After a busy summer, I decided to take the last week off work to unwind and catch up on a few things. I didn't manage to do as much of the latter as I had hoped, but I think I was reasonably successful on the unwinding front. I certainly managed to catch up on some much needed sleep, which may explain why I hardly slept at all last night and am up at this early (for me) hour. It was nice to have a bit of a break, although I'll pay for it when I walk into the office this morning to find a pile of new work waiting for me on my desk. Let the chaos resume!

Life is still busy, as my rather quiet blog may suggest, but I have nothing terribly interesting to report. Everything is much the same.

The photograph above is one I snapped the other weekend when visiting my parents. They have just had new windows installed and the cats seem to find the warmer, wider plastic windowsills much more appealing than the original concrete ones they replaced.

A week or two ago, I passed one of the many cats that live along the route between my place of residence and my place of work. This particular cat is an indoor cat, although it does have access to a balcony. I had seen it infrequently on previous occasions, but the other week it was joined on the balcony by a beanbag. The two combined in a predictable manner, remaining locked in a state of mutual absorption for an entire day, and the cat gained a mental label of "beanbag cat".

When I left for work this morning, both cat and beanbag were once again out enjoying the morning sun, so I took the (zoom lens) camera I am currently borrowing from my sister with me in case there was still an opportunity for a photo when I came home. And there was.

It's been a while since I've rambled about anything aerospace related, but the events of today seemed noteworthy.

On the 12th of April, 1981, around a month before I was born, an oddly shaped craft called Columbia took flight on the first orbital mission of the space shuttle program. Today, over thirty years later, Atlantis, the last active orbiter in the program, departed on a two week supply run to the ISS, the conclusion of which will bring the program to a close.

Over the last 30 years, NASA's 5 space trucks have spent a combined three and a half years in space, have orbited the earth more than 20,000 times (due to be just over 21,000 by the time Atlantis returns in a couple of weeks) and have travelled over half a billion miles - the equivalent of over 1,100 return journeys to the moon. In addition to producing statistics with large numbers in them, the shuttle fleet has hauled numerous satellites to and from orbit, launched and maintained the Hubble space telescope, performed around two dozen scientific research flights as part of the Spacelab program and almost single-handedly constructed the International Space Station.

In the aerospace industry, the space shuttle program has long been criticised for failing to meet the project's originally predicted cost (by a factor of about 40 >_>) and safety goals, the high cost in particular consuming a significant amount of NASA's budget, thereby obstructing more interesting and potentially worthwhile scientific projects. However, I believe that the shuttle was one of NASA's greatest public relations success stories, something that often seems to be overlooked. It may not have made access to space any cheaper, safer or easier than before, and its unusual design of two oversized fireworks strapped to a fuel tank and mated to what was once famously described as a "brick with wings" ended up being the cause of most of its in-service problems, but to the general public it was a plane that flew in space. Unlike the multi-stage rockets of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, the Shuttle was seen as something more approachable and made space feel a little bit closer, fuelling an interest in all things space during the 80s. The unmistakable design made it an instantly recognisable icon across the world. Space shuttles or craft obviously inspired by them quickly became the default mode of earth to space transport in contemporary fiction, appearing in probably the majority of books, films and TV series involving space travel released over the past 30 years.

With the ISS virtually complete, now is undoubtedly the right time to move on and pursue new projects that will further our understanding and exploration of this universe, but it will be odd to think that the once ubiquitous shuttle fleet will not be a part of those future plans.

This is the desktop thermometer that I use to keep an eye on the temperature inside my computer, represented by the number in the middle. The number on the left is room temperature. :( It hasn't budged in the past couple of hours. I don't think I'll sleep much again tonight.

Out and about today for a trip to MCM Expo. The conductor has just clipped my ticket with a paw print. I wonder whether there's a system behind the shapes, or if conductors are free to pick and use their favourite? Either way, I approve of this one.