The week after COSPAR, J went on our Boy Scout troop’s annual campout at Camp Cherry Valley on Catalina Island. This was his third year, and he served as a patrol leader, helping the new scouts get early sign-offs and rank advancements, in addition to earning his own merit badges.
Meanwhile, W, Hsuan, and I stayed home. I had let our scoutmaster know that, if he needed another adult leader, I could go on the campout with a week’s notice. Fortunately, he never called me, and it seemed that they had enough adult leaders after our troop’s Philmont trek for the summer was also cancelled. Unfortunately, Geoff, on of my fellow assistant scoutmasters, who was scheduled to go on the campout, had his back problem flare up, and he cancelled the Thursday before the Sunday departure. He’s had back problems before, and I think that surgery can no longer help. His cancellation came too late for me to take his place, so they were short-staffed.
It was fortunate for me that I didn’t go, because I had another conference — SHINE 2018 — in Cocoa Beach the week after J got back from CCV. I had never attended SHINE before, but this particular SHINE was scheduled for the week of the Parker Solar Probe launch. Since I have worked on PSP, I got an invitation to attend the launch along with four additional guests (my family, plus one student who had worked for us at Caltech). By attending SHINE, I could get my part of our family’s travel paid for by work, as business travel, and then after SHINE, we could go on a family vacation at Disney World in Orlando. I submitted an abstract for a poster on SEP charge states.
The PSP launch was then postponed from 7/31 (during the SHINE conference) to 8/4 (right when our Disney vacation was supposed to start) and then to 8/11, well after we had been scheduled to leave (8/9). With the delays, and given that this rocket launch was a once in a lifetime opportunity, we extended our vacation to 8/13. (Kennedy Space Center would host guests for the launch for only two launch attempts. If 8/11 was scrubbed, another attempt would be 8/12, and that was all that we could see at KSC. Besides, the boys had to return home soon for school.) For the extension, we added two more days at Disney (including one more day, later, at the parks) and two days at Universal Orlando (one day in the parks).
In the months before SHINE, I had spent considerable time planning our travel: Extensive lunch and dinner reservations at Disney World, plus FastPass+ reservations for rides or shows. A big consideration was for lodging in Cocoa Beach for SHINE. My original plan was for the four of us to stay in a very nice vacation condo rental at Discovery Beach Resort, not very far from the hotels (Hilton Cocoa Beach, Courtyard by Marriott) where SHINE was being held. For less than the cost of two hotel rooms at SHINE rates, we got a two bedroom condo with two bathrooms, a kitchen, and laundry, facing the beach outside our balcony. Free wifi and cable, including televisions in both bedrooms and the living room. Pool, game room, on the beach. It was a sweet set-up.
Unfortunately, W decided he’d spend a week with his cross country team at some gathering in Mammoth and then fly out to join us on Friday. That left J with the two bed bedroom to himself (with a television and wifi). He had convinced Hsuan to bring along a full wireless keyboard, so he used her computer to hole up in his room and play games while watching television.
I spent most of my week at the conference, listening to plenary talks, attending working group sessions, and putting up my poster. (I learned that there are at least two printers in the Pasadena area who will print fabric posters for scientific conferences at a reasonable price, so I did mine a few days before leaving.)
I usually left the conference for lunch and/or dinner with Hsuan and J.
Unfortunately, the conference fell short in a number of ways for me. Although the session to which I submitted my poster included in its description questions about what we can learn from ionic charge states as applied to magnetic field configurations in CMEs and ICMEs, it seemed most of the attendees to the session were interested in magnetic flux rope calculations and not at all interested in charge states, so I got no visitors to my poster (when I bothered to go), and I didn’t really feel like I could contribute to the actual working group session. So far, nobody has bothered to e-mail me. (Contrast this to COSPAR, where at least I got a couple of questions after my talk.)
I should have submitted my abstract and poster to the solar energetic particles working group(s).
Another major way that the conference fell short is that it has apparently grown too big to be an actual workshop, which is what it is billed as. In a workshop, I expect smaller working groups to gather and at least get a start on analyzing data to work on specific questions. With so many people giving talks, the sessions were mainly presentation sessions rather than working groups. I didn’t see how anything could get done, or even started.
Wednesday (8/1) afternoon was free time from the conference, but after attending the morning plenary session, I decided to skip the rest of the day and go to Kennedy Space Center with Hsuan and J. Nicky Fox had made arrangements for SHINE attendees to get a free pass to KSC, but that hadn’t come through, so we paid for admission on Wednesday.
Highlights of our visit were, first and foremost, the Apollo/Saturn V center with its actual Saturn V rocket on display, followed next by the Atlantis shuttle and the Space Shuttle Simulator ride.
Thursday night, we found out that W’s flight out of Mammoth had been canceled by the FAA, so he had no way of getting to us. He wouldn’t be able to fly the redeye to reach us on Friday morning. Hsuan spent some time on the phone making alternative arrangements for him, which ultimately involved him taking a bus from Mammoth to Mojave, where he’d be picked up at the bus stop by Hsuan’s sister and brother-in-law, who would drive him to LAX to catch a flight to Orlando. He wouldn’t arrive in time to join us for dinner Friday evening.
Meanwhile, the free tickets to KSC finally came through, so on Friday (8/3), after checking out of the condo (and my making one final stop by SHINE), we returned to KSC to try to catch things we hadn’t seen at the Visitor Complex. The main thing was the Heroes and Legends exhibit, including the Astronaut Hall of Fame. I found the plaque for John Grunsfeld, with whom I had worked during my first year as a grad student at Caltech, so that was a big highlight for me. We also saw Jim Lovell’s Boy Scout sash as well as the new crew capsules — Starliner, Orion, and Dragon.
Once done with KSC, we drove to Disney world and checked into our room at the Boardwalk Resort, and then we went to Disney Springs to have our dinner at Morimoto Asia. I had a lot of sushi, Hsuan had Japanese/Korean bibimbap, and J had the best short ribs ever.
Hsuan dropped off our rental car back at the airport later that night. She met W at the airport, and together they took the Magical Express back to our resort.