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4 November 2011 (Friday) - Mars 500

A very restless night – it rained so hard, the noise of the rain against the window kept me awake.

As I walked to my car this morning I saw the traffic wardens were out and ticketing cars. They were writing parking tickets at 7.15am this morning. Am I alone in thinking this is somewhat harsh. I have never seen a traffic warden in my road at what I would call “office hours”: they are either lurking whilst people are having breakfast, or are up to evil whilst people sleep. I’ve seen them outside my house at 12.30am (that’s half past midnight) before now.

Have I missed something, or has autumn happened very suddenly this year? Last weekend it was business as usual; this weekend the trees are full of glorious colours and there are fallen leaves everywhere.
I can’t remember autumn happening quite so fast in previous years.

And today’s news: carrying on the space theme, I see the crew of Mars 500 have landed. Regular readers will know that I’ve been following the Mars 500 mission. Or that is I’ve been trying to follow it. I’ve subscribed to their blog, but bearing in mind it’s written in Russian I don’t think I’ve got as much out of it as I might have done had I been able to understand it.
For any of my loyal readers who’ve missed the news, Mars 500 is (was) a simulated mission to Mars, conducted in a mock-up spaceship in a warehouse in Moscow. Six astronauts have spent the last five hundred days in the simulation, and have now simulated the return to Earth.
It speaks volumes about the future of space explorations that he crew contained Europeans, Russians, a Chinese chap, but no Americans….



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