Merry Christmas and a Wish for a Happy New Year

A tweet from Air and Space reminded me of the Apollo 8 Earth Rise image.
- LRK -

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airandspace - http://twitter.com/airandspace

Today in 1968: Apollo 8 astronauts, 1st humans to view Earth from lunar orbit, took famous "Earthrise" image:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/imagedetail.cfm?imageID=1931
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MSNBC has an excerpt from “Genesis” by Robert Zimmerman. Copyright ©1998 Robert Zimmerman. From the book published by Four Walls Eight Windows, New York that has an explanation of how the picture came to be taken. It is a good read and I hope you check it out.

Here I am just going to clip the prayer Frank Boman read as a Christmas wish to all.
- LRK -

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077909/
The genesis of Apollo 8’s ‘earthrise’
Decades later, ‘Genesis’ solves the mystery surrounding the image

July 15, 1999 - Back in 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 made the first around-the-moon flight — a Christmas mission that set the stage for the first moon landing less than a year later. In this excerpt from the book “Genesis,” Robert Zimmerman focuses on the events leading up to the “earthrise” picture, the first widely distributed picture of Earth as seen from the moon.

This excerpt begins just after the crew members of Apollo 8 — Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell — fired the Apollo spacecraft’s engines to enter lunar orbit on Dec. 24, 1968.

snip
The conversation soon turned serious. Borman really wanted to participate in that Christmas Day service, but didn’t have any idea what he could do. Fellow parishioner Rod Rose, an engineer at mission control, offered a solution. He would put together a short prayer that Borman could read from orbit, tape Borman’s recitation, and then play the tape back at church. For Borman, the practical test pilot, this plan was perfect. Rose cobbled together a prayer from a number of verses in the Bible, and went over it with Borman until both were happy.

Now, Borman waited until Lovell and Anders finished passing some new data to the ground. Then he began, a little self-consciously. “This is to Rod Rose and the people at St. Christopher’s, actually to people everywhere.” Borman took a breath. “Give us, o God, the vision which can see thy love in the world, in spite of human failure. Give us the faith to trust the goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness. Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts, and show us what each one of us can do to set forth the coming of the day of universal peace. Amen.”

“Amen,” Mike Collins echoed softly.

Now Borman sheepishly added, “I was supposed to lay-read tonight, but I couldn’t quite make it.”

“Roger,” said Collins. “I think they understand.”

snip
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Another tweet is from Wayne Hale with his "Predictions and Wishes".
Hope you read.
- LRK -

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waynehale - http://twitter.com/waynehale

Just posted a blog update for Christmas wishes:
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/waynehalesblog/posts/post_1261670536293.html
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Mike Verakmp passed a clip from NASA News Service which has a link to a nice Holiday Card
- LRK -

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Happy Holidays
Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:00:00 -0600
Wishing all the happiest of holidays, members of the Cassini-Huygens team offer their views of Saturn and its moons as gifts to the universe. Cassini-Huygens, a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, is a mission that is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA. The Cassini orbiter (pictured at the bottom of this image) and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL

link: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1551.html

==
This NASA news has been delivered on behalf of the agency by GovDelivery (800-439-1420) · NASA Headquarters · Washington, DC 20546
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I just finished reading "COSMIC FISHING - An account of writing Synergetics with Buckminster Fuller", E.J. APPLEWHITE.
Let me quote from page 156
- LRK -
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Cosmic Fishing
The information signals are forever bouncing
electromagnetically about the Universe, every so
often impinging on celestial entities and being either
tunably received or bounced off to travel elsewhere.
If we fail to catch a cosmic fish it may be a trillion
years before the opportunity comes again. It will come
. . . but it may not be in this Galaxy. Sumtotally, all
the fish will always eventually be caught and
rebroadcast, but not all at the same rebroadcasting
stations.
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In the next year will we be prepared to catch some cosmic fish?
Such as.....
- LRK -

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http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/23dec_voyager.htm?list965414
December 23, 2009: The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery.

"Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves
the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all."
snip
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And if you had the right translator. :-)
http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/2007/03/universal-translator-how-to-talk-to.html

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8
Apollo 8 was the first human spaceflight mission to escape from the gravitational field of planet Earth; the first to be captured by and escape from the gravitational field of another celestial body; and the first crewed voyage to return to planet Earth from another celestial body - Earth's Moon. The three-man crew of Mission Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders became the first humans to see the far side of the Moon with their own eyes, as well as the first humans to see planet Earth from beyond low Earth orbit. The mission was accomplished with the first manned launch of a Saturn V rocket. Apollo 8 was the second manned mission of the Apollo Program.

Originally planned as a low Earth orbit Lunar Module/Command Module test, the mission profile was changed to the more ambitious lunar orbital flight in August 1968 when the Lunar Module scheduled for the flight became delayed. The new mission's profile, procedures and personnel requirements left an uncharacteristically short time frame for training and preparation, thus placing more demands than usual on the time, talent, and discipline of the crew.

After launching on December 21, 1968, the crew took three days to travel to the Moon. They orbited ten times over the course of 20 hours, during which the crew made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first 10 verses from the Book of Genesis. The crew timed this reading to coincide with a full view of planet Earth hanging in the empty blackness of space, clearly showing the rich diversity of the living planet, as indicated in Earth's colors, seas, landforms, and weather patterns, rising over the dull gray horizon of the lifeless Moon. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. Apollo 8's successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U.S. President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
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http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo8/Apollo8.html
APPOLO 8 MISSION

The overall objective of the mission was to demonstrate command and service module performance in a cislunar (between the Earth and Moon) and lunar-orbit environment, to evaluate crew performance in a lunar-orbit mission, to demonstrate communications and tracking at lunar distances, and to return high-resolution photography of proposed Apollo landing areas and other locations of scientific interest.

snip
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983)[1] was an American architect, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.

Fuller published more than thirty books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetics. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.

snip
[1] Encyclopædia Britannica. (2007). "Fuller, R Buckminster".
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9365050. Retrieved 2007-04-20.
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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