tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18052302.post768609868746771024..comments2024-03-23T11:23:29.270-04:00Comments on Music of the Spheres: Cool California TripFlyingSingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12015886527228889332noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18052302.post-17988963277255013272013-02-11T20:23:23.527-05:002013-02-11T20:23:23.527-05:00Aerial fascination, ah yes. I think it started wit...Aerial fascination, ah yes. I think it started with the Gemini space program launches, or maybe even Mercury which was 1961 to 1963, when I was about 10. I remember seeing those on TV, and looking at Life Magazine pictures. I read everything I could find about astronauts and I learned that they were test pilots to start with. Of course this meant that they started out as military jet pilots, so they could go to test pilot school. So that's what I decided I would do. I started writing to the Air Force Academy to get their catalog when I was around 10 or 11. I was heartbroken around age 12 when I needed glasses. Without 20/20 vision, I would not be eligible to be a military pilot. So I built dozens of model airplanes, borrowed Aviation Week magazines from the library, and dreamed about other ways to fly. I joined Civil Air Patrol around age 12; their cadet program was a kind of Air Force Boy Scouts. The magic part was free orientation flights in Piper Cubs in the summertime. This was the most thrilling thing I had ever done, although it scared the crap out of my mother. I did this for a couple of years, but these orientation flights didn't count as flight training, and I didn't have the money to take real flight lessons, even at reduced rates that I could get as a CAP cadet. I thought I would become an aerospace engineer, and take flight lessons while I was in college. But somehow I ended up at CMU instead, which had a lot of advantages in the long run. So I waited, went to college, worked on music,went to graduate school, got married, had kids, etc. My interests somehow moved to computer science and optics along the way. Finally between 1998 and 2001, I took flight lessons and got my pilots license. Long story why haven't flown more since then. <br /><br />So flying and space have been a central theme in my life, and the main reason that I decided to go into technical education in the first place. I was at Ohio University in the summer of 1969, when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I believe that my flying and computer interests helped me to get into this NSF summer program in the first place, despite the fact that I went to a very small rural school. I still love just about everything about airplanes and spaceflight. Just as I love just about everything about creating music. A lot of the rest of my life's been really great. I can't complain about how it turned out. But if I had had 20/20 vision in my youth, I'm confident that I would've somehow made my living flying airplanes. And tried to become an astronaut. Crazy but true!FlyingSingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12015886527228889332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18052302.post-34104741961814693372013-02-10T21:16:03.775-05:002013-02-10T21:16:03.775-05:00It always frightened me, I must say, to see those ...It always frightened me, I must say, to see those exhaust cones vibrating as they discharged the gases from the shuttle combustion chambers. The cones looked like they were ready to fall off. Little did I know there were weaker links. I can't think about the shuttle without thinking about the people who died -- which pretty much negates any romantic feeling about space travel, although I'm sure the pure scale of the display is impressive.<br /><br />Maybe it is in one of your earlier blog posts but I'm wondering when/where your aerial fascination arose. I do remember the HP-programmable-calculator spacecraft landing programs you liked way back in 1976 or so, so it must be deep-rooted!<br /><br /><br />Craighttp://chcollins.comnoreply@blogger.com