Discussion of Mercury will continue shortly, but for now, just one of the many reasons I love Thalweg, even though she schools me when we play Othello... that is, her emails:

Queen Laurentide, whose warm and caring heart may be the causeth of her thawing kingdom,

Indeed what Providence! I'm glad to hear of your fortuitous results!

My faculties too have been engaged in an orchestration of transcripts! Although crude, my printscreen/copy/paste manuevers have allowed the dean of admissions at a certain professional school in colorado to view my records! Although not encased securly in bubbles within cores, the dean was satisfied with the data and made some nice analysis of how to proceed forthwith.

yay to outcomes that augur a better future for the queens of 286,

Thalweg
" My powers detect that it is time to go home"

ps my manilla envelopes are at your disposal.... as for the boys, you will have to talk to ms kitty

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From: Zanzibar
Sent: Tue 1/22/2008 3:43 PM
To: Thalweg
Subject: RE:


Thalweg, Queen of Remoteness, Empress of Sensing:

My rheumatism is acting up and my physician has recommended some strong, clean Macmillan air to clear up my senses. I will make way to your fine country at 4:15 depending on the delays of my entourage, but should there be a significant delay, those responsible will be dealt with swiftly and cruelly. All I ask in return is the use of a single Manila slave-boy; I mean, envelope... if that's ok with you? :D

My transcripts have arrived!

Until such time as we may have the Providence to meet once more,

Laurentide Ice Sheet
"I'm Melting!"

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From: Thalweg
Sent: Tue 1/22/2008 3:14 PM
To: Zanzibar
Subject: RE:


Laurentide, Queen of Scotts of the Icy Kingdom du Nord,

sw33t.

Is there anyway that I can convince you to come over at around 4:15 to present my cover letter and resume to your court in my country? I think that it would be awkward to talk about these matters in the country from whence you come. awkward, like that sentence was awkward...

sailor mercury power,
Thalweg, queen of misplaced time and thought



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From: Zanzibar
Sent: Tue 1/22/2008 2:54 PM
To: Thalweg
Subject:


Hey Thal,

If you come by I'll probably be in my office. I've been keeping the door closed to keep it warm and so I can play my music loud, but I'll put it so that it can be opened without a key.


-Laurentide Ice Sheet

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The surface of Mercury is a many-splendored thing. Let me put us into context: Mercury, the first planet in our Solar System, named for the messenger of the gods because of its fleet-footed movements across the sky.

Mercury is extremely difficult to view by telescope because it is so close to the sun. That means that whenever Mercury rises in the night sky, the sun is close behind it, or in front of it, making it extremely difficult to see. The giant, looming sun also poses the greatest difficulty in sending a spacecraft to the planet, which is the other reason that so little of it has been seen or mapped even though its existence has been known since thousands of years B.C. According to the people on the MESSENGER mission, the sun on Mercury would appear about three times as large as it does here on the Earth and would be 11 times as bright.

To send a spacecraft into orbit around Mercury requires incredible precision and a lot of planning. Mariner 10, the first spacecraft to view Mercury, was a flyby mission, meaning that it went into orbit around the sun at an orbit comparable to Mercury's, and then took pictures of the planet every time their two orbits intersected. This was over 30 years ago, and it was the first time that anyone had used the gravity of another planet (in this case Venus) to help the spacecraft along its way and to save the fuel it would take for course corrections.

It wouldn't take very long to fly a spacecraft straight at Mercury. However, by the time it arrived, it would be traveling at a tremendous speed, and the amount of fuel it would take to fight the ever-growing gravitational pull of the sun (which scales as a square to the inverse radius) would be unfeasible. Instead, the spacecraft travels towards Mercury in circles around the sun with ever lessening radii. In the case of MESSENGER, at the moment that the spacecraft was launched, it is traveling the same speed as the Earth, which is a little bit less than 70,000 mph. After making some changes in its speed and direction, it flies for a year before encountering the speeding Earth again. This time it uses the gravity well of the Earth to help modify its speed and direction, and it makes a slightly smaller circle which lines it up to intersect with the planet Venus. MESSENGER had two Venus flybys, each about a year apart and each modifying the trajectory just a bit, until it finally moved into the orbit of Mercury. You can control the way that a planet affects your flight path by planning how fast you will be going with respect to the planet (You can change this by changing your angle of approach) and how far away you are when you fly by (which changes the magnitude of the change that the planet can make in your trajectory).

On January 14th, the spacecraft flew by Mercury in the first of three flybys that it will complete before orbital insertion. Each flyby will slow down the spacecraft and prepare it to burn its thrusters and be captured by the gravity of the small planet. It is a great difficulty to avoid being drawn in by the immense gravity of the sun and to catch the gravity of the tiny planet Mercury.

um... I'll have to continue this later...

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At the moment I am up to my eyes in pictures of Mercury. Maybe up to about 6 ft above my head. But upon my return to Earth, I will explain all of Mercury's mysteries! Except for those which are under embargo, of course, and those secrets of the solar system that I am saving so as to become rich and famous in the future. Those being relative terms.

In fact, I think I will embark upon ZANZIBAR'S TOUR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM... starting at the first planet, Mercury, of course, and moving outwards. But every voyage needs a crew...

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This is the side of Mercury never before visible to the HUMAN EYE!!!

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We've seen the other side. Buuuuut, I can't tell you about it yet. HAHAHAHHAA. Watch for the press release at 8 tonight.

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Well guys, looks like I have to fly down to NASA and be there when the images come down from the Mercury flyby and we see the side of Mercury that has never before been seen by spacecraft. No more will we have a globe of Mercury with half of it covered by a mysterious shroud of gray and marked "unknown". Yes, the hidden shall be revealed tomorrow, January 14th, 2008; the final frontier of the terrestrial planets will be explored; all things will be made known.

I'll be gone for like 8 days; I may or may not have internet access... according to my supervisor we're going to be working like 24 hours a day to get the pictures and data ready for public and scientific debut. So if you see a link about MERCURY on your MSN or Yahoo homepage, click it, and read about the intercrater plains, and think of me, your friend Zanzibar, slaving away at the Applied Physics Laboratory just for you. My job is so hard.

The Welshman: "Is there a problem with me getting access to NASA seeing as I'm not a native American?"
Jimothy: "I don't think any of us are Native Americans, actually..."

Jay: "A bag of Skittles says there's an alien civilization."
Me: "I'll take that bet."
Jay: "Uh, actually, lets make the bet 1 or 2 alien civilizations."
Me: "What if one is a suburb of the other?"

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