Techno-Stories from Space - Donald R. Pettit

Frontiers are interesting places; they offer the possibility to make observations outside our normal range of experience. The International Space Station is such a frontier offering a local reduction in acceleration forces by nearly a factor of a million. This allows the observation of subtle phenomena that are typically masked on Earth. This orbital vantage also allows observation of Earth phenomena on the length scale of half a continent. A smattering of my observations will be presented. There will be many questions and few answers which of course is a characteristic of being on a frontier and why we venture there.