No, really
May. 11th, 2011 11:11 pmOn Sunday, a balloon launched from Houston, carrying three mascots (Camilla Corona SDO, mascot and spokeschicken of the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a bear named Fuzz Aldrin and a flying pig by the name of Skye Bleue) to "the edge of space" as a mission to raise awareness of, respectively, solar physics, teddy bears for police to give to children in traumatic situations, and space exploration/aeronautics.
It didn't quite go according to plan; the styrofoam capsule ended up somewhere in a swampy wildlife refuge in Lousiana and hasn't yet been retrieved despite quite heroic efforts and internet-wide well-wishes.
This blog post says it better than I can.
I'm somewhat acquainted with Camilla, who turns up at conferences from time to time, and have her friended on Facebook. And even though I strongly suspect her of having multiple physical avatars, it's not at all clear what happens to the personality in the worst-case scenario. Which is why I'm sitting up watching the #BTS1 tag on Twitter; I don't want to go to bed until we get the promised update, though I don't really expect good news tonight.
(Here's an artist's impression of the intrepid crew struggling through the swamp.)
ETA: And then I looked at Facebook again and it claimed the update (an 18-minute video) had already been there for an hour! But it hasn't made it to Twitter and YouTube yet, apparently.) I'm not sure how I feel about the capsule being stocked with astro-rations including chicken and pork dishes, but I don't quite have the cheek to post that in comments to the video.
It didn't quite go according to plan; the styrofoam capsule ended up somewhere in a swampy wildlife refuge in Lousiana and hasn't yet been retrieved despite quite heroic efforts and internet-wide well-wishes.
This blog post says it better than I can.
I'm somewhat acquainted with Camilla, who turns up at conferences from time to time, and have her friended on Facebook. And even though I strongly suspect her of having multiple physical avatars, it's not at all clear what happens to the personality in the worst-case scenario. Which is why I'm sitting up watching the #BTS1 tag on Twitter; I don't want to go to bed until we get the promised update, though I don't really expect good news tonight.
(Here's an artist's impression of the intrepid crew struggling through the swamp.)
ETA: And then I looked at Facebook again and it claimed the update (an 18-minute video) had already been there for an hour! But it hasn't made it to Twitter and YouTube yet, apparently.) I'm not sure how I feel about the capsule being stocked with astro-rations including chicken and pork dishes, but I don't quite have the cheek to post that in comments to the video.
