Astronauts need precise, reliable vision, so its deterioration during spaceflight is hardly a minor problem. And it’s a particularly humbling one. NASA has known about the eyesight issue for decades. “We saw this on Skylab”—the first U.S. space station, which intermittently housed astronauts for up to three months at a time from 1973 to 1974—“and on the shuttle,” Charles says. The importance of it just wasn’t clear until astronauts were regularly spending months in orbit. And at the moment, NASA doesn’t know how to fix it back on Earth. Bone mass, muscle mass, blood volume, aerobic fitness all return to normal, for the most part. But astronauts’ eyes do not completely recover. Nor do doctors know exactly what would happen to eyesight over the course of a mission four or five times longer than those of today.
Clearly our bodies are not made for the extreme environments of space. Raise your hand if you thought space-ready humans would need calloused toes and superhuman eyes.
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He talks in very long paragraphs about rocket science. Orbits and going to Mars and the “Aldrin Mars Cycler.” He holds three patents for things like a modular space station, and he started a foundation devoted to advancing space education. “But this is not what you want to talk about,” he thankfully says, and so you say let’s get back to that day you went to the moon. It was a moment for the world, a particular historic moment when scientific, military, and nationalistic interests intersected perfectly—and him and Neil and Mike blasting off atop a Saturn V as if in celebration of that perfect union. And doesn’t he have a perspective on that? A way of thinking about that?
“It’s something we did,” he says. “Now we should do something else.”
Looks like NASA chose the right man to be number one back in 1969.
Christmas Day landed on a Thursday this year, meaning Jaclyn and I have had almost an entire week away from the office, away from school work, and away from major distractions. It has been awesome.
My brother-in-law and sister-in-law brought their family out for the Christmas celebration, so it was a great chance to whip out the camera and snap some photos of their young children.
Better yet, news hit that my youngest sister got engaged to her long time boyfriend. My family will be preparing for a wedding over the next nine months or so, which can be considered a big pile of fun or a big pile of stress. I’ll choose the fun side.
We ate piles of chocolate and played at least 20 rounds of cribbage. I declare cribbage to be the best card game in the world. Lots of people in my circles know how to play the game and it’s perfect for an evening of fun.
Of course, we drank our share too. This small bottle of St. George’s absinthe became my dad’s beverage of choice for the weekend.
We opened some presents, but our Christmas lists get shorter every year. I prefer it this way. There’s less financial stress for everyone and more focus on the true meaning of the season.
I’m increasingly thankful for family gatherings at Christmas time. A little known benefit of marriage is that you end up venturing to two (or more) gatherings during the biggest holidays of the year. As the week shifted to Jaclyn’s family, card games were pushed aside and the young children took center stage.
These little guys have a way of melting all our hearts.
We got a chance to play in the snow before it got blistering cold.
I even had a chance to play with a Christmas present I had been saving for for quite some time. I’ll shoot to have a bit more on my new toy in the future.
Overall, this has been my favourite Christmas yet. Exchanging gifts fell by the wayside while family and friends took over. I couldn’t ask for anything more.
This may be my best photograph to date. But don’t tell Brody — he’ll ask me to delete the photo for sure. ↩
