Failure is not an option

Saw some great display screens whilst watching Shamu the whale do her stuff - giant ones, with a giant motor behind, and on a track. One minute they were 4 separate horizontal ones, then one single screen with them joined vertically, then diagonal. Sometimes with 4 different things on them, sometimes with one film or image. I though the giant plasma screens we had in the IC were good, but we must get some of these....

Had a great trip to Kennedy Space centre as well - very excited to see a Shuttle ( Endeavour) on the launch pad ready for her next trip in November. You can just see the tip of the solid rocket boosters and the orange tip of the external tank peeping out above the launch pad. I've always been fascinated by space travel and followed the Apollo missions closely. I've said before that one of my heros is Gene Krantz - mission controller for so many of them including Apollo 13 where he famously said "failure is not an option" . It's the reason I hate it when people tell me things can't be done. They might be difficult, or expensive, or would need something dramatic to happen, but they're not impossible. Not when you see how they got men to the moon in the 60s. I stood and looked at the consoles today in the control room used in Apollo 8, and it took me while to work out what was wrong - then I realised - these computers didn't have any keyboards! I've bought a mouse mat with "failure is not an option" on it to have by my desk....