The state of Human Spaceflight in the United States of America is not good.  And the speakers at the Human Spaceflight Forum at the Columbia Memorial Space Center did not sugar coat or avoid that fact.

They meet it head on, that is their jobs.  They are as frustrated as everyone else, but better than everyone else they have real knowledge that I think you will be better off hearing than just living on NASA PR.

I hope that at some point you can start it from the beginning and listen all the way through, there will be a number of moments that are real eye-opening.  But if you can't do that right now then at least jump up to the beginning of Dr. Zubrin's part (about 11 minutes in),

Sorry iPad folks, this is Flash multimedia.  It is the king of the web so please use a real computer or Android or WinMo/Skyfire device.

Have you ever heard of Downey, California?

If you're a Fast Food Industry fan you may know it as the home of the last "original" McDonalds "drive in" with true golden arches pre-Ronald Speedie the Chef icon waving from the top ofthe huge main arch.

If you're a movie fan then you may know it as the city of Downey Studios, the home of the world's largest film water tank and the location where Iron Man 2's Monaco Raceway was recreated in a parking lot with giant green screens.

But if you're a fan of history, specifically Space Industry history, then you know Downey as one of the original Space development locations.  Monumental, in fact...

Sammie had Peter Jackson on the brain all last week and so when Universal sent me a freebie we grabbed the two annuals and took the Zaner to check out the new King Kong 3d part of the Studio Tour.

Worth it?  Yeah, definitely.  I would have paid the no-lines rate for it.

Oh.. as we were leaving I looked up and saw the Airship Ventures Zeppelin!

Back when we moved from NY to San Fran I thought it was great that the very first week we got a string of good "swarm" earthquakes (that is, after I gave it some thought and felt dumb for yelling 'big trucks aren't supposed to be driving up our street all day and night!').

Relatedly, it was totally cool to move down to LA and in the first week be just minutes away from one of the biggest wildfires in generations.

Since it was the only thing anyone asked about ... here're some pics from The Station Fire that consumed over a hundred thousand acres starting a few weeks back. Today the word is that it is 94% contained BUT the temps are moving back up to the 100's and the dry Santa Anna winds are poised to pick things up again. COOL!

Today, September 11th 2009, at almost 6 in the afternoon, the Space Shuttle Discovery had to land up at Edwards Air Force Base. Earlier in the day I'd heard a casual mention on the radio that we'd be hearing the dual sonic booms in the LA area at around 5:45... but I had no idea just how loud they would be!

Before heading out to pick up my son at kindergarten I put my two mini recorders on the ledge of my office balcony, just hoping that they might pick up something.