We have been fortunate to have seen two space shuttle launches. The first was in August 1984 for the maiden launch of Discovery. The most recent was 2/24/2011 for the final launch of Discovery. It is sad to see this program wind down and we as a nation no longer having ambitious goals to explore and develop breakthrough technology to move forward. Below is a photo taken from the Titusville bridge on 2/24 with a Canon SX30IS using the 35X zoom.
Shuttle Discovery Launch 2/24/2011
While in London on business I did a side trip south to the coast to the resort town of Brighton. It was a neat town and in some ways a typical beach town with various shopping etc. but the most unusual thing was the beach was covered with gigantic stones. Not small stones like Nice France but golfball size and bigger in most cases. I took the picture below to give some scale to the size of the stones with a typical .5L water bottle. As usual transportation in Europe was very easy with the train ride from London to Brighton being about 1 hour with frequent routes and always on time.
I have been on the road every week this year, Minneapolis, Tahoe, NYC, SFO and PHX and got to experience the “joy” of travel. One thing I noticed is a huge increase in the number of TSA agents at every airport. Let me first say based on the fear of being added to a body cavity search list, that the TSA does a superb job protecting us from all enemies foreign and domestic. (I hope that did the trick) But there is no lack of them. I must admit the lines to get through the checkpoints seem to be shorter so perhaps the increase in employees is working. It is amazing to think a brand new government agency evolved from nothing to a huge organization in such a short period of time. Perhaps we should keep this in mind as the discussion of new government entities are being discussed.
BTW, the TSA budget for FY 2009 is $7.1b, about $24 for each of the 300M U.S. citizens.