One of my hobbies is tracking satellites, normally the ones with hidden orbital parameters. But I was out tonight tracking and the ISS happened to come by. This does show some of my challenges - tracking in spite of street lights, trees, etc.

Once in a while I post about some of the work that I am doing, one thing is to try to develop some techniques useful to orbital analysis. One is the "RAAN Test" which could help connect satellites to the launch that brought them into space.

We just started the winter running season with our tradtional Turkey Trot, put on by the On The Run store. @joelphillips23 and Scott ran with me, they did great! We did miss Luke and Taryn :-(

One of my hobbies is tracking satellites I have been tracking some US Navy satellites that were launched in pairs (and in triplets). Here is a pair, these orbit close to each other. A bonus is a (not unusual) extra on the left side of the photo.

I just got out of Twitter "jail" and it wasn't bad, the conditions were pretty good.

I went to a lunch today where Terry Virts, a candidate for US Senate, gave a presentation. It was very good and I hope that he wins the Primary and General elections. @AstroTerry

Here are four of my relatives that were celebrating birthdays - Brooke, Karen, Mike, and Melanie. It was great to see a lot of the family again.

Large parts of the family met in Pensacola, Florida for some birthdays - here are three of my better looking relatives. Lee, Rich, and Brooke.

Lisa and I are at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida with a lot of family members, we have a lot to talk about!

I recently got a chance to talk to a member of the US Congress, Lizzie Fletcher. We had a few minutes to talk about space and the military. She is very well informed! Her team needs to get a better camera, that one makes her look short. @RepFletcher

We watched the first episode of the new season of Slow Horses and it looks interesting. Of course in the first episode they are all at each other's throats, are in chaos. And there is a violent act that will later involve them.

Appeal for Clear Lake, Rocket history: if anyone has any of the history of the Clear Lake City rocket please let me know. I have visited many web sites, sent out many requests - have gotten little information! This is an early photo of the rocket.

Excellent points . . . The farmers aren't stupid or uninformed . . . They're racists. They knew exactly what they were voting for. But here's something they probably don't know . . . There's a very good chance the bailout they are begging for, isn't coming. #DemVoices

I got my updated COVID vaccine today!

The other day I went to see a campaign speech by Terry Virts, a candidate for the Senate from Texas. He is a very good speaker and had a lot of good ideas. @AstroTerry

I went to a political meeting this evening and got to chat with Nick Lampson, who served several terms in the US House of Representatives. He was a big part of making sure that the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer flew and was attached to the ISS.

These appear to have been popular back in the late 1960s and some still exist - this one I am told is (was??) in Grand Junction, Colorado though it might have never allowed kids inside of it.

Some of us lucky people have been in actual spacecraft but generations of kids in the Clear Lake, Texas area have been in one that let's their imaginations take them all over. We are lucky that our rocket still stands.

Here's another historical photo - David Kaplan in our office in JSC Building 29, I worked with as a Shuttle flight controller (in Payloads or DH-62). This is Nov 1987 since David has his government issue calendar. We were getting ready for STS 26 and had a year to prepare.

One hobby I have is writing C++ and C code, writing "tools" to help me analyze what satellites are doing. I always read text files with C since it is easier but I have been experimenting with reading text with C++ and it is surprisingly difficult.