Suzy McHale’s Diary: 2003 – May-December

Events of note: Pastor Mitch (Mircea Achetraritei) became interim pastor for Bentleigh Baptist Church. He seemed quite nice at first, but his tenure would turn out to be cause for great regret. Michele and Chris bought another Doberman called Sarah in July. I started my first online website in August; creating and maintaining my website would become a hobby from then on.

May

Saturday 3/5

Mum and Dad left for Kyneton yesterday, same place they stayed last year, so it is quiet.

The Expedition 6 crew will come home tomorrow (Saturday in the USA). I noticed there was a few information pages added about the Soyuz TMA, the latest variant, perhaps because Americans are coming home in it. This variant was also partly funded by NASA. I really hate the way NASA seems to have more or less taken over the Russian space program.

Rented a video called Space Cowboys, which I saw in the cinema when it came out in 2000. I liked it then, but seeing it again now with different eyes … it just seemed silly. Also insulting. Four geriatric astronauts (former test pilots in the 1960s) go up on the Shuttle to retrieve a defunct Soviet satellite and find that it was secretly armed with nuclear warheads. There’s the usual disparaging comments about Russian technology (“This is some piece of junk”) and the implication that they’re so incompetent that they must ask NASA for help. A few of these movies – Armageddon, the TV series The Cape (see last year’s 10/11/2002 entry), Astronauts – also have this theme. In the real world it’s looking to be the other way around! Vindication, mate.

I am considering whether to see the IMAX movie Space Station 3D again this week … there is nothing worth seeing in the cinema at the moment. I don’t know … it’s too focused on NASA and irritated me in parts. I think I’ve given IMAX enough of my money already!

No reply yet from Energiya. I sent it via my Hotmail address. Don’t know if the e-mail even reached them – no way of knowing unless they reply. It is so frustrating being isolated here – the space program might as well exist in a parallel universe as it seems so inaccessible to me.

~ Ended 12:39 p.m.

Sunday 4/5

Soyuz TMA-2 appears to have landed at 02:11 GMT according to the latest report I saw (12:11 Melbourne time). Might get a mention on the news tonight. The “TMA” stands for “Transport-Modernized-Anthropometric”.

~ Ended 2:26 p.m.

Just saw on the news: the Soyuz crew landed safely, but were a little off-course – by around 460 km! They landed on the Kazakhstan steppe. I suppose there’ll be some griping from critics about that (I can see James Oberg racing to his word processor right now), but at least they got home in one piece! Off-course landings are nothing new for the Soyuz, and it is packed with survival gear for land and sea.

~ Ended 5:24 p.m.

Friday 9/5

Mum and Dad got back this morning after what seemed like a very long week. I have a cold which came on last night, so I’m not feeling good.

I went to the city on Wednesday, but didn’t see anything of interest. In the train on the way there, a rather stinky man was seated near me and he sneezed a couple of times without covering his mouth, so perhaps that’s where I got this cold from. People can be so unhygienic, it’s disgusting to be near them.

I also encountered Charmaine in Bentleigh Coles supermarket on the way back (she was a friend from Church Youth Group in the 1980s, and I have seen her intermittently over the years – she is married with two children). She said she would ring me. I am uncomfortable around children, though.

Did nothing else all week. If I had to fend for myself I would be lost – I have no resources, no network of friends.

There was an article in today’s The Age saying that NASA was considering resurrecting the old Apollo capsules and using them as ISS lifeboats. These were designed to land in the ocean, though. I guess it would be one way of making some savings on the overblown cost of the ISS. They say, though, that the capsule could be adapted to take 6 or 7 crew – what about the Soyuz capsules? Surely the Russians would not stop using these.

Some comments on the ISS from a best-selling British sci-fi author, Stephen Baxter (an interview from the website at the Baxterium):

Q: You provided a sound bite for Radio One on the occasion of (I think) stage 1 of the ISS – indicating that unmanned space exploration made more sense. What about the spirit of manned space flight? Is it overrated?

A: I think the ISS is a total waste of time. It’s an orbiting white elephant. In fact flying a white elephant would make more sense; at least then they could study the effect of microgravity on albino pachyderms. ISS will consume billions and decades of effort in space, and for what? – for nothing they couldn’t already have learned from the much cheaper and more effective Mir programme. But NASA has been campaigning for decades for a station – even though they got to the Moon without one – and now they’ve got it. In the recently threatened cuts to NASA’s budget, tragically, it was good unmanned science stuff that got hit, not the Station. I think humans in space should go somewhere; the astronauts say that after about three weeks on the Mir you want to go someplace, rather than “looking at stars, pissing in jars,” as they put it. There are the asteroids, and Mars, but I’d advocate going back to the Moon. We know we can get there (relatively cheaply now), it’s only three days away, doesn’t wander around the sky relative to Earth, and while it’s not perfect as a destination it is a place we could go learn to live off the land – especially if it has water, and there are a number of ways it could actually prove to have a lot. The ideal is to send humans, I think, for the sense of wonder, and not to mention much better science. But they need to send poets, and artists, and even sf writers. So I would scrap ISS and spend the money on a manned Moon base, and a whole slew of unmanned probes to more remote destinations, pending the day we can get humans there effectively. Personally I would sign up for a week in Earth orbit, or a longer stay on the Moon; the only way I’d suffer months in microgravity enduring Nazi-doctor types watching my bones leach away would be if there was some genuine purpose – how about a flyby of Mars?

I have read quite a few of his novels – he writes about the big issues, the history and future of the Universe, the fate of Mankind, and so on. He is readable, but can be gloomy and pessimistic! My favorite novel by him is called Titan, first published in 1995; I got the paperback in 1998 and it is becoming rather worn as I keep re-reading sections of it. It’s about the collapse of the American space program in the early 2000s after a disaster involving a Shuttle landing – ironically enough, Columbia! It crashes at the Edwards AFB emergency landing site in this version after its APUs fail during re-entry. A right-wing U.S. government – not unlike George W. Bush’s – comes into power, and wants to cut the space science program and direct funds to the military. A woman astronaut, Paula Benacerraf, manages to rope in a group of like-minded astronauts and organize a last mission to the Saturn moon of Titan, which will take years. During their flight, the Chinese send a female astronaut off on a suicide mission to crash her nuclear-weapon-equipped spaceship into a Near-Earth Asteroid and alter its trajectory so it impacts near the USA (China is the new threat to U.S. security here). They miscalculate the flight somehow so that a larger piece of the asteroid than they intended to break off impacts in the Atlantic and brings about a mass extinction of all life on Earth. Oops! This leaves the five Americans on board the modified Shuttle-Titan flight (their number eventually reduced to Paula and a scientist, Isaac Rosenberg), who have landed on Titan in the meantime, stranded. Can you get more gloomy than that …?! The two die on a last trek out onto the ice, but their bodies are preserved and resurrected 5 billion years later by the life-forms that have evolved on Titan by then. The sun by now is a dying red giant, and Titan a warm world. Earth (and humanity) is long gone. Stephen Baxter suggests at the novel’s end that the most efficient way to colonize space would for humans to send out probes with various DNA in them to “seed” other suitable worlds.

Phew! It’s a long novel. My only gripe is that it’s exclusively focused on NASA, like many of his other novels (the Russian program is only mentioned in passing, if at all). Voyager (1996), a sort of companion to this novel, is an alternative-history novel where NASA goes to Mars rather than build the Space Shuttle. Here, the Russians (or Soviets, as it is 1984) help train the three American astronauts who eventually make the first landing – but why would they do that and not request that a cosmonaut be sent, too?

Rented a rather silly video called Max-Q: Emergency Landing, about a Space Shuttle crew who are stranded in orbit when a satellite they are deploying misfires and damages the Orbiter’s APUs, depriving it of power. One of the astronauts goes out to fix it and they manage to land, but somewhat off-course … on an L.A. freeway! Jerry Bruckheimer, the executive producer, also produced Armageddon. Max-Q is a straight-to-video movie (no big-name actors). Manages to insult the Russian space program yet again (“What about the Russians?” asks one NASA person when they are canvassing rescue options. “Forget it – they can’t even get it together to change out their crew on Mir.”) This was filmed around 1998; the year before was the Progress collision with a Mir module. A Soyuz capsule could not dock with the Orbiter for a rescue mission, anyway. Aside from that, it’s an okay movie to pass the time, if somewhat implausible.

Stephen Baxter is obviously no ISS enthusiast. Unfortunately, so much has been invested in it already that there’s no way the space agencies could back out now without major political fallout. Thousands of people work on the project, and their jobs would be in jeopardy – if these were lost, it would be bad for the politicians whose states have corporations involved with the ISS (like Boeing). Ideally, the ISS project would be stopped now – the countries involved cut their losses – and instead concentrate on a Moon and/or Mars mission. I did see a mention of a joint American-Russian Mars exploration mission on the news a couple of days ago, but haven’t been able to find out anything about it. The ISS could be commercialized as much as possible – hired out to private firms for science research, space tourism, whatever. It might have been better to build several small “ministations” like those proposed by MirCorp a couple of years ago (haven’t heard anything more of those). Each country could have its own Ministation, holding 2 or 3 crew for months at a time, serviced by Soyuz and Progress ships. The ISS, for all its expense, now only has 2 crew – no more than good old Mir had! The Americans wanted their big glamorous space station, and now they’re stuck with it. An article by Justin Mullins in New Scientist last year (18 May) – “It Came From Planet Earth” – compared the ISS to Frankenstein’s monster, which eventually turned on its creator and destroyed him. The article mentioned that the ISS had, at that date, cost $U.S.40 billion so far – and could eventually top $100 billion! Quote: “The Station has cost $40 billion so far. Each Shuttle flight costs another $400 million, and since the Station will require another 60 flights or more over its 10 to 15 years of operation, that’s a total of about $25 billion. Running costs are estimated to add up to $40 billion. That’s at least a cool $100 billion altogether – about 2/3rd s of which has still to be spent. By contrast, NASA’s entire budget for 2003 is $15 billion. Mir cost around $3 to $3.5 billion during its 15-year life, according to Yurii Karash in The Superpower Odyssey (page 288): “… the overall cost of Mir’s design, development, manufacturing, on-orbit assembly, and equipment (from 1980 through 1998) was about $3-3.5 billion, and current (1999) costs amounted to $250 million annually.” Little of the science on the ISS hasn’t been done already on Mir (studying bone density loss in cosmonauts, radiation exposure, etc.). A lot of science could be done on unmanned satellites.

An international manned Mars mission would certainly generate public interest, unlike the ISS. All the money spent on the ISS could easily have funded one!

A news report a couple of days ago on the Columbia disaster inquiry said that the most likely cause was the one suggested first: a piece of thermal insulation falling off the ET at launch, striking the leading edge of the left wing and damaging the tiles there. The intense heat during re-entry burned through into the wing and it disintegrated and broke off, followed by the rest of the Orbiter. The astronauts were essentially doomed at launch.

~ Ended 2:20 p.m.

Saturday 10/5

Laugh of the day! Found this article while doing a word search for ISS articles at New Scientist:

NASA on mission to planet pop

18:41 09 August 01, Will Knight

In an effort to reach out to a new generation of space enthusiasts, NASA is to harness the power of pop music.

The space agency plans to commission a song from new US boy-band Natural and is also considering further music projects including possibly a rap song, which Coolio may be asked to compose.

Daniel Goldin, head of NASA, said that the agency must awaken young people’s interest in space exploration. “If we have to do it by being hip, so be it,” he said.

The theme of Natural’s song has yet to be decided, but there are already a few suggestions floating around NASA. “I would love them to do something about the International Space Station and perhaps microgravity,” says Bertram Ulrich, curator of the NASA Art Program, which will officially commission the song in the autumn.

Ulrich said that a music video for the song could conceivably be filmed at one of NASA’s launch sites in front of a space craft. However, he dismissed reports that NASA planned to put the band in space to perform its song. “That’s totally crazy,” he said.

Hit or miss

The band, Natural, comes from the same artistic stable as successful boy bands including N-Sync and the Backstreet Boys. According to popular music experts, NASA would be well advised to make sure that the group has a hit on its hands before going ahead with the project.

Emma Jones, editor of Smash Hits magazine, told New Scientist: “In theory it’s a good idea. But it can depend on the credibility of the song and the band. If both are naff, it will only reinforce the negative image that people already hold.”

Space expert James Oberg agrees. He told a newspaper: “When governments try to harness popular culture, they just embarrass themselves.”

NASA co-ordinates various art projects each year. The program aims to encourage the public to find out about its work. The agency has been accused of spending billions of dollars on projects that the US public does not understand.

A rap song!!! Have those old fuddie-duddies in NASA management actually heard and seen rap music/videos? I think they would be in for a rude awakening …

In my 13 June entry last year, after seeing Space Station 3D, I outlined my ideas for a movie featuring scenes filmed in and outside the ISS, set to ambient, techno-dance and house music (the stuff played at nightclubs and rave parties). You could also utilize some of this for a single song and video. When I listen to that music on my CD player, the images play inside my head like in a movie – if only I could transfer them or download them into a computer! It’s a real headtrip. But that’s the sort of thing which, I think, would appeal to my generation and those younger. I, for one, don’t care about the science or ISS or anything like that. Space is a place of transcendence, where you can escape from dreary reality and lose yourself in something bigger. It’s escape and freedom. That’s what people seek when they go to rave parties and nightclubs – or when they take drugs like Ecstasy. I doubt that NASA would understand that.

Bought my first CD single in ages: “Not Gonna Get Us” by a pair of Russian teenage girls called t.A.T.u. This is the type of dance music I mean. The rave dance/party scene took off in Russia after the collapse of Communism, so it’s well-established there. This is an “enhanced” CD which features the video of the song, which I quite like. (t.A.T.u. – who are popular in Russia – are marketed as a teenage lesbian duo, obviously a marketing tactic to incite controversy, and thus media attention. A dubious ploy, and whether they are or not I don’t know.)

I’m still waiting on a reply to the e-mail that I sent Energiya … I also sent one to the other address at RKA last Monday. I have no way of knowing if they even got them. It is so frustrating. I wish I could find some like-minded people to chat with on the Internet.

~ Ended 1:18 p.m.

Saturday 17/5

More terrorist action in the world this week: three simultaneous suicide car bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which damaged residential apartments where foreign workers lived. One Australian was killed, at least 7 Americans and 34 people in all. In Chechnya, Russia, a suicide car bombing of a government building on Monday killed 54, and a couple of days later a woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the middle of a Muslim religious festival and killed at least 20. These are believed to be linked to Al-Qaeda. The world is thoroughly f**ked-up.

Such suicide bombings are almost impossible to prevent: anyone can drive a car or truck into a city’s center and detonate it. What’s to stop the same thing happening in Melbourne?

There was a documentary on SBS a couple of weeks ago about Russian military officers trying to sell nuclear materials to Islamic terrorists. I recorded it but haven’t watched it yet, so I don’t know the details. Hasn’t it occurred to these idiots that those terrorists could use the material to set off a nuclear device in Moscow? Imagine if the Chechen terrorists who held a siege in that theater last year had had access to portable nuclear bombs.

A news item from last week:

West greets East as US abandons “Old Europe”

Date: May 3 2003

The Pentagon, driven by resentment over “Old Europe’s” opposition to the war in Iraq, is accelerating plans to move tens of thousands of US troops out of Germany to the former Eastern bloc countries of Hungary, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

The first concrete evidence of the shift is the movement of the army’s 17,000-strong 1st Armoured Division, most of which went to Iraq from bases in Germany but will not return there, military officials said. The plans are the most significant reshuffling of US forces in Europe since the end of World War II, when American troops moved into Hitler’s army bases to protect the new West Germany from Soviet ambitions.

With the Pentagon’s recent expansion across Central Asia, the move into Eastern Europe means the US military will span the globe as never before. “If you want to talk about suns not setting on empires, you know, the Brits had nothing compared to this,” said John Pike, an American defence analyst. More than 112,000 US soldiers are based in Europe, 80 per cent of them in Germany.

But with some Western European nations increasingly reluctant to house US troops and with formerly communist countries signing up for NATO and eager to host the Americans, Pentagon officials say change is imminent.

The move also is being driven by the vision of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for a leaner, faster military. With its clear military supremacy, the Pentagon feels free to flex its muscles with little regard to the diplomatic consequences of moving into Russia’s backyard or leaving the impression of snubbing Germany. Details of precisely how many troops will be pulled out of Germany and where they will go are not yet decided.

– Los Angeles Times

The Eastern European nations mentioned seem all-too-eager to invite the Americans in – they will learn that once you invite them in, you’ll never get rid of them. American forces have also set up shop in the bases of various Central Asian countries – something which should surely alarm Russia. They are stealthily being surrounded.

Still no reply to the e-mails I sent off.

~ Ended 1:17 p.m.

Thursday 22/5

My mouse is malfunctioning again, so I think I’ll have to get a new one – the pointer is impossible to move about. I looked inside but it appears clean, so I don’t know what it is.

My pair of prescription sunglasses also got broken – not by me, but by the technician who was adjusting them! I took them in for adjustment as I do every few months to the optometrist in Bentleigh. The sunglass frames are blue plastic. The technician was trying to shrink the frame around the lens a bit (it had come loose), but the plastic broke. He couldn’t source another similar frame from the supplier, so I had to buy a cheaper ($35) brown pair of frames which he fitted the lenses into. Not happy. I don’t know if I should have had to pay for them as the damage wasn’t my fault, and it’s money I can’t afford. I got the blue frames in late 2000, but now I don’t have my nice blue sunglasses anymore. I can’t afford another pair – they cost hundreds of dollars.

No reply to those e-mails … I put a plaintive plea on the Buran forum in hopes for some advice. I wonder if it’s because I sent them from my Hotmail address – Hotmail is notorious for spam (junk e-mail), and perhaps the e-mails from there get automatically discarded?

I started on the Diane-35 pills last week, and have been taking the Zoloft pills for just over 3 weeks. Haven’t noticed much difference in my moods with the latter, though perhaps it’s too early yet.

My philosophies of life (observations over the years) …

Sh*t happens.
Life sucks and then you die.
God is a delusion.
You can never have too much fun.
Rules were made to be broken.
Nothing is certain.
Nothing lasts forever.
Live for today; you could be gone tomorrow.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

~ Ended 3:19 p.m.

Friday 23/5

Dad bought me a new mouse – a Microsoft wheel mouse optical – and it is much better! I’ve been having so much frustration with my old one for some time (it came with this computer), so it makes a difference! Unfortunately, Dad had to pay for it ($48) as I am broke … I am dependent upon my parents for money, which is obviously not an ideal situation, but I do not know where to go for help. I need to see a specialist to diagnose what is wrong with me and perhaps get things moving from there.

No answer to my plea on the Buran forum as of yet.

~ Ended 2:09 p.m.

Saturday 31/5

End of the month today, and last day of autumn. A week of sunny weather with chilly mornings – the sort I like, without the horrible heat of summer. Unfortunately, the lack of rain means 2nd-stage water restrictions are likely – dams are down to just above 40% full.

Saw the ISS yesterday morning and this morning, quite bright. It’s rather sad to think, though, that after 42 years of spaceflight, just two people are in orbit!

The American astronaut on board, Ed Lu, is keeping an online diary on the NASA website. The Russian commander however, Yurii Malenchenko, remains as silent as the others before him. Are the cosmonauts all under some sort of Code of Silence which forbids them to speak? It is frustrating – all you hear is the thoughts of the American astronauts which are much the same after a while. I sent off a question about this to “Ask the Expert,” not that it’s likely to get answered. Still, maybe someone will read it before deleting it!

Expedition 7 did a brief guest appearance on the Eurovision Song Contest last week (held in Latvia), doing an introduction in Russian and English.

The only reply to my plea on the Buran forum so far is a suggestion that I look for any websites created by cosmonauts. Unfortunately, there are none that I could find! A few by astronauts, but that’s it.

The much-hyped Matrix sequel, Matrix Reloaded, came out a couple of weeks ago. Michele and Co. have apparently already seen it, but I am not much interested – the futuristic world of the movie is rather bleak. There’s another movie coming out next month called The Core, about a bunch of American astronaut-types who have to go to the Earth’s core to save the world for some reason or other. Ho-hum. Lots of action and special effects, with a space shuttle crash at the start. Might go to see it if I am inclined, though I doubt the reviews will be complimentary.

NASA is sending two rovers to Mars sometime soon, as is a group in Britain. Russia has not sent any probes for years – the last attempt was the Mars-8 project in 1996, but a rocket stage malfunctioned and the probe disappeared enroute into orbit. Very disheartening for the scientists involved. There have been no attempts since that I know of – they have no money to spare. Most efforts are concentrated on the ISS. The NASA Mars probe already circling the planet sent back a photo this week of the Earth and Moon as seen from its orbit – the Earth a blue-and-white marble, the Moon a smaller brownish crescent. Russia has never done anything like this – it has no interplanetary program any more to speak of, despite landing the first probes on Mars (a capsule ejected from Mars-3 made the first soft landing on the planet) and on Venus decades ago.

~ Ended 7:13 p.m.

June

Saturday 7/6

Some ferocious gale-force winds across Victoria yesterday, from the north-west, up to 112 km/h. Caused much damage. We seem to get these winds every so often. I left my computer off yesterday in case of power cut-outs or surges. The wind dropped down overnight and is now much abated.

The European “Mars Express” mission successfully lifted off on a Russian rocket, as described in this extract from Russian Space Web. But no Russian science experiments are aboard.

Europe heads to Mars, as Russian planetary science remains grounded

Posted: 2003 June 2

Russia successfully launched a European science probe on a mission to explore Mars. The Soyuz/Fregat booster blasted off from Site 31 at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, June 2, 2003, at 23:45 local time (1745 GMT; 1:45 p.m. EDT), carrying the Mars Express spacecraft built by the European Space Agency.

After reaching the initial low orbit around the Earth, the Fregat upper stage re-ignited, sending the probe on a six-month journey to Mars. The Mars Express is scheduled to enter the orbit around Mars in December 2003. A small lander will then separate from the orbital module of the spacecraft and land on the Martian surface to conduct a number of scientific studies, including search for traces of life. Two NASA rovers will follow the Mars Express in June 2003, using the same planetary alignment to reach Mars at the end of the year.

The Mars Express became the first planetary mission departing from Baikonur, since the ill-fated attempt to send Russian Mars-96 spacecraft to the Red Planet in 1996. The failure of the upper stage of the Proton rocket left the probe stranded in a decaying low-Earth orbit. The Mars-96 fiasco essentially ended decades-long Russian planetary exploration program, as well as dwarfed that country’s cooperation with NASA and European Space Agency, ESA, in the field.

During the planning stage of the Mars Express mission, Russian space officials expressed interest in active participation in the scientific part of the project. The Russian Space Agency also offered the rocket as a free contribution into the program. However, ESA preferred to purchase the Soyuz/Fregat booster commercially, in order to avoid dependency on the cash-strapped Russian space program. As a result, Russian scientists had never had a chance to assume any active role in the scientific program of the Mars Express mission. Similar scenario played out during Russian attempts to get involved into NASA-led planetary missions. In the meantime, Russia’s own plans to send a probe to Mars and return soil samples from one of its moons had been stalled for years due to lack of funding.

NASA’s two Mars rovers are also due to lift off very soon. I can’t help wishing they disappear en route!

Another female suicide bomber in Chechnya blew herself up near a bus carrying civilians and Air Force personnel yesterday, killing up to 20.

I noticed that the novel by Peter McAllister, Cosmonaut, which I bought in late 2001 (mentioned in my 6/11/2001 entry) is now on sale in America – I came across it at Amazon.com. One favorable review was posted; I posted a not-so-favorable one. I’ll stick the reviews in here when I next visit. Despite my intense dislike of the main character, ex-astronaut “Edge” Reynolds, I still re-read bits of the novel as there is some interesting ideas, and I like a couple of the other characters (who unfortunately get killed). I also recently noticed that the author mixes up the suburb of Korolev, to the north-east of Moscow (where Moscow Mission Control, TsUP, is) with the cosmonaut training base at Zvyozdiy Gorodok to the south-east of Moscow, more familiarly known in the West as “Star City” – he merges them together. Took me that long to notice it! It’s also set in 2005, when the ISS is completed in the story – that completion date is now, if it ever happens, a few more years off yet, given all the delays and the Columbia disaster.

Cosmonaut by Peter McAllister

The next world war will not begin in the Middle East, or even on Earth. The next world war will be waged in space – on an orbiting International Space Station …

Someone on board is a murderer. Someone on board is planning to destroy the station. Someone on board is hiding a secret so incredible its keepers would do anything to stop it from being exposed.

And one astronaut must find a way to warn NASA-and the world-of a devastating conspiracy whose only trace is a single word: Cosmonaut

Customer Reviews

Orbital corpses, May 27, 2003

Reviewer: Suzy (see more about me) from Melbourne, Australia I read this a couple of years ago when first released in Australia. Ex-astronaut turned cop “Edge” Reynolds is sent up to the ISS to investigate a murder, and it turns out that those sneaky Russians have a Big Secret. A lot of astronauts and cosmonauts get killed, and there are not one but TWO zero-g autopsies. Worth reading for these, but I found Edge (from whose point of view the story is told) to be one of the most irritating characters I have ever come across (think “Ugly American”). I kept hoping he would get killed; unfortunately not. He seems to have a miraculous ability to survive all sorts of disasters. Very patronizing towards the Russian space program (if anyone from there happens to read it they will be seriously pissed off). The author also confuses the suburb of Korolev with Star City (both are in different places). It’s an okay read – some interesting ideas – but I really, really hate Edge snip.

A fantastic techno-thriller! Better than Michael Crichton!!

March 10, 2003 Reviewer: gtkaplan from Columbus, Ohio
I read this book in two nights. Absolutely could not put it down! Wonderfully rich characters, suspenseful mystery that kept me guessing, and perhaps the most exciting action sequences I’ve ever read. This would make one hell of a movie. On the International Space Station, an American astronaut is brutally murdered. The suspects are all Russian cosmonauts. NASA needs to send an American up to the ISS to solve the murder. Edge Reynolds is a former NASA shuttle pilot, now working as a cop with a specialty in forensics. He quit the space program without ever leaving Earth after his wife was murdered. Now, NASA comes calling. He is shuttled up to the ISS to spend time with four possible suspects, all of whom seem to be keeping an amazing secret. I don’t want to spoil anything by saying any more. READ THIS BOOK! Peter McAllister is the new Michael Crichton. But better.

~ Ended 3:16 p.m.

Sunday 8/6

Some vivid dreams last night, though they have faded by now as I didn’t write them down. A couple involved my assassin character from my teenage years in his black Lamborghini, who makes occasional guest appearances in my dreams. In one scene he picked me up from school; in another I snuck out of my bedroom to go meet him at night. I also recall wandering around somewhere in my past and saying to myself that I wanted to stay here and not wake up into the reality I live in now, or words to that effect. Scenes by the beach – a combination of Port Phillip Bay and Inverloch, with a road and town across the road from the beach. This is a recurring dreamscape. Another involved being at a train station in the City – but again it was like nothing in reality, yet another familiar dreamscape. I know where I am in my dreams – dreamscapes and scenes that I’ve dreamt before over the years, what direction I’m facing (north or south, etc.). Everything is in full color.

Quote from an article in Wired magazine – “The Race Back to the Moon” by Tom McNichol, May 2003, about private enterprise and the space program:

“The biggest obstacle to commercialization is NASA itself,” [Alan Binder] says. “I said, ‘Look, I’ll find the investors, there won’t be any risk to your budget,’ and they still didn’t care. Basically, NASA thinks it owns space. And anyone playing in its backyard isn’t welcome.”

Hah! There’s the “Space Mafia” for you. They don’t like anyone challenging their dominance of space. I really hope they will get their arses kicked.

The U.S. and Russian presidents also issued a joint statement when President Bush traveled to St. Petersburg last week on the way to the G-8 summit, renewing both countries’ commitment to the ISS:

U.S., Russia Renew Commitment to International Space Station | SpaceRef – Your Space Reference

Press Release Date Released: Sunday, June 01, 2003 Department of State

U.S., Russia Renew Commitment to International Space Station Pledge to complement each other’s efforts to support it)

The United States and Russia have reaffirmed their commitment to the International Space Station program.

The U.S.-Russia space partnership has deepened following the loss of the U.S. shuttle Columbia, President Bush and President Putin said in a June 1 joint statement issued in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the two leaders met.

They said the two countries will complement each other’s efforts aimed at resupplying the space station, transporting its crews and restoring shuttle flights.

Following is the text of the joint statement:

(begin text)

The White House Office of the Press Secretary (St. Petersburg, Russia) June 1, 2003

Joint Statement By President George W. Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin on U.S.-Russian Cooperation in Space

The loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia has underscored the historic role of the United States and Russia as partners in space exploration, who have persevered despite tragedy and adversity. During this challenging time, our partnership has deepened and the International Space Station (ISS) program remains strong. The extraordinary efforts of our countries continue. The United States is committed to safely returning the Space Shuttle to flight, and the Russian Federation is committed to meeting the ISS crew transport and logistics resupply requirements necessary to maintain our joint American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut teams on board the ISS until the Space Shuttle returns to flight.

We confirm our mutual aspiration to ensure the continued assembly and viability of the International Space Station as a world-class research facility, relying on our unprecedented experience of bilateral and multilateral interaction in space. We reaffirm our commitment to the mission of human space flight and are prepared to take energetic steps to enhance our cooperation in the application of space technology and techniques.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

~ Ended 3:17 p.m.

Monday 9/6

Another vivid dream last night, which involved the destruction of the next Space Shuttle flight! There were several different scenes. In the first, I had been assigned to shoot the Shuttle down at launch with a sniper’s rifle (put a bullet through the External Tank which, filled with hydrogen and liquid oxygen, would explode like a bomb). I was also initially watching the launch through the window of a classroom (north-facing) with my school classmates. I could see the gantry structure towering overhead, though my view was partly blocked. I went outside onto the quadrangle carrying the rifle, seeking a better vantage point. A building blocked my view there, so I went further back, down some streets in the City.

In the next part, I watched the Shuttle launch from the distant edge of a mangrove swamp surrounding the launch pad. The Shuttle being launched was Discovery or Atlantis. It lifted off OK, and the SRBs separated with no problems. But then something went wrong – the Shuttle veered off course to the right (towards me), turned over and crash-landed upside-down, squashing the crew on the flight deck! It came skidding towards me and the other spectators. We ran towards the Orbiter, but there was nothing we could do. Some blood was splattered on the windows of the Orbiter. Some scenes followed involving my running around the mangrove swamp – trying to elude authorities, I think. Finally, I was at home, telling my parents I would look up the latest Shuttle disaster on the Internet.

~ Ended 8:18 a.m.

Tuesday 17/6

A couple of more space-related things to get worked up about. First, a posting on the Buran forum [spelling errors his!:

Some thoughts on the Russian/Soviet space program - The Buran-Energiya Forums

Author Topic: Some thoughts on the Russian/Soviet space program

mcpish
New Member
Posts: 2
From: Canada
Registered: Jun 2003 posted 14 June 2003 14:39

Hi everyone, this is a pretty neat website, I agree with some of the other people thought it is difficult to find. Anyhow I just wanted to share some thoughts I had about the Soviet/Russian space program in general and was wondering if maybe anyone had any comments about this sort of thing that I’ve observed.

Is it just me or does anyone else also think that for some reason, the Russians just seem to be better at designing and implementing sheer raw space hardware? What I mean by this is that if you look at both the aeronatical industries and the space industires of the US and Russia you see that historially there is a completely different culture that seems to prevade. It’s been my observation that the US seems to build space hardware and airplanes in a “sleek” and “high-tech” fashion with tons of sophisticated computer hardware and whatnot. While Russia on the other hand seems to build everything as if it was a Tank. There just seems to be more of a focus on sheer ruggedness than sleekness in Russian space and aeronatics. I remember watching a documentary a few years ago about the Russian air force vs the American one and found it interesting how it is that in the US, they have to make sure that the runways are painstakingly clean from debris and shrapnell so that they do not damage the F-16s. Where as the Russian air bases by contrast have grass growing through the runways, debris littered everywhere, yet they don’t seem to experience any problems with MIG fighters injesting debris, it just isn’t a concern since everything is built as if it was a tank.

What amazes me is all the flack and critisism that the Russians get from American politions about their space program. If you look at sheer raw space hardware it is obvious to see that Russia has been ahead ever since the Saturn-V was abandoned by NASA in the early 70’s. Throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s just compare the space hardware. The Soviet Union/Russia managed to launch about 8 space stations (The alyuts and Mir) while NASA launched 1 (Skylab), both of the Superpowers developed reusable manned spacecraft and we all know which is the better one ;-), Russia developed an unmanned Cargo spacecraft (Progress), Russia has continued to improve the Soyuz with new versions every few years. This is all in comparison with NASA which in my opinion has hardly done anything in the past 30 years. They developed a space shuttle in the early 80s and it was almost 20 years later that they began to even start the ISS. All things being equal, had Russia had the same financial resou rces as NASA they’d be flying to Mars by now. Phil

IP: 142.132.115.72
Suzy
New Member
Posts: 14
From: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Registered: May 2002
posted 16 June 2003 20:55

Right on! I reckon the Russians are more practical when it comes to spaceflight technology. NASA loves to spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars on fancy computerized hi-tech that stuffs up half the time (they had problems with their $600 million ISS robot arm, for example). The American media sneers at the Soyuz spaceships as being “primitive,” but they are adequate for their purpose (transporting crews to low-Earth orbit and back). There’s a webpage at http://voyager.cet.edu/iss/cafe/articles/zvezda/page7.asp which describes the Russian problems with the Zvezda launch in a very negative light (saying that the module was launched only because NASA funded it. They don’t mention that the Destiny module had delays and setbacks, too). The site is aimed at schoolchildren, and is obviously intended to indoctrinate them towards NASA’s point of view. The Russians should do something to counter this on their sites! I’m rambling on a bit, but I’ve personally had a gutful of NASA. All they want to do is dominate space, and the whole ISS program is NASA’s sneaky way of taking over and neutralizing the space programs of the other countries involved. I call NASA the “Space Mafia”.

And here’s an extract from that page I mentioned:

“Why was Zvezda’s launch delayed, and what conditions had to be met before the module was finally launched?”

If that’s not blatant propaganda, I don’t know what is. The site, as I noted in my forum entry, is aimed at American schoolchildren, and it’s obvious that NASA are deliberately portraying a negative view of Russia’s role in the ISS program. (An inaccuracy from that Zvezda page: Proton rockets don’t carry passengers – only the Soyuz-FG rockets carry the crewed Soyuz spaceship. I might give a counter-quote: “And after the Columbia crash, would you be willing to ride aboard the Space Shuttle?”! Touché!)

From the article I mentioned in my 9/5/2003 entry, “It Came From Planet Earth”:

Things were going just as badly for NASA at home. The agency’s main contractor, Boeing, had run into serious problems when the Station’s computer wiring had to be redesigned. A section of the Station designed to join modules together failed a pressure test. And NASA had seriously underestimated the amount of computer software it would need to run the Station. But while the media spotlight focused on the Russians, these problems went largely unreported.

Another good book on the subject is one I’ve mentioned before: Russia in Space: The Failed Frontier? by Brian Harvey (2001, Praxis Publishing Ltd.). (See, for example, page 105.)

~ Ended 3:59 p.m.

Saturday 28/6

Dad lent me his scanner, so I can now scan in photos – and my drawings! They come out really well. If I ever work up the courage to create a web site, I can put my creative work on it (though I’ve not done any drawing for a while). I also bought and installed a new anti-virus program (McAfee VirusScan 7.0) as my Norton Anti-Virus update was about to expire.

Mum and Dad went up to Rochester last Sunday to Tuesday to visit Michele and Co. – Josiah’s 9th birthday.

I went to visit Andrew Barnes – the bookseller in Prahran – last week. He suggested I e-mail Kate Doolan, the woman whom I saw there last year and is a space writer. I’ve not got around to that yet … I told him about trying to e-mail Energiya and others, and he said that doing this from a Hotmail address was next-to-useless as it gets and sends out so much spam junk mail that anything from there would likely be deleted. Also, my e-mail was in English, and perhaps they use different coding in Russia (or something). He suggested I compile the questions, bring them to him and he would ask his wife to translate them (she is Russian) and e-mail them off through his address. So I will try that and see what happens.

Nothing of interest, aside from my ever-dwindling bank account. I know I need to look for some sort of work sometime, but where on Earth do I start? Andrew had some suggestions, but these were not very practical for me (e.g. going overseas to work in Europe! I have enough trouble just coping with life here). He is well-traveled and worldly – very much unlike me. I don’t know if I could explain to him adequately about my problems with coping.

News that Russia is to resume its space tourist program once the Shuttles are flying again. None of the prospective tourists, however, are Russian:

2003-06-23 21:22 No Russians among Russian space trip applicants

Moscow, June 23 (RIA Novosti’s Eduard Puzyrev) – There is not a single Russian among the ten current applicants for space tourist trips, report PR of the Rosaviakosmos federal aerospace agency.

Two Russian private entrepreneurs got through preliminary tests at the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems under the Russian Academy of Sciences, but found it unaffordable to go for training to the Star Township space centre near Moscow, to say nothing of the flight – an accommodation costs US$20 million. The arrangement is for Eastern and Western moneybags, remarked our informant.

Rosaviakosmos experts are enthusiastic about a contract the agency made a few days ago with the US-based Space Adventures Co., which has ventured to promote space tourism. The company assisted the world’s first space tourists – Dennis Tito of the Californian Big Biz and Mark Shuttleworth, South African millionaire – to arrange Rosaviakosmos-sponsored flights to the International Space Centre by Russia’s Soyuz manned craft. A total ten have applied to the Space Adventures for now, and are at various selection stages.
© 2001 RIA Novosti

The Space Shuttle may be back in operation as early as December, or in April next year. It has a whole lot of safety issues aside from loose ET foam, but correcting all these would be very expensive. The ISS construction has been set back by a year, at least.

~ Ended 2:28 p.m.

July

Friday 4/7

Into the second half of the year. School holidays. A couple of cold but sunny winter days yesterday and today – the sort of weather I like. It’s the best time of year when days like that come. I went for a bike ride yesterday afternoon along my usual route – down South Road to the bike track beside Beach Road, then back.

More computer woes … After installing McAfee AntiVirus, it seems to be interfering with my IntelliPoint mouse cursor when on the Internet, as well as locking up and freezing web pages so I have to reboot the computer. Dad went out and bought a larger $60 memory card today – 256 MB to replace the tiny 60 MB RAM the computer came with (the minimum 2 years ago – one reason it was so cheap). I’ve only used up about ¼ of the hard drive (1.12 GB with 3.62 GB free). McAfee has a help website for registered users, so perhaps I can try that. The increased memory should improve other things, at least – it’s the minimum size needed, these days.

When Dad opened the computer case, the inside was coated with a thick layer of dust! It had not been opened since he bought it in October 2001. The computer resides in my bedroom – not the ideal place, but there’s nowhere else to put it. So, despite my dusting, a lot still floats around.

Had a couple of dreams last night involving my cousin Heather. Something about preparing to get married, or for some event. I was at her house, the weather was bright and sunny, and it seemed to be a long time ago. When I was a teenager, Michele and I used to spend some Saturday afternoons at Gran’s home, and Heather would come over. We would sit by the fire in the dining room with Gran and talk about all sorts of things. I really miss that now – I’ve not seen my cousins for years, not since Gran’s funeral in October 2000. They all have their own lives and families. Heather’s oldest daughter, Dior, will turn 15 in November. I look at photos of them all and wonder who those strangers are. I certainly don’t have the relationship with my nieces and nephews that Heather had with us. They don’t even know me. But what would I say to them, even if I could talk to them? I have done absolutely nothing and my life has been a dismal failure.

Dior goes to Kilvington, the same school that Michele and I went to – but it is very different now to when we attended. It’s been extensively (and expensively) renovated and rebuilt through the 1990s, has its own web page and the students get their own laptops. I don’t know what the fees are, but they are undoubtedly high! I still get a newsletter about once or twice a year – very slick and obviously aimed at promoting the school. They must have engaged the services of a PR. I remember some of the miseries I went through there – though these were relatively benign when compared with the hell I endured at That Awful Place later on (i.e. work).

A while ago I came across the website of Tonya Harding, the former Olympic ice skater who gained notoriety by trying to injure her then-rival, Nancy Kerrigan, in 1994. It’s one of those trashy yet curiously enjoyable tales. Tonya was also born in the same year as me (1970). The website is somewhat tacky as it features a section called “Fantasy” where (mostly male) readers post their fantasies involving Tonya in a forum. And you can probably guess the nature of these … I am baffled as to why anyone would want others to write things like that about them! Not to mention being rather concerned, as some are practically rape fantasies. (What if one of those readers decides to carry his fantasy out?) Note: it is a fake site; not approved by Tonya.

~ Ended 6:52 p.m.

Saturday 5/7

Still having some problems with the computer. Installed Internet Explorer 6 today, but I’ve had to turn the computer off manually twice when it froze up, which won’t do it much good (I seem to have done that rather a lot since the computer was bought). The cursor movement is still erratic with the antivirus activated. It’s well beyond my ability to diagnose – Dad says there is a conflict somewhere – but this would need a technician to sort out which, of course, would cost more money. It’s frustrating and tiresome. I had a look at the Linux website (an alternative free operating UNIX-style system) but this would require more extensive learning to install and use, and I just can’t be bothered.

~ Ended 6:19 p.m.

Sunday 6/7

Two suicide bombings near Moscow today, at a rock concert held in an airfield outside the city. Two women detonated bombs strapped to their torsos after being denied entrance to the concert, killing 17 people and injuring many more. If they had got in the toll would have been much higher. A third bomb went off in a marketplace nearby. The culprits are thought to be Chechens. There is no real way such suicide bombers can be stopped, there or in any other country – millions of people travel through cities and it’s impossible to stop and search everyone. Israel has similarly been targeted by Palestinian suicide bombers for years. Unfortunately, it’s a tactic that has become popular amongst Muslim extremists, especially since September 11 (where suicide terrorists flew aircraft into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon). It’s a cowardly but effective way of spreading fear amongst populations: targeting innocent civilians. No one knows where such a bombing will happen next – it could be that person sitting next to you on the train wearing an overcoat. Australians were killed last year in Bali, not by suicide bombers but by a related method: putting a bomb in a parked car and remote-detonating it by a mobile phone or similar.

In Iraq, American soldiers are still getting injured or killed despite the war having ended in May – more than 60 have been killed to date by hostile Iraqi resistance fighters.

The world has gone mad since the end of the Cold War, and I do not look forward to the future in this respect with any optimism.

~ Ended 6:56 p.m.

Sunday 13/7

Kate Doolan rang me last Sunday night, and I rang her Tuesday night; talked about space stuff. She is moving flats from Glen Iris to Northcote, so she is busy at the moment, but she said she’d e-mail me. I also went to see Andrew the week before as regards sending those e-mail questions.

I went to a Bentleigh Church working bee (tidying up the garden, etc.) yesterday morning with Mum and Dad – I just felt like it. No, I’ve not become converted, I just felt like seeing other people. I think the more important thing about a church – or any other organization or group – is that they are places for human connections and contact. Most seemed glad to see me, for some reason! Some I have known since my teenage years, such as Charmaine’s parents, but most from that period left years ago. The new interim pastor, Mitch (Mircea Achetraritei and his wife Yolanda), who is from Romania, is quite nice. The previous one (also a replacement for the one before him) left after something of a scandal, where he got a crush on one of the (married) ladies and started harassing her with e-mails, unsolicited house visits and so on! This had been going on since last year and caused a lot of strife. Mum gave me some details about it last week. This is the politics I was complaining about a few entries ago. It is rather entertaining, though, if you are not one of those involved! For discretion’s sake, I won’t say too much. The pastor apparently had unresolved issues/problems that he hadn’t revealed when he first arrived.

~ Ended 2:12 p.m.

Thursday 17/7

The pastor, Mitch, came for dinner last night and it was quite good.

Haven’t heard from Kate yet – perhaps she is busy.

~ Ended 6:26 a.m.

Read this article on The Moscow Times website, which got me rather irate:

Church on the Blood Consecrated

By Alexei Vladykin, the Associated Press, Thursday, July 17, 2003

Yekaterinburg, Ural Mountains – Surrounded by crowds of Russian Orthodox faithful, clerics on Wednesday consecrated a golden-domed memorial church on the spot where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were shot to death by the Bolsheviks 85 years ago.

Russian Orthodox priests wearing gilt-edged red robes chanted and carried crosses under lowering skies in Yekaterinburg, where the last tsar, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children were executed in a cellar on July 17, 1918.

The Church on the Blood, a white-walled structure topped by several shining gold-colored onion domes at different levels, was built on the murder site at a cost of 328 million rubles (about $1 million), much of it donated by large companies, Itar-Tass reported.

“I am delighted that I am here on this historic day. This place is known to everyone as the Russian Calvary,” a descendant of the Romanovs, Olga Kulikovskaya-Romanova said at the ceremony.

Other family members and well-known people, including Mstislav Rostropovich, joined about 1000 pilgrims who arrived for the consecration.

Some traveled hundreds of kilometers on foot and stayed at a tent camp set up in a nearby field, NTV television reported. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II has been ill lately and was advised by his doctors not to travel to Yekaterinburg, Itar-Tass reported.

In a message, Alexy said the consecration suggests “a possible historic turn” for Russia and called for unity between the Russian Orthodox Church, the state and the Russian people. In imperial Russia, church and state were extremely close and the tsar was considered to have the divine right to rule. At the main entrance to the church stands a sculpture depicting the last minutes of the Romanov’s lives – surrounded by members of his family, Nicholas clutches his son, Alexis, to his chest.

Nicholas, who abdicated in March 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia, was canonized by the church in 2000, along with his family, after years of debate on the issue following the collapse of the Soviet regime.

Nicholas and his family were detained and in April 1918 they were sent to Yekaterinburg. Three months later, a firing squad lined them up in the basement of a merchant’s house and shot them. The building was demolished in 1977 on orders from Boris Yeltsin, who was the top regional official at the time. The remains of the royal family were unearthed from a mining pit near Yekaterinburg in 1991 and were buried in St. Petersburg in 1998.

I was incensed enough to send off this e-mail:

I read this article with absolute dismay. The Church and Tsars kept Russia in ignorance and poverty for centuries, and I can’t believe that people want to resurrect this retrograde nonsense – it will do Russia no favors. If there was one good thing about the Revolution, it was getting rid of these backward and corrupt institutions, including shooting the Royal Family. Good riddance! Unfortunately, the Church has been all too eager to get its claws back into the Russian people after the fall of Communism. Even more alarming is the Patriach’s suggestion of merging Church and State. This is the worst thing you could do for a country – just look at fundamentalist Muslim countries like Iran. Keep them well and truly separate.

Even more obscene is that $1 million was spent on this pointless memorial. Better to have spent the money helping the poor!

Don’t know if it will get published, but at least someone might read it! If there’s one thing I hate about modern Russia, it’s this revival of religion and monarchism. Institutions best done away with. And apparently they have “canonized” the last Tsar. How dumb can you get?

~ Ended 3:22 p.m.

Friday 18/7

Mars is bright in the morning sky; it will be at its closest to Earth in August – the closest it’s been for several thousand years. The waning full Moon was right next to Mars early this morning from 5:30 AM; I could see it even with my poor eyesight (I don’t wear glasses when going to the oval for an early jog).

The online Moscow Times doesn’t seem to have a letters page that I could find, so I don’t know if anyone read that e-mail I sent yesterday.

~ Ended 3:43 p.m.

Thursday 24/7

The Moscow Strangler! A report of some mysterious killings of young women:

7 Young Women Strangled to Death

By Simon Saradzhyan, Staff Writer, The Moscow Times
Tuesday, Jul. 22, 2003.

At least seven young women have been strangled to death this month in Moscow, prompting fears that a serial killer is on the loose.

But investigators said Monday that they doubt that the murders are the work of one or even two different serial killers because they have little in common with one another.

“Not yet,” said police spokesman Alexei Vakhromeyev, when asked whether the police had collected evidence connecting the murders.

The two most recent murders took place over the weekend. The first victim was found at 1:10 p.m. Saturday near an apartment building on 16th Parkovaya Ulitsa in eastern Moscow. She had bruises on her neck where she had been strangled and she had been struck on the head, the police said. She was wearing a bangle on her left arm. The police refused to release her age or name.

The second woman was found several hours later, lying in bushes near a pond at 232 Leningradskoye Shosse in the northwestern outskirts of Moscow. The 17-year-old girl was a student of the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, the police said.

The Zhizn daily identified the victim as Tatyana Nikishina and said she had been strangled with her own bra.

Investigators believe the girl was killed in a personal dispute, Gazeta.ru reported, citing a police spokesman. Suspects have already been identified, and the police are looking for them, the spokesman said.

It was unclear whether either victim has been sexually assaulted. But police have ruled out robbery as the motive in both murders because valuables were found on the victims.

Two more young women were murdered on Saturday, but both died after being struck on the head, not from being strangled, the police said.

The killings came after at least five young women were found strangled in northeastern Moscow in the first two weeks of July. Some of them were tortured and sexually assaulted before being killed, the police said. Still, investigators believe that it is highly unlikely that the crimes are all connected.

“There are too many differences,” said Vakhromeyev, who represents the police’s elite Criminal Investigations Directorate.

For instance, the killer or killers strangled some of the victims with their bare hands and others with clothing or ropes, Vakhromeyev said. Serial killers usually kill all of their victims in an identical manner, he said.

Prosecutors are keeping a close eye on all seven murders but have so far found no evidence indicating they might be the deeds of one or two serial killers, said Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for the city prosecutor’s office.

No arrests have been made in any of the seven cases, she said.

Deputy City Prosecutor Yury Sinelshchikov has ordered a team of criminologists to examine all of the cases for possible similarities, she added.

“We are not ruling out the idea of serial murders, but this is not the main lead given the differences in their markings,” Petrenko said.

Vladislav Polikarkin, the investigator at the northeastern branch of the city prosecutor’s office who is investigating his district’s murders, could not be reached for comment Monday.

The first woman reported to have been strangled this month was a 28-year-old graduate of the Culture Institute. She was beaten, sexually assaulted, gagged with her own clothing and then strangled, the police said. Police found her half-naked body at the Botanical Garden in the afternoon of July 1. Police have only identified her by her first name, Yulia.

At 3 a.m. the next day, the half-naked body of an 18-year-old woman was found near a kindergarten on 2nd Vladimirskaya Ulitsa. The victim, identified as Ksenia, had been beaten, raped and strangled.

The body of the third victim, Irina Gera, 28, an employee of the City Duma, was found half-naked near railroad tracks at 43 Ulitsa Yablochkova on July 4. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with the strap of her purse.

On July 8, the fourth victim was found hanging on the belt of her robe attached to a door handle in her apartment on Ulitsa Inzhenernaya. The 25-year old woman worked at the Cherkizovsky outdoor market and might have moonlighted as a prostitute, the police said. They suspect she was killed by a client or by her boyfriend, who works at the same market.

The fifth victim, 32-year-old grade school teacher Yelena Tolokonnikova, was killed late July 10 or early July 11, and her half-naked body was found behind a row of garages on Ulitsa Dubininskaya. Police suspect that she might have been strangled by a gypsy cab driver.

A leading psychiatrist confirmed Monday that serial killers usually follow the same pattern in each killing but added that it might be too early to say whether the recent murders are linked. It can be very difficult to draw a correct psychological portrait of a serial killer during the early stages of an investigation, said the psychiatrist, Sergei Yenikolopov, a senior researcher with the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences’ Center for Psychiatric Health.

Yenikolopov and Vakhromeyev said it is next to impossible to spot a serial killer.

Vakhromeyev said that those worried about a possible attack should stay away from isolated areas, especially at night, and find a companion when going out for a walk in the park.

“I am not saying that people should only gather in groups of 50 on Red Square and always be on high alert, but I would advise against taking a shortcut through the park,” Vakhromeyev said.

The person could also be deliberately using different methods in order to confuse the investigators.

~ Ended 8:59 a.m.

Saturday 26/7

The first marriage in space has sadly been thwarted:

“Official: Russian cosmonaut promises not to marry in space,” HoustonChronicle.com.

So no thanks to a grumpy old general and a silly outdated law, a great PR event for the Russian space program is not to be.

Ed Lu (Yurii M. still remains silent) has posted some videos depicting a tour of the ISS on the Expedition 7 Gallery video section. They’re OK, but won’t win any Academy Awards. Reckon I could do better! I know most of what he said about the ISS, already. The latest Progress supply ship to come up is docked to the base of Pirs, while the old one is still at the aft end of Zvezda – TsUP were trying out a new procedure where two Progresses remain docked to the ISS to aid reboosting the Station’s orbit. The one at the aft end (#247) remains docked until 17 November. #259 remains docked at the base of Pirs until it is replaced by the next one on 29 August. Pirs, the Docking Compartment/Airlock is thus full of rubbish being loaded into the Progress below it, and is not being used for vykhody (“exits” – EVAs). So that is perhaps one reason why there are no Russian EVAs scheduled in Orlan spacesuits.

The space program is now so boring. With the suspension of Shuttle flights, it is now in a “holding pattern”. It was going nowhere anyway, but even more so now.

~ Ended 2:47 p.m.

Sunday 27/7

Gross-out of the year!! Some odd goings-on in Germany:

Cannibal case shocks Germany

Friday, December 13, 2002 Posted: 8:44 a.m. EST (1344 GMT)

Rotenburg-an-der-Fuld, Germany – German police are watching home videos made by a man who apparently killed and ate a man after advertising for a willing victim on the Internet.

Prosecutors say the 41-year-old suspect, who has confessed to the crime, is not being treated as insane.

The accused cut off part of the victim’s body by mutual agreement because they wanted to eat it together, police said in a statement.

The suspect then killed the man – a 42-year-old from Berlin – with deep cuts to the neck and chopped the body into pieces that he froze and later ate, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors have named neither the victim nor suspect. Both men were computer technicians, German newspapers said. Police believe the killing happened in March last year.

Police arrested the man, who lives in Rotenburg-an-der-Fulda, near Kassel, in the German state of Hesse, after he posted an Internet ad seeking another male volunteer to satisfy his appetites.

Kassel prosecutor Hans-Manfred Jung told Reuters news agency the man was in custody and was regarded as capable of standing trial.

“The deed appears to stem from cannibalistic and homosexual tendencies shared by both men,” police said in a statement.

Officers were searching the suspect’s home – an 18th century manor house – on Friday, and said they had found frozen human flesh and bones as well as video recordings of the crime.

Neighbours said they found the story difficult to comprehend. One said: “It was sort of clear to us that he had a different perspective on life than we did but he was a normal person, to speak to him, to drink a glass of beer with him, just like you and me.”

CNN’s Stephanie Halasz said the case, which had shocked the country, was dominating the tabloid press.

Some newspapers had talked to psychologists in an attempt to try to understand the crime, she said.

Bild newspaper described the crime as the most bizarre crime of modern German criminal history. “A man was led to the butcher’s block, and eaten,” it said.

It is Germany’s second headline-grabbing murder case this year after a young couple was jailed in January for killing a friend and stabbing him 66 times in a Satanic ritual.

Apparently the bit that was cut off and eaten was, uh, an unmentionable body part, which was cooked in red wine. Can’t see that recipe appearing on those TV cooking shows anytime soon. (There must be a market niché for a book entitled “The Cannibal’s Cookbook”.)

~ Ended 2:20 p.m.

Wednesday 30/7

Very cold and wet yesterday and today after a sunny but windy day on Monday.

Michele and Chris bought ANOTHER dog – a female Doberman called Sarah. They now have 4 children and 2 dogs. They must be mad! Let’s hope these two dogs last longer than their previous two.

~ Ended 12:11 p.m.

August

Friday 1/8

Michele’s 31st birthday today.

Installed Microsoft Office 2000 on my computer, using the Pastor’s CD-ROMs, so it’s updated everything, including Word (now 2000, from ’97). A few changes, including many more font colors! There was only a limited selection in ’97.

The Moscow Strangler killed his 12th female victim, it was reported on tonight’s SBS news, all to the north and east of the city center. Women are quite nervous about walking alone in the parks.

~ Ended 7:13 p.m.

Saturday 2/8

Mr. Waters went into hospital this week because of heart pains – he had a heart attack 14 years ago, and has been on medication ever since (he also has diabetes), but cholestrol was blocking the arteries again, so he’s in hospital for a week under observation. The Waters, and my parents, are getting all sorts of ailments as they age – a depressing reminder that they won’t be around forever.

Tried sending off yet more questions to NASA’s “Ask MCC”:

Could anyone tell me …

Why none of the cosmonauts are answering questions or keeping on-line journals? Are they under some sort of Code of Silence? I would like to hear what they think, too!

Why aren’t the Orlan spacesuits being used?

Also, none of the previous questions I’ve sent have yet been answered! Am I just unlucky?

Thanks …

I was feeling somewhat exasperated, so I just dashed that off. Doubt it will get answered, but someone there might read it …

In the “Thanks” standard reply:

HSF – Feedback – Ask the Experts – Thanks

Thanks for your question, Suzy McHale!

We receive hundreds of thought-provoking questions each mission and wish we could answer every one of them. However, our primary job is, and always will be, to safely and successfully keep the ISS operating smoothly, so that just isn’t possible. Still, we do appreciate your interest and will make every attempt to address as many questions as possible. This is as much your Space Station as ours.

I invite you to check the answers periodically during the mission to see if we have replied to your question.

Please accept this certificate, a photo of the crew, with our thanks for your participation in NASA’s space program.

Best wishes,

Jeff Hanley
Flight Director Office

“This is as much your Space Station as ours” – yeah, as if …! They are funded by taxpayers’ money – are public servants – so they have a duty to answer EVERY question from the public, no matter how trivial. I think those at NASA (and other government institutions) forget this; they live in an insular environment and tend to take their positions for granted – and thus become arrogant. They need some reminding otherwise!

~ Ended 4:25 p.m.

Tuesday 5/8

Another suicide bombing in Russia last Friday, this time next to a hospital:

Russian military hospital bombing’s death toll reaches 42

Interfax. Saturday, Aug. 2, 2003, 7:57 p.m. Moscow Time

Moscow. Aug 2 (Interfax) – The death toll of a Friday bombing at a Russian military hospital reached 42 on Saturday as rescue workers digging through the rubble found around 7 p.m. the body of a woman member of the hospital staff, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

A ministry spokesman who quoted the number to Interfax also said 82 people were injured in the suicide attack on the hospital, situated in the Caucasus town of Mozdok.

He said 64 of them had been hospitalized. Fifty of them “are servicemen, all of them have been evacuated,” he said. “Forty-one of them were evacuated to the Rostov District Military Hospital. Some of those injured were evacuated to hospitals in St. Petersburg and Moscow. At present there remain 14 people at the hospital of the town of Mozdok. None of them have serious injuries.”

The spokesman said eight people had undergone surgery.

The military hospital was blown up by an explosive-packed truck that had rammed through the hospital gate. Mozdok lies in North Ossetia, a region bordering Chechnya.

Those injured are being treated by the personnel of the Mozdok town hospital, two military medical teams from the North Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz and a team from Zashchita, a Russian emergency medical center.

The death toll since then is at least 50. Several officials in charge of the hospital were arrested for criminal negligence – they had not fortified the area despite warnings. Unfortunately, these bombings look likely to continue. It’s become similar to the unending Israeli-Palestine conflict.

America is still having soldiers killed in Iraq (52 since the war ended on 1st May), though they did kill Saddam’s two psychopathic sons a couple of weeks ago.

Bill Waters had the examination of his heart yesterday, and it has more dead muscle than previously thought. He is scheduled to have a triple bypass in a month, if he lasts that long.

Mum and Dad are going away to Kyneton on Friday for a week, again, so I’ll be by myself along with Sasha.

Had yet another of my recurring dreams involving school. It was the last day of Year 12, and I was in one of the classrooms. I went looking for some of the girls who’d been there for the whole 12 years as I had, from Prep to Year 12: Joanna Stanway, Andrea Crabtree, Jennifer Bradd, Megan Waters. I wanted to say goodbye to them for the last time and felt rather sad. Of course, in real life I left after first term and never said goodbye, not that they missed me. It’s 15 years since I left so ignominiously in 1988 – the only one not to graduate; a loser and failure. It would feel quite disorientating to see them again as they are now, though I’ve no real desire to – they would be strangers to me. There was a 15-year reunion this year, though I don’t think I received an invitation.

Kilvington has a website at www.kilvington.vic.edu.au/ . It is quite a different place from when I was there. I noted that one section, sponsored by some American company, directs students to American sites and that country’s point of view – get ’em when they are young. Each year group also has its own curriculum handbook – I downloaded the Year 9 one, the year Dior my niece is now in. It’s full of those personal development phrases that have filtered throughout society from the business world, where such silly trends originate, and which I regard with a certain cynicism. Here is the “Message from the Head of Middle School”:

Dear Girls,

Do you have attitude?

At Kilvington, we believe that our Middle School girls possess a keen sense of responsibility and a true need to move beyond the classroom to explore and develop links globally. Each of you is capable of amazing things!

We are so excited by the new Year 9 curriculum which has grown from our talks with yourselves, your parents and through our understandings as teachers. It involves practical and physical challenges, movement into the community and deep reflective thought. The new program offers opportunities to make a difference in terms of social justice and encourages you to develop skills and competencies for an exciting future within our knowledge society.

So how have we added to our curriculum? Our new course is called “Attitude”. Beyond the traditional core and elective subjects outlined in the handbook, there will be diverse opportunities for students in this new program. “Attitude” runs across the entire year, with students selecting one subject from “Mind” in the first semester and one session from “Body” in the second semester. Units include working towards a marital arts qualification, delving into psychology, establishing links with indigenous Australians and organizing a “social justice forum”. Each of the units will conclude with a celebration, qualification or award.

In addition, two new core subjects, “Challenge” and “Explore,” have been included in your course. During the “Challenge” unit, you will have a chance to develop and engage in your own significant experience within the community. Think widely … anything could be possible! In “Explore,” together we will move into the CBD to discover opportunities, possibilities and lifestyles.

“Attitude” is the continuation of an exciting journey for Year 9 students at Kilvington. I encourage you to take up the challenge, embrace the learning and achieve highly!

Still, I wish I could be 20 years younger; a student with a future to look forward to. I would certainly have some fun with some of the courses, such as website development – if I had the same views as I have now, which would be very different to everyone else’s (I was that way when I was at school). I wonder what they would make of my “Expedition Clueless” stories in Creative Writing …?!

~ Ended 4:15 p.m.

Wednesday 6/8

The space wedding appears to be back on:

Russia: Space wedding back on

Tuesday, August 5, 2003 Posted: 10:21 a.m. EDT (1421 GMT)

Moscow, Russia (Reuters) – Long-distance relationships are always tricky, but this one has been more remote than most.

The first space wedding, which will unite Russian cosmonaut Yurii Malenchenko and his earth-bound bride some 240 vertical miles (380 km) away, is back on, after being cancelled last month by the spaceman’s superiors.

“As far as I know, it is planned for August 10,” said Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, on Tuesday.

Malenchenko, 41-year-old commander of the International Space Station since April, has overcome technical and legal problems, as well as the objections of his bosses, to wed U.S. citizen Ekaterina Dmitriev, 26, by space telephone.

Gorbunov said Malenchenko had deputed an American lawyer to sign the marriage documents for him at the ceremony in Houston, the home of U.S. space mission control.

The zero-gravity bridegroom will still look the part.

“He has definitely been sent a tailcoat,” said Gorbunov.

He is marrying some American woman who emigrated from Russia. Wonder where they will live? He is also nearly twice her age!

~ Ended 11:47 a.m.

Saturday 9/8

Mum and Dad left for Kyneton yesterday afternoon, so I am on my own (with Sasha). No one to talk to or go out with.

Saw the ISS this morning; also Mars, which is brilliant in the western morning sky – as bright as Venus, but with a reddish tinge. It is visible as a small disk even through binoculars (haven’t seen it through Dad’s telescope yet). It’s the closest it’s been for around 70,000 years. If only humans were going there, or were already on there! If America and Russia hadn’t wasted so much money and energy on the Cold War, they could have embarked on a joint Mars mission decades ago, and had a small colony going by now. But instead billions have been wasted on the ISS that is an unnecessary detour and will achieve little that wasn’t already done on Mir. I feel like sending them an exasperated e-mail: Stop fussing about, just use whatever technology you’ve got and GO! GO to Mars, stop talking and dreaming about it.

~ Ended 5:09 p.m.

Monday 11/8

The first space wedding has taken place. Unfortunately, it looks as though it will be the last:

First wedding from space to be held

Moscow, August 10 (Itar-Tass) – The first and possibly the last wedding from space, in which Russian cosmonaut on a mission on board the ISS Yurii Malenchenko will marry Yekaterina Dmitriyeva in Houston, will be held on Sunday.

The marriage ceremony will take place at a Houston restaurant. Early in July, the cargo spaceship Progress M1-10 delivered on board the International Space Station a tailcoat and a wedding ring for the groom. The bride, 26-year-old U.S. citizen of Russian origin, has received permission for the wedding in which one party is not present from Texas authorities. Legislation of Texas allows such marriages if one of the parties is absent for valid reasons. A space mission is quite a valid reason for the 41-year-old Russian cosmonaut not to attend the wedding ceremony.

A spokesman for the Russian Rosaviakosmos aviation and space authority, Sergei Gorbunov, told Tass that the Russian Space Agency has no objections against such marriage. “Marriage is cosmonaut’s own business,” he said. “All actions of cosmonauts in orbit are regulated by the inter-governmental Code of Cosmonauts’ Conduct on Board the ISS, which contains no direct ban on marriages,” the spokesman added.

However, cosmonauts have no right to use station resources for their personal needs. “The groom will be able to make a call from the space station, but the call will be placed during time allocated for contacts between the crew and their relatives,” Gorbunov said.

He also said “space marriages will be forbidden” in the future. He said it would be stipulated in a contract signed with cosmonauts before the flight.

That will be Malenchenko’s second marriage. Yekaterina Dmitriyeva was born in the-then Soviet Union, but her family moved to the USA when the girl was four years old. Now she lives and works in Houston.

I wonder what went wrong with his first marriage?

This could have been a great PR opportunity for the Russian space program – furthering international relations! – but the Grumpy Old Men in charge don’t seem to realize this. (Russian for “old fuddy-duddy”: staromodnyi chelovek, старомодныи челрвек.)

The bride has created her own website at www.spacewedding.net/ [no longer online – archived at Archive.org. She has clearly turned into an American as her writing is mawkishly soppy and sentimental:

“Love is strong
and you’re so sweet
you make me hard
you make me weak
love is strong
and you’re so sweet
and someday babe
we go to meet
a glimpse of you
is all it took
a strangers glance
it got me hooked
I’m gonna follow you
Across the stars
I’m gonna follow you
In swanky bars …
We make a beautiful team”
– Rolling Stones, Voodoo Lounge

Love is beautiful. Love is strong. Love is the component that we behold. So goes the story of Yuri and I. A long while ago, about 5 years ago. Yuri and I met for the first time at my mothers house. I have to say, it was a Russian holiday and too early in the morning for my taste but none the less I had gotten up and met him there with his friend Yuri Gidzenko. The man never left my mind after that day. I had run into him at several parties but the memory of Yuri, dark, handsome and utterly seductive lingered in my mind for many months that has turned time into years to come. In my head I had always heard a voice, and the voice spoke through distresses and hard times, that I would fall in love and marry the man I had already met and known once. Well as the years went on I pondered this idea and dragged it through many waters. But nothing came to avail. Than one day I was waiting tables at a restaurant in local Clear Lake, Texas. A Japanese restaurant, for my dear desire taste for Japanese food, Tokyo Bowl. A girlfriend called me up on the phone. It was April 12th , 2002. She said, “Kat, you have to come out with us, it is Yuri Gagarin’s night at the Outpost Tavern, you have to come” I told her I was too tired and did not want to see anybody at this time. I just wanted to go home and go to sleep and go to my 8 am aerobics class as planned.

So she gave me some slack. Then another girlfriend, my bridesmaid, Laurian called and said “Lets go out. I have nothing to do tonight, lets go do something fun” So I said why not, lets go to the Outpost, Elena just called and said there was this great party. Lets go to that. So Laurian agrees. We head out there, sure enough there are so many people there. A swarm. We mingled, we talked. We met a French man there, Alain Binger. He kept telling us how beautiful we were. We laughed, tossed our heads back in utter compliment. But ignored the man’s words. Laurian’s boyfriend came to pick her up. I was left alone. So Alain approaches me, and tells me there is a friend he wants me to meet. So as I am putting my glass down to leave I look up, from the glass, to the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. A man in a black leather jacket, seduction just seeping from him in every angle I can see. There stands Yuri. In the quarter of a minute our eyes made contact. I knew this was the man I was going to marry. Looking into his eyes and knowing that this was the bond of my life. I knew at this instant that this was the most wonderful man, the gentlest, the kindest the one who can give me all the love in the world, and love that is beyond this world. I knew there was no turning back. This was the man who was going to make me believe that Love was strong, and he can make me weak. And so our romance began. We parted ways that evening with exchanged numbers and anxiety in ourselves.

To meet the next day, I took off work, and spent the whole day in Galveston with Yuri. It was absolutely magic! That following Sunday I moved in with him, and so our love story began. And it has been climaxing ever since. Through long distance and through many miles up above myself. We have kept our love strong and we have kept our love alive. Just like an ordinary couple we have had our disagreements. But we manage through that. Because we believe in one another. I believe in him and he believes in me. There is nothing I can say that can explain what our love means to us. What we feel. What we know. About one another. We are strong. The further we dive into our relationship of fate, the further our love blossoms and grows and strengthens through the distance through the love that we have. I wish this to happen to every person who reads this. Because the magic is truly from within the soul. All sorts of people in magazines in books, tell you to believe in yourself and good things will happen. And I agree. If you believe in yourself in the path that you are chosen for. The magic comes alive, with anyone. I poured my heart out to Yuri, everything I ever had to hide, everything I was ever afraid to tell anyone else. He knows. And that is the best comfort for my soul and for my life. True love in its beauty unsheathed and inhaled.

:-P Too sickly for my taste. I think she’s been reading too many romance novels!

Nothing else of interest. Just getting through each day. Mum has rung me every night so far.

~ Ended 12:49 p.m.

Wednesday 13/8

Two days till Mum and Dad return. I went to the city this morning. Was a bit naughty – bought a rather expensive book ($90) called Russian Spacesuits (Springer-Praxis Publishing, 2003). There is little information on Russian spacesuits anywhere, including the Internet, so I just had to buy this. Savings down to $740. I know, I can’t afford it … but the book is quite good and fills a gap. There’s plenty of info on American EMU spacesuits, but almost nothing on Russian spacesuits (including on Russian sites, at least the ones I’ve found).

Found another forum at collectSPACE, and a topic posted on how boring the space program is, based on this article: “COMMENTARY: Call Hollywood! NASA Needs a Makeover!,” Space.com.

The article concentrates too much on NASA and its astronauts, but the writer does have a point. Here’s some extracts from the forum topic: Call Hollywood! NASA Needs a Makeover! – collectSPACE: Messages.

IP: Logged
kosmonavtka
New Member
Posts: 1
From: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Registered: Aug 2003 posted August 11, 2003 08:38 p.m.

Hi, I’ve just signed up.

Some of the entries here say what I’ve been feeling for a while: that the space program is dead BORING! NASA and Russia have a great asset in their astronauts and cosmonauts, and should be marketing them like pop stars – the good-looking ones, anyway! I’m sure a lot of women would find this very appealing (me for one)! ;-)

Contacting astronauts and cosmonauts is frustratingly hard, as you can only go through the “Ask the ISS crew” on the NASA site if you want to e-mail them, and none of mine have yet got through. They might as well live in a parallel universe! Making them more accessible – such as allowing them to have their own websites – would be great. Create a fan club for them!

This may sound trite, but I reckon that this form of publicity would appeal to a lot more people than any amount of tedious blathering about science.

There were a lot more postings; 2 pages of them. I couldn’t resist adding my views :-P. See if that gets a response. I might add an irritated comment about the exclusive focus on NASA (though as it’s an American site I guess that’s inevitable).

I’m using “Kosmonavtka” (lady cosmonaut) as my online identity now, including a Yahoo e-mail address. For me, sadly, it’s wishful thinking … I even secured a free basic website on Yahoo using the same ID, though I don’t know if I’ll do anything yet. I have only a few vague ideas: an introduction, a family photo album, a couple of pages on the Russian spacesuits (using info from the book), perhaps my “Expedition Clueless” stories.

~ Ended 2:18 p.m.

Tuesday 19/8

Mum and Dad returned home OK.

There was a big power blackout in the north-east of the USA last Friday (Thursday there), affecting 5 states (including New York City) and part of Canada near the border there. Not due to terrorism, as was the first thought, but because the ageing power grid got overloaded (it’s summer there). Power was restored within a couple of days, but it’s a reminder of how vulnerable our interconnected societies are, with their dependency upon electricity and computers.

I’m still entertaining vague thoughts about my website. I read up on the HTML (Hyper-Text Mark-up Language) code used to write pages (you can view a page’s HTML code by selecting View → Source on the main menu bar). It looks complicated at first, but the basic commands used (to select text types, colors, backgrounds and so on) aren’t too hard once you get the hang of them. Microsoft Office has a web page creator called FrontPage, where you can write in HTML or have the creator do it automatically. I wish I could afford my own domain name and site (and not have ads like the free sites), but obviously I can’t.

~ Ended 2:29 p.m.

Wednesday 20/8

More suicide bombings today. One was a huge blast at the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad which killed at least 18 people, including the much-respected Special Representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello – like the suicide bombing of a Russian hospital a couple of weeks ago, the bomber drove a truck. Another in Israel on a bus where a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 20 or so passengers, mainly women and children. America is still having problems with its occupation of Iraq; saboteurs have damaged oil and water pipelines, and U.S. soldiers are still getting killed.

Aunty Hilda and Uncle John dropped in for a visit today. They are moving from Townsville in Queensland to Launceston in Tasmania, after 10 years in Qld. (they moved there in 1993). Haven’t seen them for that long! They found the heat and humidity there unbearable, so they won’t have to worry about that in Tassie (or suicide bombers, for that matter …). They bought a small house on a large (¼-acre) block in a quiet country area. They are taking the ferry across Bass Strait, with their car, leaving this evening.

~ Ended 6:26 p.m.

Wednesday 27/8

Mars is at its closest to Earth tonight around 7:51 p.m. There’s been quite a lot of media interest, so I guess the “Red Planet” still captures the public’s imagination. If only humans had a colony already on it! Or a manned international mission enroute.

I’m getting the hang of the HTML basics. I’ve done a couple of my web pages; the front/index page and one briefly describing spaceflight accidents (the two Soyuz and two Space Shuttle ones). It’s only a basic outline; I’ll provide plenty of links to other people’s more extensive sites.

~ Ended 7:38 p.m.

Friday 29/8

My three web pages look quite good; I’ve figured out how to link them so you can jump from one to the other, as well as insert those “Back to the top” page links (so you can jump back up to the top of a long page). This is only basic HTML; you can get very elaborate if you want. I reckon my pages look attractive – they’re very simple, not cluttered. I’ve been to lots of websites and know what I find irritating (ugly layout, bad spelling, cluttered appearance, etc.). Unfortunately, if I ever upload it to a free site I’ll have to put up with ads on the page. There’s also some privacy concerns – should I put my name (first and surname) on the page or not? I want people to know who I am, but though I’m not in the phone book, a person could find out my address via the Electoral Rolls, if they were so inclined. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to hassle someone as obscure as myself, but there are all sorts of weirdoes out there.

~ Ended 6:54 p.m.

September

Thursday 4/9

Into spring and the 9th month of the year; almost over already. Mum and Dad are going up to Rochester to see Michele and family for the night.

Had another dream about blowing up the Space Shuttle two nights ago; I was looking through some character’s eyes. The Shuttle was launched near the ocean; I was watching from a pier. The character also flew a light airplane near the Shuttle on the launch pad; then he fled and hid the airplane in a garage in a small town. He seemed to be staying as a boarder with the people in a house there. He then fled, as authorities were looking for him. I didn’t write down the dream after I awoke, so it’s rather vague now.

Still working on my little website. I use Microsoft FrontPage 2000, which saves a lot of work, though I also type in the basic HTML that I’ve learned.

~ Ended 6:28 a.m.

Tuesday 9/9

Had a dream last night that I was preparing to board a Soyuz rocket. I was dressed in the Sokol pressure suit and, with a few other people, arrived at the base of the gantry that supported the rocket. We got into a lift and ascended to a higher level, then got in another lift and went to the top. There I got out and walked around, looking at the expansive view out the windows and taking some photos.

I decided not to put my full name on my website for the time being. I’ve got 7 pages more-or-less finished.

~ Ended 6:03 p.m.

Friday 12/9

This morning in America – yesterday evening in Australia – marked 2 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon.

~ Ended 7:11 p.m.

Friday 19/9

Very windy today.

A Tu-160 bomber crashed yesterday outside of Moscow, killing all 4 crew, as described in this extract from a Moscow Times article:

Tu-160 Bomber Crashes, Crew Killed

By Staff Writer Simon Saradzhvan
Friday, September 19, 2003

A long-range supersonic Tu-160 bomber crashed during a test flight in the Saratov region Thursday, killing all four crew members.

The crash of the four-engine bomber deals a serious blow to the air force component of Russia’s strategic nuclear triad, defense analysts said.

The heavy bomber was flying a sortie to test a newly installed engine when the crew reported a fire on board at 11:03 a.m., said Vladimir Demidov, the deputy head of Saratov’s emergencies department.

Ten minutes later the bomber disappeared from the radar screen, and the crew did not respond when radioed by ground control at 11:20 a.m., Demidov said in a telephone interview.

Search and rescue crews located the aircraft at about 12:30 p.m., he said. The remains of the four crew members were found and identified, he said.

The Tu-160, which is designed to carry long-range cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, was not armed during the test flight, officials said.

Defense Ministry and Emergency Situations Ministry officials said Thursday evening that it was too early to say what might have caused the fire.

The plane was flying at altitude of somewhere between 100 meters and 1000 meters when the blaze broke out, officials said. The plane might have started to disintegrate, preventing the crew from bailing out, they said.

“The crew of the Tu-160 had no time to escape. It is clear that something unusual happened on board,” air force Chief of Staff General Boris Cheltsov said in televised remarks.

No one was injured on the ground.

Two of the plane’s three black boxes have been recovered but they are in poor condition after being damaged in the fire, Itar-Tass reported.

Air force officials and investigators from the local military prosecutor’s office were combing the crash site for clues Thursday evening.

The Defense Ministry ordered that the air force’s remaining 15 Tu-160 bombers be grounded pending the results of a crash investigation.

The planes, which first started flying in 1987, are the backbone of the air force’s strategic nuclear fleet.

“This crash has dealt a rather tangible blow to strategic aviation, given the limited number of these bombers that Russia operates,” said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies think tank, or CAST.

While the air force only has 15 Tu-160 bombers, two more are being assembled at the Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Production Association in Kazan, according to CAST. The plane costs about $1 billion to build.

The air force also operates 63 long-range nuclear-capable Tu-95 planes that can carry long-range nuclear missiles but cannot fly at supersonic speeds, CAST said.

The bomber that crashed Thursday was commissioned 12 years ago and had a life span of at least another decade, Cheltsov said. The bomber was listed as № 1 in the air strategic command and bore the number 01.

A Tu-160 last crashed in March 1987 near the Zhukovsky air base in the Moscow region after one of its engines caught fire, according to CAST.

The 01 bomber was recently outfitted with a new engine due to an oil leak, Cheltsov told reporters Thursday. The new engine was built by the Motorostroitel engine producer in the Saratov region, he said.

Calls to Motorostroitel went unanswered. Officials at the Kazan aviation plant declined to comment.

A dreadful tragedy which won’t help morale.

The American forces in Iraq are still having soldiers killed on a regular basis; three more yesterday. Here’s an article from The Age:

America’s hegemony dream becomes nightmare

Date: September 17 2003

The high-water mark for Washington’s neo-cons may already have passed, writes Scott Burchill.

If events in Iraq continue on their present trajectory, the window of opportunity that neo-conservatives in Washington seized after the September 11 attacks will soon close.

The two-year window - which enabled Washington and its loyal allies to invade two countries and dispatch both governments (Afghanistan, Iraq), reconfigure US strategic doctrine from deterrence to pre-emption, ratchet up pressure on “rogue states” and “evil” regimes (Iran, North Korea, Syria), and declare war on terrorism - is closing for two reasons.

First, on the ground in occupied Iraq, Washington is slowly realising the limits of its power. For all its technological sophistication and military superiority, the Bush Administration is learning a painful lesson about the historical fate of colonialists in the Middle East.

Second, with opinion polls turning and George Bush putting his mind to the campaign for the presidential election in November next year, it is highly unlikely he will risk opening a new front in the “war against terrorism”.

Things have not gone according to plan for the neo-cons and their colleagues.

In Afghanistan, the Government of Hamid Karzai struggles to extend its power beyond the fringes of the capital Kabul, while warlords, the Taliban and the poppy growers resume their nefarious activities. Donors who pledged billions for rebuilding the state have reneged or gone missing, Washington has lost interest and been distracted by Iraq, while Karzai himself needs US bodyguards to forestall his assassination by political rivals.

In Iraq, the pretext for the attack by the “coalition of the willing” has collapsed. Washington, London and Canberra claimed and/or implied an Iraq-al-Qaeda link where none existed, but have now apparently created such a link as a consequence of their invasion and occupation: their lies have become a self-fulfilling reality. According to prewar intelligence, the threat from al-Qaeda “would be heightened by military action against Iraq”.

The weapons of mass destruction that we were told Saddam had stockpiled, could use against the West at short notice or might pass on to Islamic terrorists, have disappeared. Despite claims by Blair, Bush and Howard, they were almost certainly destroyed by 1997. According to a British parliamentary committee, the risk of a transfer of WMD to al-Qaeda was only likely if the regime suddenly collapsed: precisely what was engineered.

One effect of the war has been to encourage nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, which now understand that only nuclear weapons will deter a US attack. Hardly the desired result.

Few will shed tears about Saddam’s demise. However, the invasion of Iraq removed a secular government in the Arab world that had brutally suppressed Islamists, much to the West’s delight. Paving the way for a possible future Islamic state in Iraq seems an odd strategy for those who regard themselves as being at war with Islamic extremists.

No one is talking about the democratisation of Iraq with a straight face any more, although Washington remains in denial about the nature of resistance to its occupation. Blaming terrorist infiltrators from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, or Saddamite “dead-enders,” for the continuing bombings and attacks is a direct consequence of America’s inability to understand why its presence in Iraq is unwelcome.

One of the fringe benefits of the war against Iraq was to be the installation of a pro-Israeli government in a key Arab state. We were also promised that Saddam’s removal would help solve the Israel-Palestine dispute.

The former is still possible, but only likely if a Pentagon satrap such as Ahmed Chalabi is installed in power. If anything, the Israel-Palestinian dispute has degenerated since Saddam’s removal from power, despite the best efforts of propagandists to conflate Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism with the “war against terrorism”.

As the war approached, trans-Atlantic friendships were burned, NATO was sidelined, Turkey refused to be bribed into supporting the war, and Russia, Germany and France were driven closer together by a common opposition to Washington’s unilateralism. The US is significantly more unpopular around the world than it was 12 months ago, especially in Pakistan, Indonesia, South Korea and the Arab world.

And the financial cost of its promiscuous intervention? A deficit in 2004 estimated at $US7.3 trillion ($A10.9 trillion).

The neo-cons and their political masters attacked the UN for not following orders, so it became a “behemoth,” “meaningless and weak,” and without “credibility”. Now the same people are asking the same organisation, which they claimed was “irrelevant,” to bail them out of trouble in Iraq because no other state is prepared to send in occupying troops under the present arrangements. It’s a humiliating U-turn.

Military victories create, rather than solve, political problems. What must have seemed like a gift to the global ambitions of the neo-conservatives in Washington two years ago has now been reduced to a striking paradox: the United States has never been more powerful around the world, but Americans have never felt less secure.

Scott Burchill lectures in international relations at Deakin University.

America is spending about $1 billion a WEEK in Iraq (which would pay for another Tu-160). How long is that sustainable? There’s also their continuing war against terrorists in Afghanistan (which is bogged down also). They should have concentrated all their forces on hunting down Osama bin Laden and Al-Quaeda (who are still a real threat). Saddam is still apparently alive – somewhere.

Memorial services for September 11 were much quieter this year.

The k26 Buran site still wasn’t back online last time I looked; nor was the forum. They’ve been off for over a month now; I wanted to make more postings! Sent them an e-mail but still no reply.

I tried to upload my website (10 pages, just over 2 MB) yesterday, but got an error message from the Yahoo! server: it doesn’t accept FrontPage extensions. Sent off an e-mail; I’ll also try using a different form of URL as described in a book I borrowed.

Another article from the online Moscow Times:

Private Schools Provide a Pricey Alternative

By Yana Valueva
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Special to The Moscow Times

It’s no secret that Russia’s once-vaunted education system is in decline. Many schools lack the proper equipment. Decades-old textbooks are falling to pieces. It’s not uncommon for school buildings to go unheated in the winter.

This is a troubling situation for parents who are concerned about their children’s education. But fortunately, at least for those families who can afford them, private schools have been making great strides in Moscow in the last few years.

Private schools began to spring up in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union as an alternative approach to the state educational establishment, which fell into disrepair and neglect.

These schools quickly became centers of innovation, with programs that rediscovered pre-revolutionary teaching methods and borrowed technology and curricula from the West. They are marked by their attentiveness to the development of each pupil as well as the rigorous demands they put on students’ time and energy.

The Education Ministry does not maintain figures on private education. But according to estimates given by Lyudmila Ivanova, the Lomonosov School’s deputy director in charge of public relations, there are currently about 450 private schools in Moscow, and the numbers are growing rapidly. The figure tripled in the last two years.

The Lomonosov School, named after the founder of Moscow State University, was recently ranked by Career Formula magazine as the second-best private school in Russia. Located near Kuntsevo metro station, Lomonosov has modern classrooms and sprawling sports fields. Students are required to study at least two foreign languages, choosing from English, French or German.

Lomonosov doesn’t come cheap, at $8550 per year, but the benefit comes in a specialized approach. The school incorporates three educational tracks, which allow students to develop at their own pace. The first level is equivalent to the requirements of a standard Moscow state school. The upper two levels practically guarantee entrance to a higher educational establishment, preparing students for the rigors of advanced study.

Lomonosov’s taxing programs pay off. According to Ivanova, 43 percent of graduates from Lomonosov matriculate at Moscow State University. Graduates have also gone on to study at the London School of Design and New York University. This is just the type of news that many parents are eager to hear.

One of the main advantages of a private education is the individualized approach to each child. There are generally 10 to 12 pupils to a class, compared with up to 45 per class in state schools.

Most private schools have a similar routine, with a schedule that keeps children constantly occupied, sometimes until as late as 8 p.m. Beside regular classes, many schools offer extracurricular programs such as dancing, swimming or horseback riding, striking a balance between intellectual and physical exercise.

Following the globalization trend, the Russian International School bases its educational programs on international standards. British National Curriculum (taught in English), the International Baccalaureate Program (taught in English and Russian) and the Russian National Curriculum (taught in Russian) are all available.

The Russian International School is a boarding school, so the annual tuition fee of $14,500 includes rooming costs. Located in the Domodedovsky district, it is the first international school in Moscow to offer a program for students who want to augment their education with professional training in a sport. A child can choose sports such as golf, rugby, dance and gymnastics.

These days, as more schools are opening their doors, private education in Russia is not as exotic as it was a decade ago, though it appears to offer a chance to prepare students for competition on the international labor market.

The European Gymnasium, located near Sokolniki metro station, was one of Russia’s first private schools, having opened in 1992. Native English speakers teach at the school, while university professors teach college-level courses.

Zarina Savvoyeva, the Gymnasium’s parental liaison, said such intense schooling spares parents extra hassle when it comes time for their children to take tough university entrance exams.

“Our parents do not need to hire tutors,” she said. “The level of education presented in our school is enough.”

Most state schools are just not equipped to offer such a range of instruction and activity. Many state schools often wait years to receive just a portion of the visual aids, lab equipment and computers that many private schools possess as a matter of course.

Private schools certainly do not come cheap. Tuition can cost more than $1500 per month. But there are private schools that offer a high standard of education at an affordable price – as little as 5500 rubles ($180) a month – such as the Una School in Moscow’s northeast.

Pupils study two foreign languages, and senior students are taught by university professors. Children have three hours of physical training each week, and can participate in karate, volleyball and gymnastics. Ninety percent of graduates go on to higher education.

While there does not seem to be any quick solution to the woes of Russia’s state educational system, there are now at least other options. “Private schools,” said Ivanova of the Lomonosov School, “are the face of Russian education.”

Looks like students are being divided into “Haves” and “Have-nots,” just like in the pre-Revolutionary era. It’s not unlike the situation in Australia (or many other countries for that matter – America, England, etc.) where there is an underfunded state school system and many elitist private schools. (There was a massive nationwide state school teachers’ strike on Wednesday over pay and conditions). I have to wonder if teaching one’s children at home (as Michele is doing) isn’t such a bad idea after all!

I doubt I could cope with returning to study, even if I could afford to. I didn’t enjoy it the first time, and doubt I would now – not unless I was very interested in the subjects offered. And it seems so fiercely competitive now. I hate the whole obsession with success and status which society seems to be focused on.

Saw an SBS documentary on Tuesday called “Japan’s Missing Teenagers” about teenagers and young men who, unable to cope with the intense pressure of school and study, drop out and end up shutting themselves away in their bedrooms, sometimes for years on end, turning into recluses. Their parents look after them, but the condition (called “Hakikimori,” if I remember the word right) is a source of shame and little is available in the way of treatment. I did something similar when I dropped out of Year 12, unable to cope – though not to that extreme. I am still a semi-recluse, though, only living a half-life.

~ Ended 2:19 p.m.

Wednesday 24/9

It’s two years since Dad bought me this computer; soon be 2 years since I left That Awful Place (work). I still have unpleasant dreams of having to return there.

Uploaded pages and images of my website earlier this week; I ended up doing it manually as the FrontPage messed up the process. It is now online and looks rather good! I am, though, the only one who has visited it … There are also no ads on it yet; perhaps the people who do this haven’t got around to doing this part yet? The address is http://au.geocities.com/kosmonavtka2/. Note: Archive.org link; Geocities is no longer online. I’ve done about 10 pages so far or just over 2 MB worth.

~ Ended 2:26 p.m.

October

Saturday 4/10

My website is going well; I’ve got 13 pages up and a couple of complimentary e-mails already! (From Robert at Zarya and from a German site at Spacefacts.) Not very many visitors, though (20 at this time – most of these me!). At least some know I’m out there, though.

October now; soon be Christmas and year’s end. My 33rd birthday also, which I’m not looking forward to.

~ Ended 6:25 p.m.

Saturday 11/10

Mr. Bill Waters had his triple bypass operation yesterday, and it went well. He will spend a few days in hospital, then come home.

I’ve spent a lot of time on my website, so I’ve not done much else! I had this entry in the Yahoo Guestbook add-on:

Name

Kjell Sanden

Comments

Great site. I particulary liked the updated list over active cosmonauts and training groups.

That’s it to date! At least three people seem to like my site! I’ve much altered it since I first uploaded it, mainly appearance-wise.

~ Ended 3:48 p.m.

Tuesday 14/10

Mr. Waters goes home tomorrow; he seems to be recovering well.

China is due to launch its first man in space very soon; tomorrow is the date given. They are being rather secretive about it as they don’t want to be embarrassed if something goes wrong!

I’m wondering if Russia’s giving so much assistance to China with its space program was such a good idea. China seems to be ambivalent towards this; they apparently snubbed some Russian Space Agency officials who requested to attend the launch. China clearly wants to be independent. Russia sold them technology and knowledge in the early 1990s when they needed to raise money, but this could be something Russia may regret.

James Oberg, in a Scientific American article about the Chinese space program, “China’s Great Leap Upward,” October 2003, remarks that “Although China is still far from challenging the space status of the U.S., it may have more attainable goals in mind. If there is a new space race under way, it is for second place. Russia’s space program faded in the 1990s and now preserves its remaining capabilities only through massive commercial sales to Western customers. With a GNP and federal budget five times as great as Russia’s, China can easily afford to outspend America’s former chief rival in the space race.” So Russia’s space program is now in decline, only resting on past glories?

Of course, his is only one opinion, though one of the most prominent ones. I wish I could ask someone in the Russian space program about the accuracy of that statement!

My site is now just over 4 MB, with 25 pages!

~ Ended 6:41 p.m.

Wednesday 15/10

China successfully launched its first man into space today. Haven’t got many details yet. He is to land tomorrow after 14 orbits or 21 hours in orbit. It got a brief mention in the evening news, but the commercial stations are useless if you are wanting more details; they are just not interested.

My computer is still giving me problems, much the same ones it’s had since Dad bought it. Must be something wrong in the hardware somewhere. I’ve had to turn it off so many times after it’s frozen up for one reason or another! It can’t be doing the hard drive much good. I’m getting really tired of it. Perhaps the only solution is to upgrade to Windows XP, but I’d need a new computer as this one wouldn’t support it (it’s an IBM Aptiva designed for Windows 98). It would cost a lot to have a technician to diagnose and repair whatever is wrong (if it’s fixable).

I’ve had over 155 visitors to my site, but still only one guestbook entry! They can’t all have been me.

Mr. Waters is back at home in Frankston; still doing OK.

~ Ended 6:13 p.m.

Monday 20/10

Dad bought a copy of Windows Millennium Edition (ME) earlier this year when I started having problems with my PC, and he gave it to me last week to install if I felt like it, so today I did! Installation went OK. ME is the update of 98, XP follows this, but I would need a new computer for XP, which is unaffordable. I’ll see how this version goes. I expect I’ll have problems, but it seems better.

Expedition 8 launched on a Soyuz Saturday, and will have docked today.

~ Ended 6:51 p.m.

Saturday 25/10

Daylight Savings begins tomorrow (groan) – up an hour earlier for the next 5 months. As I get up after 5 a.m., I’m not too happy!

Had another “time travel” dream last night, where I found myself at home as it was 33 years ago, with my younger self (as a toddler) there, too, along with my parents. I was noting that there were fewer cars on the roads; it was much quieter, and that there were no personal computers around (not for another 15 years!).

Concorde made its last trans-Atlantic flight today, touching down at Heathrow Airport for the final time. The Concorde fleet is being retired as it is no longer cost-effective to run. Passengers will now be stuck with 8 hours or more on slower airlines.

I went with Mum and Dad to see Mr. Waters at home last week; he looked tired and pale, as it will take him months to recover.

Computer seems to be OK now, after some hassles (fingers crossed!). Dad had to buy a set of USB ports (4) as the ones in the computer case had apparently developed a fault – the Iomega Zip disk kept freezing and locking up. There seems to be no end to the things which can go wrong!

~ Ended 5:48 p.m.

November

Saturday 1/11

Now into the second-last month of the year. My website is going well – 27 pages up already! Just over 5 MB. I’ve made several changes to it since I uploaded it just over a month ago. I’ve received some e-mails and 2 guest-book entries, which is encouraging (no-one’s said bad things about my site yet!). I put a small low-resolution photo of myself on the site after a request. I am debating whether to put my surname up – I want people to know who I am, but there’s the privacy issue. Although I am an obscure nobody who would hardly be worth bothering by any potential serial killers/stalkers/etc.

The k26.com/buran site has been offline since August, and no sign of it yet. I liked to make postings on the forum there, but that’s gone, too! I sent them an e-mail in that month, but no reply. All that’s up is the site’s main page (some sort of design group). The Russian spaceflight magazine Novosti Kosmonavtiki’s (Cosmonautics News) site has also been offline for 2 or 3 weeks which is dismaying (I got some information for my site from there).

The Expedition 8 crew are now in orbit. I’ve not been taking much notice of happenings there as I’ve been so absorbed in my website! In fact, that’s all I’ve been doing for the last month. I can see how website maintenance can be a full-time job! (I wouldn’t mind doing it as a job, though I’ve no qualifications whatsoever.)

~ Ended 2:22 p.m. (UTC +11)

Saturday 8/11

My last day of being 32.

I had yet another recurring dream involving my school classmates last night, and of having to return to That Awful Place (former job) a couple of nights ago. Am I ever going to be free of both?

The weather this week has been sunny at last, after 2 or 3 weeks of rain.

~ Ended 6:36 a.m.

December

Wednesday 3/12

A ferocious 2-hour thunderstorm from 12 midnight last night caused widespread flooding and damage across Melbourne suburbs (fortunately, we missed out here). It was described as the worst storm in 100 years. Almost constantly-flickering lightning and thunder, with heavy rains. I got little sleep, so I was tired today. The hot 30°+ weather began about 2 weeks ago; summer is here now. Yesterday and today were somewhat humid. More storms are due tonight, hopefully not so bad as last night’s.

I had some strange dreams related to the storm last night: that the rain was flooding in, and South Road was collapsing into sinkholes from the heavy rain. A couple of nights ago I had a brief lucid dream where I was talking to Gran and saying to her that I really missed her – I think I was in her home. I was aware that I was in a dream during it, and that I could control the dream – I’ve experienced this in other dreams over the years, though it’s only brief.

I’ve not got any e-mails from anyone visiting my website for a few weeks (except for junk mail). Wonder if my photo scared them off!

The Novosti Kosmonavtiki site is back, at least (the magazine staff had moved to a new address in Moscow). It’s winter there now, with snow – it looks a nice change from the dreadful hot summer here! Though I would probably be freezing if I were there (though at least you can rug up). Wish we could experience a white Christmas, for once!

~ Ended 6:53 p.m.

Saturday 27/12

Haven’t written in here for a few weeks; been busy with my website. Christmas is over, and I received a lot more than I expected – a CD burner being one! I can move all my high-res NASA photos onto CDs and free up hard disk space. Unfortunately, I deleted a lot of Expedition photos some weeks ago, so I’ll have to download them all again – a couple of hundred megabytes’ worth. I also received a nightdress and cosmetics from Mum, as well as a Swatch.

Saddam Hussein was captured two weeks ago in his hometown of Tikrit, hiding in what was described as a “rat-hole” – a dug-out in the ground behind a house. He had grown a beard and looked like a scruffy old tramp. Instead of using his last bullet on himself (as he had asserted he would), he meekly surrendered to the U.S. soldiers who found him. His hide-out looked like a bachelor’s nightmare.

Aside from that, the usual suicide bombings and such over Christmas (no rest for the wicked).

The ESA’s Martian Express successfully separated from the Beagle lander, which then touched down on Mars … maybe. Nothing has yet been heard from the Beagle; it was supposed to land on Christmas Day. Has the Martian curse struck again? The two NASA spacecraft are due to land in January (I can’t help hoping they will meet a similar fate as NASA act like they own Mars, and are generally insufferable).

End of the year next Thursday, which I am not looking forward to because of the idiots who let off illegal fireworks (I can think of where I’d like to stick their fireworks …).

~ Ended 3:07 p.m.