15 minutes and we are done!

Hi everyone

Well, Sir Issac Newton proved himself in spades tonight. After an exquisitely orchestrated gravity assist and solar sailing 8 Billion km journey to go a mere 100 Million km, a small engine on the Messenger Spacecraft fired for 15 minutes and successfully placed man's first robot in orbit around Mercury. For the next year, at the very least, Messenger will explore the nearest planet to the sun and try to understand this rather strange, very dense and very temperature diverse world.

Another interesting thing about this. While the WGG had American Idol recording on our PVR, I switched over to the media server that I have connected to the TV and used the Web to access the streaming video feed from the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University which had a live show coming from Mission Control for Messenger. Way cool. We live in a very different world and the even cooler thing is that if I wanted, I could have watched it on my iPad or smart phone, in the latter case, I would have been able to do so while sitting on a streetcar or in the park. Totally connected to something that is happening in real time but 100 Million km away.

Welcome to the 21st century. Hope you enjoy the ride...

Paul