Suzanne’s Blog

Spacewalks aren’t easy. Yesterday’s news was testimony to that.

Ask astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn Piper.

She was doing her seven-hour spacewalk to do some repairs outside the International Space Station when… Ooops…. slippery fingers!

She let go of her tool bag momentarily while cleaning a greasy mess made by a malfunctioning tool. The 13-kg tool bag just drifted into space…

Now when it’s lost in space… it’s really lost… but when the reports came out initially, there were worries that the bag might come back and hit the ISS (International Space Station) and cause more damage - I guess like a boomerang effect in space?

Never heard of it… but hey you never know what happens up there, it’s an unknown universe. Apparently, the crew had spotted a screw floating by earlier in their mission but were too far away to catch it. They had no idea where it came from…

Anyway, I got a little curious since I know little about space. I was thinking ” if it was slowly drifting away, why couldn’t she just reach out and grab it… like you would with a balloon that just slipped away…” Well, it’s not that simple obviously. I watched this clip and it made everything much clearer to me. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7737250.stm

Astronaut Heide had to constantly be holding onto something or SHE would have been ’lost’ as well I suppose. Forces of space would pull her away. I guess it’s really like when you’re underwater.

Imagine you’re fixing a nozzle at the bottom of the pool. To stay there, you need to hold onto something or you’ll float to the top. So when one of your tools floats away to the top (even though this happens at a slow-motion pace) you become helpless once the tool is just even an inch out of reach… Interesting… I learnt something there.

Oh and another trivia which I found very amusing. A spider runs amuck in Space! haha

Two spiders were taken to space with the crew as part of a science experiment aimed at generating interest among students grades K-12 ( hey, they got me interested too!)  They wanted to see and study how spiders weave their webs without gravity.

Well pity the space spiders and the webs they weave… because obviously the spiders fought a battle with weightlessness and lost. The web turned out to be just a tangled mess, a far cry from the elegant symmetrical creation that we see here on earth.

Take a look at the photo made available courtesy of NASA. This is what the web looks like…

Spiders are confused? Deranged?

According to a spacewatcher… it seems one of the two spiders grew irritated at its habitat and its helplessness, so it broke free and is now nowhere to be seen. Maybe it’s having artistic troubles and is looking for a good place to drown its sorrows?

Or maybe… it’s just camera-shy.

When the spiders come home at the end of its 15-day mission later this month… boy, will they be relieved…

But funny incidents aside, the men and women involved in space exploration and science are carrying out incredible missions and collecting invaluable information on what awaits men in space. Space study is about our future and you’ve got to hand it to them to take such unknown risks in the name of science.

We’ve come to the end of watching a remarkable journey … and what an unexpected one it has been.

Watching Obama’s victory speech gave me the goosebumps… he is that good. I’m not American, but I was pumped with hope for America and what good sea change this means for the rest of the world. I endorse his stance on climate change, his take on how the rich should pay and contribute more and am convinced he has a better and real sense of the bigger world around him. John McCain is an admirable man but he appeared to lose focus time to time during this election.

We’re now going to see lots of post-election analysis report from various media and different people giving different opinions on the election and what went wrong/right. Well I thought I’d write my two cents worth about how amazing this race has turned out to be… not that I think it’s important for you to know but simply because it has been such a breath-stopping, exciting follow through for me as well that I feel I need to now let it all out and come to a conclusion of my own… so that I can just wrap it up,  put it aside and get ready for a new chapter… just like how Barack Obama did in his victory speech… except I don’t think I could do it as beautifully as he put it

You know, I vividly remember when I was first introduced to the name ‘Barack Obama’. It was just 4 years ago, when I was getting ready for the Democratic National Convention 2004 and whispers reached my ears to look out for a young promising man who will be making a speech that night to endorse John Kerry.  “Barack who?”…

Well, he’s turned out to be more than just promising. Look at the story now and it’s an impressive and incredible one. And having watched him and followed him since has made me a fan of Obama. It is his ability to electrify young voters, get them interested and more aware of what’s happening in the world around them that really makes him exceptional. He drew millions of new voters and the young has never been so active in politics as in this race we’ve seen.

He must know what an inspiration he is to all young black men especially…
And that his story, perseverence and success is giving other people of colour more confidence in their everyday life too.
He has sent out a message of hope and planted seeds in tomorrow’s generation to dream for their future and about their future.

And I, coming from a family of teachers, enjoying interacting with young students and just being someone who cares a lot about our younger generation, firmly believe and cannot stress enough how so important it is to dream, not to be afraid to dream and work towards that dream. Well, he certainly is today’s great model for all youth. I am so proud of him for that.

Here comes the hard part.

Barack Obama will soon be embarking on his “actions speak louder than words” mission come January when he has to start delivering on his promises to his country and to the world. 

The world’s high hopes for Obama are probably unrealistic. But hey, having said that… he’s known for breaking records. This campaign, thanks to him has been the longest and costliest campaign in US history. Barack also made history by breaking the ultimate racial barrier to become the first African American to claim the country’s highest office.

After sweet victory, the hard work begins now.

Though his honeymoon period in office is likely to last longer than previous presidents, bearing in mind the massive mess he inherits from George W. Bush… I do hope to see some form of refreshing change in the first 100 days in office.

That would mark a great start to indeed a new dawn as he calls it in his victory speech.