I've posted a lot of images here at renderosity, but this one has to be some kind of first. I should explain it. The company for which I work, Stellar Solutions, Inc., has a business planning meeting every year. This year it was in Breckenridge, CO. in February. We met, we skied, and we ate! At dinner there was a curious setup over in the corner. It was a rack of old west stage costumes and props. The guns disturbed me just a teeny amount as they looked and felt very real! They also had whiskey jugs, tons of hats, a digital camera and really nice printer right there. You'd pose, snap, print and take the thing home all in about 5 minutes. I was finally unpacking some stuff (it's October!) and came across it. So there I am, in embarrassing silliness. I have to admit I laughed to see it again. The embarrassment quickly fades to pride of knowing these people. As a group of aerospace systems engineers, we have helped implement a huge chunk of the commercial and government satellite space infrastructure, no kidding. If we didn't do it, we probably know who did and used to work for them (or be their boss!) as our roles and the businesses have changed over the years. On the left is today's Stellar Commercial team. On the right are those who participated in two memorable events. The Intelsat-603 Reboost Mission, Space Shuttle STS-49 (I think), the rescue of Intelsat 603 that required the first unplanned 3 astronaut EVA, and as far as I know, the only one ever, a big success. The Intelsat-708 mission was a pure disaster, crashing into a village in China. My boss came back with a shrapnel-riddled suitcase, but he was Ok because he wasn't in the hotel at the time. I was in Washington DC for both events watching computers gather data, or fail to do so. It's a business with some real risk, and I love being a part of it and handling the engineering data, a constant source of wonder and surprise.