Even the mouthpieces of the left are beginning to share the truth. Meanwhile, more hostages are found to be dead – of course Hamas would like to bargain with the dead bodies. The mother of that beautiful girl – Shani Louk, who’s body was paraded through Gaza has begged not to have soldiers killed just to bring back her body. What a brave woman. This war will drag on for a very long time, and no-one in the world media cares that so many Israelis are refugees in their own country – not able to go back home, either in the south or the north.
Our friend Sharon works here and offered to give us a tour. Took a while to arrange, but we got here with Elk, Mandy and the two boys. On a beautiful sunny day – the next day, the rains came.
First stop, the model of the Perseverance, the Rover that replaced Opportunity. That wonderful rover that was only supposed to last maybe a year – and lasted 15. This is the exact Replica of Perseverance. Not all that big, but sending ack so much information.
We all loved the tour, well Cameron the least, I’ll get to him later. Elk, being an engineer who has worked for a company that has supplied parts to JPL really got a kick out of it.
All of us, Joel took the picture. And yes, Sharon is a guy- his named isn’t pronounced like the female name. These two had some great conversations.
Just the size of a golf cart -and gathering so much info. btw, a great movie to watch is Good night Oppy, another friend of ours had worked for years on that project – we saw her briefly in the movie. On issue is anthromorphising these machines a little too much. But if that is my complaint – go watch the movie!
The command center that is used for all the missions.
On the left, all the active missions that are in space, Notice Voyager 2 has been up for 46 years and is still transmitting back information. I’m not sure why Voyager 2 is up a little longer than Voyager 1 – but bother up a long time. Perseverance is only up 3 years, Opportunity – died so is off the list. I think the list on the right is things that are being followed within the earths atmosphere.
Images of the telescopes that are tracking.
Some Jet Prepulsion History.
Sharon is now starting a Jewish club at JPL – because Oct 7 woke all of us up. Theodore Von Karman was a Hungarian Jew who escaped to the US – these days DEI doesn’t want to honor any of the heads of JPL – all White men – so it’s time to fight back.
Anyway, Von Karman, was working at CalTech and through the university started a rocket program – later as WWII approached the army got involved – it needed rockets. After the war even Wernher Von Braun, formally a Nazi scientist came to the US and worked at JPL on some of the first Mars programs.
These days CalTech still runs JPL, but Nasa overseas things, so yeah bureaucracy of the Federal government is involved. When Opportunity was built, Nasa only allowed the Nasa sign to be on it. So The engineers got smart and on one of the wheels they perforated JPL in sign language – so now, all over the surface of Mars it says JPL. Don’t mess with engineers – they may be nerds but they get the job done. If you watch the movie the Martian you will see the can do attitude of JPL.
We climbed up the hill to the testing grounds. This is where they put the rovers to as much of a real life test as they can here on earth. Nothing was being tested while we were there. Oh well.
Here is the model of the campus. Up the high part of the Arroyo Seco. Von Karman and friends used to shoot rockets around here, now that Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge have grown around it – they have to go further out in the desert for testing.
Cute bear in the gift shop – no I didn’t buy him.
Our souvenirs were the guest card and a sticker.
More info in the next post.
Leah