Air Wars

BOMBERS

Activity around our house in the northeast heights of Albuquerque has been pretty intense the last few days. The big noise coming from the various "slurry bomber" planes brought in to help fight wildfires that have been ravaging our forests. Some of the old planes (the red & white ones) are on the brink of retirement, while specially equipped C-130s operated by the Air National Guard or Air Force Reserve units take up the slack when the planes under contract to the Forest Service are called to action elsewhere.

HUMMERS

And then, there is the other activity, more local, around the hollyhocks and trumpet vines. The little hummers are hard to catch with my cheap camera, but I tried Sunday morning.

Blast Off!

Rodger photo
Where I watched Discovery Launch on February 24, 2011

"... the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward…"

President John F. Kennedy, 1962.

The President was speaking at Rice University as he traveled the country drumming up political support for the manned space program and his dream of sending an American to the moon, and bringing him safely back.

Mission Accomplished!

No longer do we have the great aspirations brought on by a worldwide challenges such as the space race initiated by the Russians who put man into space before US.

February 20th I watched from 3 miles away as Space Shuttle Discovery reached for the heavens. It was great, and I was proud to see it fly.

It is a sad day to see the USA’s manned space program come to a close with the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Now, we’ll be relying on some other country to send our astronauts into space.

That is not good – we’re better than that.

And to those who say we can’t afford a space program, I would say, "Oh yes we can!"

There are those who said we couldn’t afford NASA back in the 1960’s, but we did it.

We can’t afford to fight foreign wars, but we do it.

Just do it!