Today I was able to convince my co-worker, Anthony that eating food in another state would be a lot of fun! So after work, we headed north to Idaho to sample some native cuisine. Potatoes? Nope...Mexican. All in all, southern Idaho looks A LOT like northern Utah, who knew?
We were here to shoot video at ATK of a system that uses x-rays to check solid rocket booster segments for the Space Shuttle and soon the Ares I. It consists of plates of unexposed film being brought into the booster segment on a conveyor belt. Above the booster is a massive x-ray emitter that shoots x-rays through the solid fuel...looking for voids or foreign objects. Thankfully, they turned the whole operation off while we were shooting video, otherwise I would have been toast, literally!
What you see in the picture below is the inert forward segment of the Ares I. The black ring is called the inhibitor plate and in the middle you can see the star pattern of the solid rocket fuel. The grey is the fuel, the black lines in the middle is empty space. I have followed this segment for the last 5 month, documenting it every step of the way.
After shooting yesterday, we were able to stop by the Golden Spike National Historic site. This is where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads were joined together with a Golden Spike on May 10th, 1869...it marked the completion of the very first transcontinental railroad.
A replica golden spike...
An artists rendition of what it looked like...
Me, next to the replica locomotive "119"
The train was in motion!
Oh so close...the next to last spike! So close to greatness!
On the way back to our hotel, I spotted this field of wild sunflowers and took a couple of pics...
It's hard to look cool surrounded by wildflowers...
Well, that's it from Utah. Tomorrow we fly home to good old Alabama!
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