quote:

Originally posted by dandelion:
Awww! Also Tony Randall's birthday.

David Letterman's "go-to" guy. I love Tony Randall!

I love Tony Randall too (and Dr. Lao)!

February 26th is also the birthday of Theodore Sturgeon. He-who-asks-the-next-question and one of the greatest short story writers.

Ronald Searle, 90 today.

Yesterday we should have celebrated the 77th birthday of... King Kong!

http://www.movieposter.com/ima...eposterguy/kong1.jpg

I have this poster from a sci-fi class I taught in past years. I'll put it up for a couple of days as a belated "happy bd" to old Kong!

Classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0WpKl2A_2k

Another Waukegan boy:

March 23, 1952 – Kim Stanley Robinson

Ravi! My favourite Beatle's father figure.

Did Ray call his bud Hugh Hefner today and wish him a happy 84th?

Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens ~

http://www.usatoday.com/life/b...-20-twain20_CV_N.htm

quote:

Originally posted by fjp451:
Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens...

Sorry to be pedantic, fjp, but today is the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's DEATHday, not his BIRTHday!

Right, right...just caught the flub. "100 years of passing," which is non-the-less, a worthy day of remembrance for such a great character and author!

Thanks, for being so astute, Phil. I posted moments ago and came back quickly to cover my fingerprints. But alas...the fruit at the bottom of the bowl was already taken as evidence!!

I could have tried this, "I was just seeing if anyone was paying attention." But on this site - even from far across the big pond - one is always watched closely.
f

quote:

Originally posted by fjp451:
...But on this site - even from far across the big pond - one is always watched closely...

Indeed!

HA! Chortle...hoot...guffaw!

Smooth investigating, phil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek44tW0Dqig

"Happy Birthday Hubble Telescope!" The Original lens glasswork made in my hometown:
http://www.hubblesite.org/news...leases/2010/13/full/

I have taken sci-fi students to visit the secluded high security facilities. A very impressive experience on many levels. The flaws of the first lens were not the errror of the plant. It was a microscope miscalculation of measurements that were sent to the manufacturers here.

RE: WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Almost immediately after Hubble went into orbit, it became clear that something was wrong. While the pictures were clearer than those of ground-based telescopes, they weren't the pristine images promised. They were blurry.

Hubble's primary mirror, polished so carefully and lovingly over the course of a full year, had a flaw called "spherical aberration." It was just slightly the wrong shape, causing the light that bounced off the center of the mirror to focus in a different place than the light bouncing off the edge. The tiny flaw — about 1/50th the thickness of a sheet of paper — was enough to distort the view.

Fortunately, scientists and engineers were dealing with a well-understood optical problem — although in a wholly unique situation.

And they had a solution. A series of small mirrors could be used to intercept the light reflecting off the mirror, correct for the flaw, and bounce the light to the telescope's science instruments. The Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, or COSTAR, could be installed in place of one of the telescope's other instruments in order to correct the images produced by the remaining and future instruments. Astronauts would also replace the Wide Field/Planetary Camera with a new version, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), that contained small mirrors to correct for the aberration. This was the first of Hubble's instruments to have built-in corrective optics.

Astronauts and NASA staff spent 11 months training for one of the most complex space missions ever attempted. In addition to the critical nature of the mission, it would be the first test of the telescope's vaunted ability to be serviced and repaired in space.

...20 yrs later:
http://www.hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry would be 89 today. He saw the human species as a evolving and maturing "child-race" and wanted to be best remembered as someone who loved humanity.
Ray Bradbury was a good friend of his.
Star Trek Phase II is a web series that continues the Original Star Trek created by Mr. Roddenberry. The episode "World Enough and Time" written by Michael Reaves & Marc Scott Zicree and directed by Marc Scott Zicree is dedicated with love to Ray Bradbury and is available for download at http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/index.html

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