Soyuz Launch -- Up Close and Personal

Soyuz Launch -- Up Close and Personal
My museum client (http://www.discoverytours.org) is organizing a repeat of
this trip for this September,
and I will again be the tour 'expert-in-residence'
(http://discoverytours.org/tours/search.php?sear=61).
'Every launch is like the first one'
What it's like to witness a spaceship set off for the space station
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12042803/


By James Oberg
NBC News space analyst
Special to MSNBC
Updated: 8:24 p.m. ET March 27, 2006

Editor's Note: On Wednesday night EST (Thursday morning local time), a Soyuz
rocket is set to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for
the international space station. Aboard will be Brazil's first astronaut and
two men replacing the current crew. NBC News space analyst James Oberg was
there in Baikonur last October when the current crew blasted off and recalls
here what it's like to see such a launch close up.

The sun had risen an hour earlier, in the east where it was supposed to, and
it was shining normally off to our right. But now a very convincing replica
was rising with startling speed directly in front of us, accompanied by a
very un-sunlike thunder of a thousand waterfalls that rattled the coins in
our pockets and made impossible any verbal communication of our sudden awe.

"Jim Oberg" wrote:
Soyuz Launch -- Up Close and Personal
My museum client (http://www.discoverytours.org) is organizing a repeat of
this trip for this September

One of these days I've got to find out if I'm still restricted from
visiting Russia...

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

(Derek Lyons) wrote in
:

"Jim Oberg" wrote:
Soyuz Launch -- Up Close and Personal
My museum client (http://www.discoverytours.org) is organizing a
repeat of this trip for this September

One of these days I've got to find out if I'm still restricted from
visiting Russia...

Job related, or did you just **** someone off?

--Damon, who'd like to take that trip, too

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Jim Oberg" wrote:
Soyuz Launch -- Up Close and Personal
My museum client (http://www.discoverytours.org) is organizing a repeat
of
this trip for this September

One of these days I've got to find out if I'm still restricted from
visiting Russia...


They're our friends now, didn'tcha know...

Except for when they're not.


D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Damon Hill" wrote in message
31...
(Derek Lyons) wrote in
:

"Jim Oberg" wrote:
Soyuz Launch -- Up Close and Personal
My museum client (http://www.discoverytours.org) is organizing a
repeat of this trip for this September

One of these days I've got to find out if I'm still restricted from
visiting Russia...

Job related, or did you just **** someone off?


I still get nervous crossing into Canada.

Well not so much INTO as coming back.

No real legal issues, just "problems" in the past.


--Damon, who'd like to take that trip, too

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...

"Jim Oberg" wrote:

Soyuz Launch -- Up Close and Personal
My museum client (http://www.discoverytours.org) is organizing a repeat
of

this trip for this September

One of these days I've got to find out if I'm still restricted from
visiting Russia...


They're our friends now, didn'tcha know...

Except for when they're not.

Hell, I'm still nervous about them for having elected a President who
looks like a middle-aged and embittered version of Ilya Kuriyakin.

--

..

"Though I could not caution all, I yet may warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools!"

--grateful dead.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
"Mikey'zine": dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

Damon Hill wrote:

Job related, or did you just **** someone off?

--Damon, who'd like to take that trip, too



Boy, that's a trip well worth taking.
You'd come back with your head screwed on in an entirely new direction.
Or, as Winston Churchill put it: "Democracy is the worst form of
government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from
time to time." :-D
Been there, done that.

Pat

mike flugennock wrote:


Hell, I'm still nervous about them for having elected a President who
looks like a middle-aged and embittered version of Ilya Kuriyakin.


And was once a secret agent to boot.

Pat

snidely wrote:

Considering the source, I'd guess job related...something about knowing
what he had to know to do his job, especially.



They were very queasy about anything military related when I was over there.
It could be that the U.S. Navy wouldn't much prefer him to go over there
either in case it turned into rubber truncheon fun time over at the
Lubyanka.

Pat

Damon Hill wrote:

(Derek Lyons) wrote in
:

One of these days I've got to find out if I'm still restricted from
visiting Russia...

Job related, or did you just **** someone off?


Once could say job related - at least a job I used to have. The
government does care about the activities of some of those who used to
work for them.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL