posted 09-16-2014 12:31 PM               

Yes, it was a great time with two great friends. Well worth getting only two hours of sleep that morning.

As mentioned elsewhere, I had written an A1 centerpiece last year on the likelihood of a meteoroid hitting the East Coast. I had interviewed Rusty Schweickart, now with the B612 Foundation, since he was originally from Monmouth County, NJ, where the paper I work for is based. But I did use some of Ed Lu's testimony before Congress, which by happenstance was the day before the story saw print. (I tried to persuade my editors to send me to DC just on mileage alone but that didn't work out...)

So after Lu's talk on "Taking the First Step to Defend Our Earth" - really eye-opening!, I just wish there was a video of it because transcription doesn't do it justice - I walked over to Lu and thanked him for the help B612 gave me. Since lunch was immediately afterward, Lu told us, "Follow me," and that's how Garry, Neil and myself found ourselves sitting at Lu's table.

I thank Lu for allowing us to bend his ear on space stuff, which he didn't seem to mind talking about. Had I been more awake, I would have remembered that Lu was not only assigned to an earlier incarnation of the STS-101 crew, but went through at least three different Expedition 7 crewmates (Poleshuck, as announced; then with Moshenko who was replaced by Malenchenko; along with Kaleri, who moved to the right to Exp. 8 when the crew went from three-person to two.) I would have loved to have asked him about those changes and how long he worked with any of the earlier announced cosmonauts.