Printemps

What a week - where to start...

First, we survived the Why the Moon? symposium last week, in which we heard the agency lines justifying their budgets countered by Harley Thronson's plaintiff Why not the Libration Points? Some amazing presentations, lots of energy in the poster session (I talked myself hoarse about planetary resources) and great dinner conversations.

In the final analysis, we have our feet firmly planted on more rational project topics (I hope), my internship application is winging its way North (can I assume the good doctor's "See you in Bremen" is a statement of fact?) and my abstract is being perused jointly in the halls of the Austrian Space Forum and the Canadian Space Agency. Can you say "international cooperation"?

Finally, Sunday afternoon found me relaxing over a cup of tea on my boat after a gruelling rainy ride to Kehl and back to pick up Liliana's passport for the Russia trip visa. I randomly replayed an old BBC radio episode of "Material World" called Using Nature's Good Ideas. And therein lay a possible solution for my personal assignment - auxetic materials! This looks promising, since a specific application is "constant pressure structure" which is precisely what a spacesuit needs to be (to replace atmosphere).

To the Moon!