Art, of Spacely and Earthly origin

On August 3rd astronaut Steve Robinson was repairing the bottom of the Discovery Space Shuttle. He turned the camera on himself and took this photo with his space-protected Kodak DCS 760.

(the amazing high-resolution version)

NASA has been really careful with the aging shuttles, and for good reason. The shuttles are so old that there have been rumors of NASA engineers buying spare parts for them on ebay! Seriously. I remember when the shuttles were a thing of wonder and mystery. Now they are literally falling apart.

Carl Sagan said that the solution was more unmanned robotic space flights like Voyager and the successful Mars rovers. As sexy as manned flight into space can seem, we just don't have the money to protect our explorers. Which in of itself is very sad indeed.

On a more planetary note, this friday The Kaleidoscope Crew went out to support two local artists. Prolific graffiti artist Hense had a show at Octane coffee bar and our buddy DJ Dookie Platters was spinning records along with the whole Noot d'noot gang.

The art was tight, and the music seemed like it was lifted right out of my own playlists. (Lyrics Born followed by Bloc Party? okay!) All in all it was downright inspiring. My friend Silas has an art show coming up in September that I need to submit pieces for. And everyone agreed that we need to get the Oakhurst gang backtogether for another one of our own shows in November.