Dark skies next week with the new moon hitting. SLAS has a star party on Monday I'm planning on attending and their public meeting at the UofU on Tuesday so I thought I would see if anyone up for a trip to Rush Valley/Pit n Pole (they are the same aren't they?) on Wednesday, Thursday or next Saturday (7/22, 7/23 or 7/25)? BTW, was out there and saw the drum shot up with bullet holes at Pit n Pole. I glanced at it and then had to take a second look while unloading to make sure it wasn't a tube and someone was sending a message . . . and I thought of Joe's recent article about visitors at night. Anyone have visitors out in Rush Valley/ Pit n Pole be it badged, human or animal out there? Did anyone else catch Science Friday on NPR today? It was called To The Moon and had Andrew Chaikin, Alan Bean, Harrison Schmitt, both astronauts in Apollo and went to the moon and Apollo 12 and 17, and Ross Tierney. Wonderful recollections, especially on find the orange dust/rock fragments up there. They all made strong arguments why we need man flight to Mars with Chalkin sharing a story about how he called the director of the mars rovers on the 4 year anniversary and asked if he had changed his mind on only having robots to the work. His reply, summarized, is basically it took his team 4 years to get one and a half months worth of work out of a rover so yes, we need men and women up there. Not sure if the podcast is up yet, but here is a link to his site http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/ 200907171.