Pasadena JPL (wow) Frisbee golf Ca poppies May 5

Went to beautiful Pasadena, home of the Rose Bowl. Very pretty, beautiful homes on the hills. First stop the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of ten NASA directed facilities dedicated to unmanned spacecraft. 5000 employees hired and administered by Cal Tech, JPL was originally started by a group of Cal Techers who tried to build rockets in the '30s and basically loved to blow things up; they were called the suicide squad; Cal Tech evetually gave them a dedicated off site area so they wouldn't blow anyone else up. The tour was great. They communicate with all the US unmanned spacecraft still operating, including the original voyager, which is currently 10 1/2 billion (yes, billion) miles away, at the edge of our solar system; round trip communication takes 32 hours at the speed of light (remember what that is?). Pretty neat.

Above is a "clean room" with a group of engineers (all covered up) working on the next Mars Rover, an unmanned craft that is scheduled to be launched (takes 9 months to get to Mars) in late 2011. Greatest contamination concern is human skin. Boy, are these guys under pressure to perform! They have been working on this mission for the past seven years. NASA budget is about 2% GNP, count me as a big fan!

Control room above, board to the left of NASA are the spacecraft they are currently talking to, boards on the right are code lines reflecting bundles of data they are receiving constantly. Go watch the Hubble videos of deep space and tell me what's out there isn't worth exploring.

Frisbee Golf, this was too funny. First, above a pic of one hill of Pasadena, beautiful homes everywhere on the hillside, pic taken from a field next to the Frisbee course. Apparently, Frisbee golf got started by those who loved frisbee throwing and golf was too expensive. Near JPL is an 18 hole frisbee golf course; it is free, the course was plenty busy on a Wednesday at 11am (doesn't anyone work anymore?). Some of the players said they thought this should be an Olympic sport (he wasn't kidding). I must admit they were pretty good at throwing these things. What will they think of next?

Guy teeing off on the first hole.

His bag of frisbees.

Finally, went to an area called The Antelope Valley up North, whose claim to fame are fields and fields of Ca. poppies, the Ca. state flower. They are only open for a short time during the year so we went to see them. A broad view of one field and a close up are below. Very windy up there, maybe 40 mph; staff says it is always windy up there, sometimes up to 70mph. Everybody was being blown every which way.