ISP light, ISP bright

ISP I saw the other night...


Yeah, kind of cool. My husband and I were able to go outside and watch the International Space Station and the Shuttle Discovery pass over head the Tuesday night about an hour after sunset. You could see it moving from west to east with the naked eye, but with a decent pair of regular binoculars you could actually see the sun reflecting off of the solar panels. If it wasn't moving so fast (took less than 3 minutes for it to cross the sky from horizon to horizon) we would have set up our telescope and astronomical binoculars which would have allowed us to see the ISP in it's entirety. But with as fast as it was moving, trying to tract it would have been pretty difficult and may have run the risk of dumping the tripods both require for proper viewing. It's kind of neat to look up and know there are people up there living on the threshold of space even if only for a short time.

Maybe with the information learned from the ISP we'll see the start of a permanent moonbase in my lifetime, and maybe my nieces and nephews will finally see the beginnings of an actual colony on the moon (which makes more sense that starting with on an Mars, IMHO). Then again, by this time we should all be in those nifty flying cars we were promised.

Still, all in all it was something to see...

Hmm... Well, I don't know. The Moon seems rather like a meek guy with a "Kick me!" sign on it's back. More meteors impact with it than with Mars - mayhap the red planet would be a little bit safer. On the other claw, the Moon is more silent and calm.

I wonder if we could see something of the shuttle going up from here - I certainly wouldn't mind seeing it.

There haven't been any major meteor impacts on the Moon in a long, long time. Also, of anything goes wrong help is potentially only a few days away instead of possibly two years. Actual evacuation would be possible with a reasonably fast rescue/pickup.

Also, it makes more sense from a logistical perspective the raw materials available on the moon for manufacturing and the like, plus the lower gravity, would make the moon an ideal base of operations for the final step off to Mars.