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From atomicboy v7.0
atomicboy 7.0 | A Web of Lists
atomicboy has been around for a long time. The atomicboy web site has been around since 1999 and as the name suggests has gone through 7 major design, architecture, and content revisions. Version 7 introduces a Wiki architecture and an idea I had for a while that my personal site should contain lists of my stuff, my history, events, and whatever I can list that makes up me.
The domain atomicboy was originally given to me as a gift from my then girlfriend and now wife. My nickname has alternated between atomic and atomicboy for some time but since 1999 atomicboy has stuck.
--atomic 00:05, 3 February 2008 (PST)
So why a picture of the Saturn V rocket?
I was born in the middle of the Space Race, my dad was an engineering nut always tinkering with something or other, and my mom was interested in robots and computers. It could be said I'm a product of the Space Age and I drifted into the Computer Age and now I live in the post-industrial-rocket-space-computer-digital-consumer age. I went to a Fine Art College but I was the only one there with a computer. I read sci-fi novels all through middle school and high school and college -- heck I never stopped reading sci-fi novels. I've been to every rocket museum in the United States and to the ICBM silo exhibit in Arizona. I like rockets, space flight, jets, and aircraft. The dicotomy you'd see in me if you knew me is that I like to do things by hand, I like sailing, I like changing my own oil because it's important to smell your oil, and like gardening, and I don't have a pilot's license.
I think it's important to build high technology, to go to the moon, to mars, and beyond but I believe it's important to pay attention to the little details, the things that make us human and alive. Both are important.
My nickname "atomicboy" was born way back when but it was always about "atoms" and not "atom bombs". We are all made up of the same atoms, born in stars, made of stardust, and held together with invisible force.
About the photograph from Wikipedia:
The largest production model of the Saturn family of rockets, the Saturn V was designed under the direction of Wernher von Braun at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with Boeing, North American Aviation, Douglas Aircraft Company, and IBM as the lead contractors. It remains the most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status, from a height, weight and payload standpoint. The Russian Energia, which flew only two test missions, had slightly more takeoff thrust.
NASA launched thirteen Saturn V rockets between 1967 and 1973, with no loss of payload. The design payload was the manned Apollo spacecraft used by NASA for moon landings, and the Saturn V went on to launch the Skylab space station.
See the Wikipedia entry for the Saturn V rocket.
I have always had a fascination with rockets, rocketry, space flight, and space exploration. I think that it is a useful pursuit for humankind because we do need to explore both our own planet as well as the space that surrounds us. So the logo of this site is a photo of the business end of the largest and safest spacecraft ever built.
There is a sadness that this rocket was last flown in 1973 and nothing more efficient, powerful and functional has been built in the intervening 35 years. We lack the will power to dream beyond the everyday it seems. Yet dreamers are finding ways to green our technology, keep our frail human bodies together longer, communicate across borders, all the while ignoring the drive to push out and learn the details of new worlds.