Tiny Insects and Space Travel

Darn, these little hoverflies are hard to capture!  They are so tiny you can barely see them so in order to get this I took >200 shots.  That was the extent of my photography today.  They always look like little cartoon characters when I get them up on the screen.  

Last night we attended the John H. Glenn Lecture in Space History at the National Air and Space Museum.  As members of the Smithsonian Associates Program, we were eligible to enter a lottery to get tickets.  We were able to get 4 tickets so my husband invited a patient who had spent his entire career with NASA, and his wife.  The lecture was in the iMax theater with overflow attendees viewing it on monitors in the planetarium.  We got there early and were able to get good seats for the live program.  It was such a fascinating night.

David Rubinstein, who is one of Washington DC’s biggest philanthropists was the moderator and former astronaut Major General Michael Collins, pilot of the Apollo 11 command module, and Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and the Washington Post were the panelists.  It was a very informal q&a session that was filled with wonderful stories and fascinating information.  Michael Collins is now 84 years old and looks to be in great shape.  His anecdotes about training to be an astronaut and going to the moon were quite amusing. At one point, Rubinstein asked Collins what it was like when he remained in orbit in the command module and it went to the dark side of the moon where he was cut off from everything.  Just the thought of it is quite frightening to me, but he said it was fabulous  He finally had some peace and quiet and didn’t have NASA giving him orders and telling him what to do. 

Jeff Bezos talked about the future of space travel and his company Blue Origin. His vision for the future is quite fascinating and he predicts that his first flights with passengers will start in 2018…a ticket will set you back considerably, however, at about $260,000.  


This program will be offered via Webcast on the NASM’s website in the future and preserved for generations to come.  I have loaded a couple of pictures in the extras.