Hi Guys and Gals,
The saga continues with the final launch of the shuttle Discovery which was due at the beginning of November. This was subsequently postponed to the beginning of December as the cause of the cracks in the fuel tanks had not been resolved. It has now been postponed yet again as the problem of the cracks still has to be determined. The next window for the launch is February 27th to March 8th. This could now delay the shuttle Endeavour’s last flight, which had been scheduled to launch February 28th and will now have to be in April. The third and final shuttle launch due in the summer and approved by Congress in October may well have to be cancelled if the forecast cut in budget is passed. We still hope that we may see the final launch of Discovery before we return to the UK but it is now looking less and less likely.
In the meantime however a new era has taken place with the commercial project SpaceX. They have successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule into orbit and brought it back to earth on Wednesday last. Meanwhile the shuttle Discovery was sitting nearby grounded yet again while Falcon 9 was flying straight and true. The sky was clear blue on that morning and I was privileged from the outside of our place to see the rocket and its vapour trail as I was preparing to leave for a ride. It was a triumph for SpaceX who in less than eight years has built the rocket and its capsule for roughly $700 million which has flown successfully on its first launch. By contrast NASA, which has become a Government bureaucracy, has spent more than $6 billion on its Constellation rocket and Orion capsule that has never flown. The unmanned capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles off the coast of Mexico at 2.02 pm after a flight that lasted just over three hours and included two orbits of earth. Two waiting ships and a barge then closed in and plucked the capsule out of the water. The only downside of the mission was the company’s inability to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket which sunk in the Atlantic Ocean . The company says that they gleaned valuable information during the flight and expect to eventually be able to re-use its rockets. Watching the newsreel pictures as they collected the capsule from the ocean was all a flashback to the days of the Gemini and Apollo programmes back in the 80’s.
The newspaper heading read “No you’re not Nuts: It’s raining Acorns” was referring to an exceptional crop of acorns we are having this winter. We have been experiencing this as the American Oak that has branches reaching over part of our property has been raining them down on our roof. The noise when they hit the shed and car port roofs, which are made of aluminium, sound like rifle shots at night. Hopefully the good news will be that the squirrels will be too busy eating them to bother about our truck electrics and heater pipes which have proved to be too their liking in the past for either breakfast, lunch or dinner, sometimes maybe all three! There has been no explanation given as to why this should happen every few years. Researchers call it a “mast” year when oaks produce a staggering abundance of nuts but that’s not the only term you will hear. “It’s a bumper year” said Kevin Wilkey “One comes every three or four years and this happens to be the year”. While nobody knows for certain what causes a bigger than normal drop of acorns one result is the Thanksgiving feast it provided for wildlife this year.
Trust you all had a good time at the Over the Hill Gang Christmas Lunch on 14th at Sumner’s Ponds and that the Clarencourt Christmas lunch on Sunday is a great success. Only sorry I cannot be with you as Christmas never quite seems the same over here.
Bryan Staples