09Sep 2006 #0637.html

Orion

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Dear Family and Friends,

Welcome to this week's "Thoughtlet."

These words are my personal diary and a weekly review of ideas, beliefs, thoughts, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you: my children, my family, and my friends.

"The following article was in Friday's (08Sep06) Outlook section of the Chronicle:

'Orion, a new frontier and the last man on the moon Destination of a new craft less important than direction By Capt. Eugene Cernan With a single announcement for NASA last week, the nation took a giant leap forward in realizing its plans to return humans to the Moon by 2020 and then press on to Mars and destinations beyond - known in space policy circles as the Vision for Space Exploration. The announcement proclaimed that Lockheed Martin will build the replacement for the space shuttle, a cone-shaped crew exploration vehicle designed to take astronauts into and out of Earth orbit, as a prelude to voyaging once again to the moon. NASA has dubbed the new spacecraft project Orion, following in the tradition of projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo of the 1960s and 1970s. Orion will borrow the best from our country's nearly 50 years of space experience and combine it with 21st century technology for this new and challenging venture. The result is expected to be a new vehicle that is more robust than Apollo, less expensive to operate than the space shuttle and safer to fly than any other capsule or winged space plane flown so far. First flight of Orion with a crew on board is targeted for 2014, but NASA hopes to find a way to move that up to as early as 2012. The announcement also demonstrates concrete progress is being made with the Vision for Space Exploration. It won't be long before construction of hardware starts and component testing begins. That means job security for thousands of skilled aerospace workers across the country and in Houston - money not spent in space but on Earth to help keep our economy strong. In turn, the money spent on the Vision becomes an investment in our future - benefits coming in the form of new technology, medical advances, consumer products and, most importantly in my opinion, education. The potential impact of this program on education in our country may be tough to quantify right now, but I strong believe that it will give our younger generation a tangible reason to dream about the future and inspire them to become a significant part of that future. The steady, outward progress of project Orion will stimulate young minds and hearts of a generation called upon to once again accomplish the "impossible" - just as our generation was called upon at a time when our country desperately needed us. In the 1960's America was racked by civil strife, campus unrest and a vastly unpopular war, not to mention that the Soviets owned space. We needed heroes badly. We looked for a reason to feel good about the future and pride in our nation. Project Apollo gave us that reason to look forward and dream of doing great things, and I submit to you that Orion, like Apollo, will be that needed stimulus to education. The public wants a program like this and is willing to support it. Gallup pools taken each year since the Vision was announced consistently show more than two-thirds of the American public support it so long as NASA's share of the federal budget does not exceed 1 percent. Overall support for the plan remains strong in Congress, which has fully funded the program two years in a row. With those final words spoken on the moon more than three decades ago, I took the liberty of committing our nation to someday returning. However, today I believe that the destination is less important in determining our destiny than the direction in which we are headed - and with a new Vision for Space Exploration, our course is set to cross a new frontier. Cernan is a veteran of three space flights and was the last man on the moon. He lives in Houston.'

I still remember the excitement when President John F. Kennedy gave his speech at Rice University (I didn't know until years later it was at Rice), where he challenged the nation to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. I consider this article in the Houston Chronicle the same class of announcement, only without the power of the same type of charismatic President behind it. However, the impact will have the same type of impact on my Grandkids, which President Kennedy's announcement had on me, if they choose to pursue science in school. The article gave some dates, plus the first trip to Mars from other sources is scheduled for 2030. To put the dates in context, I've built the following table with ages of six grandkids when these events happen.
Name2006201220142030
Ethan Evans6121430
Grant Matthew4101228
Colby Cade4101228
Taylor Robbyn281026
Ella Dawn281026
Halle Nalise06824

It is not straightforward to "cite your minds forward" (Alma 13:1) and to remember the future. However, sometimes the future is so blatantly set in front of us it is just obvious. I can imagine any one of my Grandkids being one of the astronauts making these trips. Probably it is just my ego to have this type of imaginations. Oh well! Too bad I haven't been able to keep up my part of preparing the kids for this type of roll through my planned Grandkidlets. As I write this Thoughtlet, I'm 23 weeks behind and obviously having a hard time keeping up with the Thoughtlets, let alone the Grandkidlets, of which I haven't written one since the 7th of March 2004 ( http://www.walden3d.com/grandkidlets/2004/0410.html). Oh well!

As far the rest of the week went, it was pretty quiet. Just getting back from a 10 day trip to China, there was a lot of catch-up to do at the office. Probably the most important thing I did for GDC this week was to put together a couple of marketing brochures. Dave was very preoccupied with the purchase of Grant Geophysical, which was announced in an e-mail from Maureen at about 7:00 PM Friday evening.

I did get in the middle of a bunch of company politics this week. John Gillooley and Sonny Landrum are under a tremendous amount of pressure to make GDC profitable. One of the issues is whether the interpretation group will make their projected numbers. They day not realize the power of Fred's new Zhou Transform for quantifiably defining the difference between producible and unproducible fizz gas. So I set up a Lunch 'N Learn for Fred to present to the software, sales, and interpretation teams. The title was "What Units Are the Seismic Amplitudes on Your Screen." Fred is really good. He gave me a bad time about never drinking coffee in front of everyone. Then he talked about the SpaceGraphTM and some of the work we did. He was mixed up and thought it came from Utah, not from BBN. Oh well!

I worked with Marc Roulston a couple of evenings. By getting a bid from AT&T for $54/month for 1.0 Mbit DSL connection, I was able to get Earthlink to give me the same speed, and to cut the cost from $140/month to $70/month for 12 months, and then $80/month. This will provide 3 mega-bits/second uplink, and 768 kilobits/second downlink, instead of 193 kilobits/second. Marc has set things up so I can sit anyplace in the house and access the Internet.

Monday was the Labor Day. I spent the day working in the home office. I would have liked to go to the Hafen Reunion, and there isn't money in the bank for this kind of activity yet. Andrea was very busy getting her seminary and Japanese class material together. So we did not see each other over our holiday. She was upstairs, and I was in the office. In fact, I think Marc came over for a few hours on Monday. Oh well!

Tuesday I drove because I knew George and Becky Schultz are temple workers on Tuesdays. I listened to the last of the AudioTech cassette tapes I was behind on. I wrote down two interesting and pretty obvious concepts from these tapes:

'Exposing a weakness can offer a leader protection.'

And

'Profits arise out of creating value for customers.'

Tuesday night Elder Green and Elder Munro, the two new missionaries in our ward, came over for dinner. I enjoy having the missionaries over to the house. Elder Munro was enthralled by the books. Elder Green said, "I've seen more neat things in this house that in all the other houses I've been in on my mission." It was a nice evening. They even liked 'Froggie Learns The Gospel.'

The other evenings I just worked on getting things moved over to the new Linux system, working on a proposal to Henry Ho, and generally keeping myself buried in the office. On Friday Fred gave a 'Lunch and Learn' lecture tiltled "What Units Are Your Seismic Amplitudes On Your Workstation." I had set it up after discussions with John Gilloley and Sonny Landrum.

Saturday it rained, and so I did not mow the lawn. There were e-mails with Ed Rogers and Merril Littlewood, and there were Thoughtlets to catch up on. Andrea and I went to see an afternoon showing of The Illusionist. Andrea wanted to see it because it was set in Austria, and we had spent a week there a few weeks ago during the EAGE (0625.html). In the evening I watched the CNN special, "In the Footsteps of Ben Ladin." Sunday was special, because I gave each of the 10 kids who were all in attendance at my Primary Class for the second week in a row (there is only one who doesn't come, Nathanial Wilson), a nice leather Chinese box with a divider and two labels: TITHING; and SAVINGS AND SPENDING. In the evening Brent Peterson and I visited some of the families we are responsible for helping if there is an emergency. And through all of the activities and mundane things of this week, there was an overcasting shadow of the future, and the future is named Orion."

Since the 38th week of 1996 I have written a weekly "Thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me). Until the 43rd week of 2004 I sent these out as an e-mail. They were intended to be big thoughts which mean a lot to me. Over time the process evolved into a personal diary. These notes were shared with my family because I know how important the written word can be. Concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life, I thought this was a good way to reach those I love. It no longer feels right to send out an e-mail and "force" my kids and my family to be aware of my life and struggles.

Everyone has their own life to lead, and their own struggles to work through. I will continue this effort, and will continue to make my notes publicly accessible (unless I learn of misuse by someone who finds out about them, and then will aggressively pursue a legal remedy to copyright infringement and I will put the Thoughtlets behind a password).

The index to download any of these Thoughtlets is at http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets, or you can e-mail me with questions or requests at rnelson@walden3d.com (note if you are not on my e-mail "whitelist" you must send 2 e-mails within 24 hours of each other in order for your e-mail to not be trashed).

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

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Copyright © 2006 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.