SpaceJournal

[coalescent]

From the ESA website, the diary of Pedro Dusque:

During my first flight I took with me one of those very expensive ballpoint pens with a pressure ink cartridge, the same as the other Shuttle astronauts. But the other day I was with my Soyuz instructor and I saw he was preparing the books for the flight, and he was attaching a ballpoint pen with a string for us to write once we were in orbit. Seeing my astonishment, he told me the Russians have always used ballpoint pens in space.
[...]
It will be the sunset in two minutes (it's 12:10 now). The Earth is already black below us and people sleep. The sun, centred in the blue arc of the atmosphere, is surrounded by blackness. There's only 30 seconds left. The low side of the atmosphere gets orange, and the sun flattens. An orange brilliance remains, then a flattened ball of light, then only the orange and blue arc of the atmosphere, and then, and only then, the higher layers of the atmosphere become visible. An arc two times wider but fainter appears on top of the previous one, ephemeral, and both disappear suddenly in the most perfect blackness.

Space tourism needs to hurry up and get here.

In other news, it seems that Panic was not at Latino's this week and was instead, of all places, at Bar Med.

This seems strange and unnatural.

Did anyone go? What was it like?

Comments

Rather helpfully...

[xsabx.livejournal.com]

...I am about to write some fictional space tourism. Thanks for this, it may well be useful.

Latino's

[(Anonymous)]

Is Latino's even still there? I'm sure this is a really stupid question, but I went to Oxford a couple of weeks ago, and it looked, in the brief glimpse i got whilst dashing past towards the bus stop, a bit, well, demolished - boarded up windows, etc. I thought maybe it was just being refurbished or something? Anyone know any better?

Victoria.

Re: Latino's

[(Anonymous)]

It is still there, though it has apparently become "Clementine's". Apparrently it is still run by Luis, and has finally applied for its licence, so might be suitable for 6th week Panic, assuming that the council isn't too slow.

I went to Panic at Bar Med, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. There were a lot of new people there, and downstairs at Bar Med isnt as bad as you expect from looking into the upstairs. My only complaint was at the lack of defined edge to the dancefloor, leading to less of that nice packed feeling despite there only being 20 people on it. Bar Med is definately a bigger venue.

Come and try it out on the 5th, see what you think.

David