I am back from a quick trip to Texas. Steve, Sydney, and Ruger did great while I was out of town. They even took a hike up the mountain out back. Give Sydney a call and she will tell you all about it.

This weekend we have some visitors coming down including Grandma Carol, Papa B., Grandma Kreher, and Aunt Barb. I still haven’t decided if Sydney will be going back up to Illinois with them when they go home. That would mean she would be away from home for two full weeks before the Wise Family comes down for a visit. I am not sure if she (or if I) am up for a trip that long. While our visitors are here, Steve and I are going to run over to Atlanta to watch the Bears game. Thanks in advance to Grandma and Papa for watching Sydney while we are out of the house!

Our last visitor was Uncle Brandon in September. Here is the picture of him and Sydney working away on their laptops.

For those of you that are interested, here are some quick notes about what is going on at NASA:

- The Shuttle is planned to be retired with the last flights scheduled for 2010
- NASA is developing a new program, called the Constellation Program, to build new vehicles to take humans up to the International Space Station (ISS) and eventually to the moon and Mars.
- The first test flight of the Constellation program is called Ares I-X and will launch next year. This is one of the tasks I work on. The test flight objectives are focused on first-stage flight dynamics, controllability, separation of the first and upper stages, ground operations, and first stage recovery. The test flight will also verify the performance and dynamics of the shuttle’s solid rocket booster in “single stick” arrangement. (The usual shuttle configuration is two rocket boosters with one external fuel tank.) This flight will only last about 2 minutes and does not reach orbit.
- The first manned flight of the Constellation Program is scheduled to occur in 2014. This flight will go to the ISS.
- The first flight to take humans back to the moon is scheduled to occur in 2019.

Lil bit’s next visit to the doctor is Wednesday morning. That’s all for now.
- Ang