[BajaGringo]

Unfortunately this winter storm will make that quite difficult where we’re at here along the coastline outside of San Quintin. I did find an app that alerts me when it is going to be overhead:

https://issdetector.com/

I do have a personal connection to the ISS as my laboratories did a lot of the fluid analysis for the space station when it was being designed and before it was built. We were contracted by Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena and they were the ones who first got me online, hooking me up to the ARPanet system over 40 years ago.

[McBaja]

Very cool. I am curious as to which fluids did you test – lubricants?

[BajaGringo]

Lubricants, hydraulic fluids and heat exchanger fluids mostly. We also did some studies evaluating filtration media for the water reclamation system as well as metals testing for susceptibility to corrosion in piping materials evaluations.

[McBaja]

That’s very cool, congratulations.

[BajaBundo]

So you’ve been on the internet long before the “www”? I heard about you guys but thought they were at all MIT, the pentagon and the CIA.

So which one are you??? 😆😆😆

[BajaGringo]

LOL – Sorry but you don’t have the security clearance to know that kind of stuff. 😆

[DB-Baja]

@BajaGringo I seem to recall that the ISS wasn’t even announced until the early 90’s I believe and construction began in 1998. So how were you working on it 40 years before? (early 1980’s)

[BajaGringo]

When we were first approached by JPL a little over 40 years ago, the ISS was never mentioned. We were told we were working on a proposed project for a new space sation that was to be the next step from the Skylab – remember that project? As the US and Soviets were in a space race back then, the project would evolve over the years with the tit-for-tat politics and our work would eventually be incorporated into the ISS after the fall of the Soviet Union and a joint agreement with Russia to explore space together.

That agreement now is faling apart too and there are rumors that Russia wants to abandon their participation on the ISS in the next few years.

[DB-Baja]

Things seem to have come full circle from the early 90’s.

[trekker]

My husband has the space station app but it only is worth using when we’re outside of town or in Baja as there is so much light contamination at night here we can’t see anything.

[BajaBundo]

I have a telescope and the only time we use it is when we go to Mexico.

[boe4fun]

According to the Smithsonian:

The first piece of the International Space Station, a cargo block named Zarya, went into orbit in 1998. Ever since, the ISS has been steadily picking up pieces, becoming bigger and more reflective. It is now the second brightest object in the night sky, bested only by the Moon.

We are lucky enough to live in rural San Luis Obispo County, so we don’t have too much ambient light.

[DB-Baja]

I remember following along as they built it in space. I found it fascinating then and still so.