apollo’s 15 and 17, including a portion of this sample from the Station 6 boulder: http://store1.yimg.com/I/skyimage_1839_1990028

I grew up in Huntsville Alabama. My father started working for the Von Braun team in 1954, moved over to NASA Marshall in 1960 and stayed until he retired in 1990. I think, but am not entirely certain, that he fabricated and assembled the mechanical solar system model (orrey) that was a prop in the short films on space exploration that Walt Disney produced in the mid-50’s. He also fabricated some parts for the rocket that launched Explorer 1. From one end of our yard we could look out some 10-12 km to the Saturn V engine test stands for the several hot firings that were conducted at Marshall. I’ve seen 3 launches: the second unmanned Saturn V from some VIP stands (but not at the VAB); STS 8, and as we were driving south on past the Cape during a family vacation to Florida, a rocket took off, catching us completely by surprise. I later found out that it was Mariner 7!

One final comment, to echo what RedSky said – I attended a number of the Lunar and Planetary Science conferences in Houston in the 70’s. One of them was the 1979 meeting, which happened a few weeks after Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter. The poster sessions were the first chance that many of us had to see better photos of the planet and satellites than the grainy half-tone images in the newspapers. So all of you “youngsters” with your fancy-schmantzy web and jpegs and tiffs of Mars and Saturn on your computer screens every morning, you don’t know how easy you have it. In my day we actually had to drive or fly to other places to see that kind of stuff!

And PaleBlueDot – this may not be your kind of music but here is a clip of a song Pale Blue Dot http://vinylkings.com/palebluedot.htm .

I'm 28, and I've always been interested in the exploration of space, anything interesting, really. Space is nice because it is vast, infinite maybe, and so anything you can imagine probably exists, or did exist, or will exist, and amazingly enough, we can even fly up there and take a look for ourselves.

I got my B.S. in software engineering technology (designing and implementing software, basically), but I lost interest in that pretty quickly. Writing business apps so someone else can maximize their profit margin is not for me. And I have a sneaking suspicion that we'll run out of software to write, anyway.

I've moved on to fiction, turning my creativity to something a bit more human than an endless string of 1s and 0s, and I have a feeling my novel will soon be published, though I suppose it's technically feasible that there might possibly be some miniscule chance that I may be wrong, perhaps.

It's interesting to see the wide cross-section of people who peruse the boards.. oh yeah, and I vaguely remember seeing pictures from Voyager, I think, in National Geographic, but as far as remembering the actual events I only really remember Challenger. I had actually forgotten completely about Pathfinder until the MERs started getting coverage and the media brought it up. I doubt I'll forget about the MERs, though.

Wow! When Nasaman58 started this topic, I never guessed it would reveal so much of the underlying fabric that makes this the best space forum on the web today. No wonder the quality here is so high. There is a huge diversity of people from all walks of life and from all over the planet, all with one deep-seated desire...to understand the universe around them and to communicate with like-minded individuals. What an amazing community this is.

I wasn't here when this forum started, but Doug created something almost magical here, and I feel privileged to have found it.

OK. I was thinking that I was going to win the oldest member award, at roughly 54.60239 years old. I shaved some of the precision off of that estimate, since I really don't remember the exact hms of my birth date, nor the exact time I will publish this. Regardless, it appears I am one of the older members.

I am a geologist by training and at heart, though I have been working for the past dozen years as an environmental engineer for a chemical company. I have been interested in space for as long as I can remember. I recall my father taking me outside to look toward the sky, hoping to see Sputnik after just turning 7 years old. I remember Dad bringing home a sample of the (I think aluminized mylar) material the Echo satellite was made from, and going out to look for it. I remember waking in the morning to run out to find the newspaper so I could (hopefully) find the close-up pictures of the Moon from one of the Ranger missions. You can't imagine how devastating the news was to my young self, when the newspapers revealed that yet another Ranger Probe had entirely missed the moon!

Oh, but when they finally did hit it. I was hooked for life. As you can tell, I could probably go on for ages about this stuff, but I think this is getting long enough.

I chose my screen name (CosmicRocker) because of my love of rocks and the wonderful information they contain. Rocks from other worlds are even more interesting. Beyond that, my favorite rock band from my grad school years was the Moody Blues. They had a popular hit back then called "Veteran Cosmic Rocker."

I am 24 and work as a technician on what is currently the world's largest ultraviolet laser fusion facility. (lab for laser energetics) I have always been interested in spaceflight, especially the unmanned variety and the treats we've been afforded lately (MER, huygens, stardust etc.) are just ...well....indescribably beautiful to me. It's great to see so many of the varied backgrounds of other users here. I thought I was probably the only one here under 30 but I guess not!! That's great to see IMHO. BTW I love your icon PaleBlueDot!! I'm a huge fan of Carl Sagan too! This site seems to have the most perfect blend of levelheaded skepticism and wide eyed wonder/optimism about the MER mission I've seen anywhere. Really a great place and I hope it can stay this way.

I am almost 30 and I work as a programmer. My disadvantage in this forum is English. My posts are often crude nad full of errors.
I'm from the Czech republic (former Czechoslovakia).
(nazdar Borku

It does bring up the possibility that one or more of those in the middle range were either conceived or born while Apollo astronauts were actually on the surface of the Moon, though... talk about a lunar influence, eh?

-the other Doug

hey there! another Dutch guy here. I'm 23 at the moment, did an MSc in aerospace engineering and now living in the UK to look at Titan with data from CIRS (and enjoying every bit of it!)

I always had a large interest in planetary space exploration, but unfortunately, there's no planetary science opportunities in Holland (except maybe ESA ESTEC in Noordwijk, but since the Dutch government only contributes a tiny amount to ESA's budget... sigh). Anyway, there was no planetary science education, so I did the next best thing, aerospace engineering (I don't like stars and clusters, etc that much). Turned out to be a little disappointing, expecially the first 3 years, since it was mostly aeronautics, and I don't really care a lot about airplanes...But I'm glad I did it (although I wouldn't have minded some more 'real' science) and I'm glad I'm doing what I am doing now.

That's my life story so far

Nice meeting you all !
38 year old chemist here. I presently teach and do research at a university. Mainly working with NMR spectroscopy applications in analytical and food chemistry now, did a lot of polymers in my early days too.