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Jerry Hilburn
Member Since :2003
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So today Michael Jackson died. He was 50, and he died around noon today. He fell down clutching his heart and out he went. "Into The Great Unknown". My wife expressed mixed feelings. He a brilliant genius of music and dance, but we are suspicious of his love of children.
Acquitted yes, but guilty? We will never know.
I was at the San Diego County Fair today when I heard the news. My kids are 14 and 12 and we brought 2 friends, and off they went without me. I haunted the halls and stalls alone, ate a corn dog alone, and for the first time at the fair in 15 years alone in a sea of people, thought about Micheal and me. It was such a surreal feeling. I am 50. He was 50. I outlasted him. And there amongst the pig poop and fried twinkies, contemplated my mortality.
Damn...
Did I choose the right life?
Did he?
Did he have a choice? Really, did he? Did I?
Is it all fated, or probability?
I remember him at 10. I was 10, and he was AMAZING!
No way I could be that.
Now I live on. And Micheal is gone.
All the things you love die.
Never can say goodbye....
I am going to find a star for him...
jerry
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So after a tumultuous 12 months fraught with peril, challenge, and surprise, the dust has finally settled and I have returned my focus to the sky. My world changed radically in October after moving to Rancho Penasquitos. Less than a month after arriving the October Firestorm threatened our homes and we were forced to evacuate for several days. What at first seemed to be a beautiful view across 20 thousand acres of open space reaching down to the ocean, suddenly became a firewatch.
Call me the bone head as it was my idea to move from Clairmont into a home overlooking a red zone on the fire maps. I never thought about it, and then came the fire. Actually 3 of them, the first two were extinquished in a few hours, but the third one filled my pool with a foot of ash and debri, and the morning of our escape, embers did rain down. We were quite fortunate that none of the homes in our immediate neighborhood burned, but less than two miles as the crow flies over 500 were lost.
Did I mention that I sold my business? Oh yeah, I sold my business. And all of the employees that I had worked with for 8 years went away and suddenly I found myself with nothing to do, and no one to do it with. You would think that would be a good thing, but it wasn't, and the adjustment was very difficult. I went through a low period between October and February as I regrouped and planned a new strategy. In February I started a new company, and found a new partner, and in less than 3 months booked a years worth of work for 6 people.
So finally I could breath a bit easier and of course the urge to get back to doing some astronomy came back and I decided to finish my project in the back yard. Brian Mc Farland helped in a big way by helping me to get an adapter plate prepared for the deck so that I could get my pier mounted. After doing some serious yard work to remove about a ton of ice plant (30+ big ass hefty bags) I had a retaining wall put in and finished the landscaping.
This past weekend I finally got the entire system up and running, and now I will start focusing on getting my first submission into MPC so we can put this observatory on the map!
Here are a couple of shots of the setup...
Home Shot
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There are those rare moments in life when a dream is achieved. You pause, you look around at the summit you've just climbed, and a complete satisfaction with life fills your heart. On Saturday April 28th at 8:58 am a rocket left the launch pad at the New Mexico Spaceport, and roared into space carrying a payload for Epsori Space Systems (my company). In the moments that followed this event, the emotions I felt as I watched history unfold, with my son by my side, cannot be fully described with words alone.
Epsori Space Systems became the 1st customer to reach space with an educational payload aboard a rocket launched from the New Mexico Spaceport. In fact this was the first successful launch at the Spaceport to reach space. We are pioneers. And with that said, a little bit of history was made that day, and with it my life long dream realized. Some will say its merely a footnote in the book of space flight accomplishments, but its my footnote, and it is enough for me. Next stop, orbit.
Jerry & Brice - Go Flight!
4/28/2007
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New Year, New Equipment, means only one thing. Get your buns out to TDS and get busy testing it. But when the rubber meets the road and its 6pm and 38 degrees, opening that roof is a bear! Still how could i not do it, and so last week I packed up the van with the new MI-250 mount and associated optics and a new Hutech modified Canon XTi and Sparky the wonder dog who watches my back on those cold lonely nights.
Here is a shot of the new setup:
After getting this bad boy running, calibrated, and nailed down I finally managed to squeeze a shot out it that I liked:
Now if summer would just hurry up!
jerry |
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2006 has been a weird weather year for us chickens here in SoCal. HOT. Then fall cool weather. Monsoons, then baking hot. And now finally cool conditions prevail. I have not had the time this year to spend out at TDS, but will be heading out for three nights beginning Thursday night. I have been very busy on a new project that I hope will result in big things for amatuer astronomy within 5 years.
Circumstances being what they are, I happen to be living at one of those tipping point moments in time where economic pressure, technological advance, and good ol American know how have come together in the form of an emerging, non governmental, commercial space access capability, providing the little guys a chance to play ball in NASA's backyard.
I have always wanted to travel in space, going where no man has gone, to steal a phrase. But alas, having been born a millennia too soon, my only option has been to dream.
Until now.
In June I formed a new corporation, Epsori Space Systems Inc. with the goal of placing student experiments into space. Joshua Johnson has joined with me in this endeavor and together we are building our first electronic and life science experiments which will fly into space on October 21, 2006. And again in April of 2007, and then every six months thereafter as we pursue the dream of placing an amateur made telescope in polar orbit by 2012.
You have to crawl before you walk and so we are starting small. Our immediate mission goal will be to bring together six elementary, and two participating high schools representing about 100 students, who will join with us in our first mission to space. Epsori has contracted with Up Aerospace in New Mexico to carry our payloads to 100km in October 2006. We also will be exhibiting at the Ansari X-Cup lunar challenge in October in Las Cruces, NM.
All these activities are keeping me jumping of course and leave less time for astronomy currently than in past years. However, the SDAA Roboscope project has gone well this year and we are finally training operators to carry out Exoplanet research using the remote observatory here at TDS.
All in all the plan marches along, and in time I hope to post the orbital elements of the first Amateur Space Telescope right here in this blog.
To infinity! And beyond....
Jerry
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| Milky Way in Saggitarius |
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Cabeus
10/9/2009
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Lulin - The Movie
2/21/2009
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Orions Belt
12/28/2008
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Water Spout
9/22/2007
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Moon
8/28/2007
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Moon
8/28/2007
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Sagittarius
6/13/2007
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M-51
5/14/2007
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M46
3/25/2007
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NGC 2244
3/25/2007
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M104
3/21/2007
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TDS - Venus Sets
3/20/2007
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Barnard 33
2/19/2007
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NGC 7293
11/4/2006
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M45
10/22/2006
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M 42
9/25/2006
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M-16
6/3/2006
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Moon
4/14/2006
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