The best news ever (ok, at least the best news in the last 72 hours) today: I get to move to the FDO office soon! I had kind of been bracing myself to hear that I wasn't going to move until March, April or later (like after return to flight). Afterall, for months and months and months I heard nothing (and all I knew is that there were lots of other trainees over there). Then, out of the blue, "We're ready to have you whenever you're ready to come." So, now I just need to negotiate with my current projects to get myself out of dodge. Hip hip horray! (As a preface, I really will, in fact, miss DM42. Especially the Mars missions and the new vehicle designs and the AWESOME people. But let's face it, I was getting bored with it a year ago, things perked up SIGNIFICANTLY for a little while, and then got boring again when I entered she-will-eventually-leave-the-office limbo).

In other news: I got in an argument with my professor last night when he declared for the second time (I kept my pretty mouth shut the first time) that there will never be a manned mission to Mars, at least for 100 years, because the technological challenges are insurmountable. Now, I'll buy arguments that there is a lack of money/political will. But, we can make the technology work. Anyway, he did a really simple trajectory problem to prove his point about mass ratios being too high. I shot back his Isp assumption (300 for science nerds) and the assumption that we don't do assembly in space or use in situ Mars resources were completely invalid. And he said the mission will still never work until we develop better technology. And I said why would we ever develop that technology unless we committed to the mission. He said the technology was impossible anyway and we could never do it. I said that in the late 1800s, respected scientists said men would never fly in anything heavier-than-air. At this point I realized it was the end of class, so I shut up so the other students could leave (yeah for my self control). It just made me fume.

Then I talked to Dad on the phone for about an hour in possibly the funniest conversation ever. We talked about the standard stuff (work, skiing, the weather, fishing, school, etc.) But occasionally we were interupted mid-sentence by my dad saying things like: "No no no no! William don't touch that!... Teeny (yes, that's what they call my poor little sister) don't eat that!... William, don't empty out daddy's wallet!... Teeny can't Daddy have time to talk to Becky? Just five minutes?" Ah, life being a single parent of toddlers.