I finally posted the pictures from last weekend’s trip to the Titan Missile Museum.

YESNet, a group for young members of my company’s engineering and science staff, organized the trip for any who wanted to go see the museum. It was so popular that they had to open up a second tour just for us to prevent it from getting too tightly packed in the complex.

The tour was an amazing look at the only remaining silo of the fifty four Titan II silos that once surrounded Wichita, Little Rock, and Tucson. Crews consisted of four Air Force soldiers (two officers and two enlisted technicians) that were underground and sealed off for twenty four hours at a time. They ate, slept, and trained together for that entire time and were usually expected to be on site between 4 and 8 times a month.

It’s definitely an eye-opening look at what we, as a country, did during the Cold War to try to prevent an actual war from breaking out by making sure that, should there be a war, the country that attacked would be destroyed.

Click on the image to see more pictures

Well, Lauren and I decided it was about time we share our apartment with two little bundles of fur, so we adopted two baby kittens yesterday. The white one with dirty ear tips, tail, and front paws is a female named Sophie. The tigery one with white belly and paws is a male named Miles. They are brother and sister and are currently 9 weeks old. Click on the image below to see more pictures of them.

Update 10/16/05… they are just too damn cute… look at them sleeping…

http://www.rocketracingleague.com/

From the mind of the creator of the X-Prize competition that Scaled Composites won a year ago tomorrow with the Space Ship One reaching 354,200 feet above earth, comes the latest rocket-fueled craze… the X-Prize Cup and the Rocket Racing League. Dr. Peter Diamandis (the founder of the X-Prize Foundation) and Granger Whitelaw (two-time winner of the Indianapolis 500) came together to create the fastest race ever conceived.

Imagine NASCAR in the air doing high angle, high performance turns on a 3D track using GPS and heads-up-displays to stay on course. The creators are even saying sponsorship of rockets will work similarly to that of NASCAR; the helmets, pressure suits, and rockets will be covered with sponsor logos.

Though this is an interesting idea, it’s not 100% original (though this is the only REAL life attempt at the idea): the Wipeout line of PlayStation and PC games were some of the first to take racing rockets to the main-stream when the franchise of games started back in ’96.

Regardless of originality, I’m still looking forward to checking out this new type of racing. Since some of the most outspoken people who watch NASCAR are rednecks, takes the term “space cowboy” to a whole new level.

Aaron, Jenny, Lauren and I just got back from a bike trip around an 8 to 9 mile drive through the Saguaro National Park that is only 8 miles from our apartment and really close to Lauren’s uncle’s place.

It was a really nice ride that goes through the desert and was short enough and secluded enough (very few cars and people there) to allow Lauren to be comfortable and give her a good idea of how to use her new bike. For the most part, it was relatively easy going and down hill, but, in the middle of the ride, the balance for all the down was met with an uphill battle that was deceivingly long.

All in all, it’s a great place to do a little road riding without worrying about too many cars around. The one hill was quite doable in lower gears and led to a really nice downhill where I managed to top out my speed at 37. We’ll defiantly be going back again.

Aaron took one picture of all of us after we finished the ride, but I don’t have it yet, so when he posts it to his site or Flickr, I’m going to steal it and post it here.