Space Segues

In just about half an hour, the first spacewalk of STS-130 is scheduled to begin at the International Space Station.  The Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with ISS late Tuesday night, and the shuttle crew and station crew have been working to examine the exterior of Endeavour to determine if she took any damage during launch.  The 1st of 3 EVAs, this spacewalk will prep the Tranquility node for removal from Endeavour's payload bay and transfer to it's place in the stations superstructure, which will be accomplished with the robotic arms of the station and the shuttle.  Of course you can watch it live at SpaceVidCast.com.  Even if you aren't all that interested in space, astronauts, or robot arms, you ought to give it a watch.  There's something about getting a live color video feed from 200 miles above the Earth's surface and moving at over 17,000 miles an hour.  And speaking of video and space...

NASA recently released an HD video tour of the International Space Station.  I believe it was shot during the last shuttle mission to the station, STS-129, based on who appears to be onboard.   The video takes you through the Russian end of the space station and over and down to the docked shuttle Atlantis.  It gives some good perspective on the size of this 400 ton, speeding construction site.  Most people think of the space station as it was when it began--cramped and with just a few people aboard.  It's now nearly complete and hosts up to a six person crew full time.  

And speaking of space and having come along way, this is a fascinating website dedicated to documenting the many things we learned from working on the moon.  It really is worth considering just how much of our modern technology can be traced back to discoveries and engineering problem solving derived from this dogged determination to get to the moon.  I was particularly taken with the documentation of the use of duct tape on the Apollo missions.