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I'll just post this in the 'seriously silly stuff' because a lot of people tell me my obssesive interest for spaceflight is silly

Last week, when a Soyuz undocked from the Internation Space Station during STS-134, Italian astronaut Paulo Nespoli was able to shoot dozens of truly unique pictures and video of the ISS with Endeavour docked! (and let's not forget the Progress, another Soyuz and the European Automated Transfer Vehicule 2 )

As you are well aware (?) there is only one flight left and this was the first time a photo-op was possible, so in this context the word 'unique' isn't being raped for once
Enjoy!

Cell-phone wallpaper, anyone?







There's a lot more here, since I don't want to resize every single image. And I don't want to spoil it for the people who actually care. If you're into these kinds of stuff, go look, there's like five pages of high quality awesomeness!

Also, as I mentioned, Mr. Nespoli was kind enough to shoot some video




I am so going to show these to my grandchildren, hoping they'll make fun of 'that silly station thing' as they grew up with lunar bases and missions to Mars. The US space program is like one of the top five reasons I (and many foreigners) have great respect for the United States, really, only the states can pull off stuff like that.

I love the space program and was fortunate enough to get to work on numerous experiments that flew on the shuttle. I also got to work on some of the subsystems of the space station. It was very interesting, but you also get to see the bureaucracy of working on government contracts.

I have an uncle that retired recently that worked most of his career on the solid rocket boosters. He is really bummed that the shuttle flights are coming to an end.

I am actually kind of glad, because I do think the mission to mars in a vehicle closer to those that landed on the moon makes better sense.

Really, this forum just keeps getting better and better.

You can be very proud of yourself, because you are one of the people who actually helped humankind advance. It sounds kinda cheesy but the work that people like you have done is so much better than making profit, increasing production, defeating the competition, making a succesful campaign to promote a product (my English isn't that good, do you understand where I'm getting at?). All this silly stuff people do every day isn't going to mean anything in 2030. But when America does make it to Mars, you can say that you helped.

A lot of people are disappointed with Obama's decision to forget the moon, but I'm not. Some people think America doesn't want to 'play ball' with Japan, China, Russia, India,... (sorry if I forgot other countries with lunar aspirations) because America couldn't win the 'second space race'. My response is that America already won, and they're going to win again at Mars Good luck America!

Edit: can I ask you what projects you were involved with? As I mentioned, I'm a bit of a space geek!

I couldn't resist

I was involved with experiments involving acceleration, crystall growth, and radiation detection mainly. On the space station I was involved with a lot of subsystems in the U.S. lab that basically provide the environment for doing tests. I was just a very small part of it and started out working on it as a co-op student in college. I got out of aero-space in the late 90s and moved more into commercial projects.

Even if you were only a small part of it, elements such as radiation detection will be critical when astronauts have to spend longer periods in space. As I previously said, you can be proud of yourself! (if you aren't already )

Yea, it was fun in a lot of ways. It was strange, though. At the time when I was doing it I would tell people what I did and they talked like I was an astronaut or something. Nope. No glory here. Just geek work.