Barbara Finally Gets Her Ride

NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe will announce today that Barbara Morgan, the back-up teacher in space to Christa McAuliffe, will finally get to fly.

Dan Goldin viscerally and vociferously opposed civilians in space (except for corrupt Senators), and refused to reinstate the teacher-in-space program (it was suspended after the Challenger accident, in which McAuliffe was killed). Morgan is finally flying because she was formally accepted as a member of the astronaut corps, and has been training for several years. However, I suspect that she’ll still try to get in some teaching during her flight.

Honor

For people who agree with Kathy Kinsley’s proposal that the Afghan scientists who hid the radioactive material from Al Qaeda deserve a Peace Prize, there’s now an on-line petition available.

I’ve signed it. (Thanks to Dan Hartung for setting it up)

[Update at 10:45AM PDT]

When I signed early this morning, I was number four. Now there are twenty seven. I know that Kathy and I have both publicized it, but don’t know if anyone else has picked it up on their blogs yet. We’ll know that Instantman has when it starts jumping by orders of magnitude. Did all those signatures come from my and Kathy’s site?

[1:11PM PDT Update]

Now there are thirty seven signatures, and I see that Bill Quick has linked to it.

Let’s see how fast we can spread this meme.

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