"Through the Stargate"

JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 9/4/2006 4:33 PM
There was also that time I was digging into a gully to find the source of some water that was seeping out. I never did find it. Not sure what that means though. I left the shovel in the gully and the walled collapsed, burying it. Denzil was angry with me because I couldn’t find it afterwards.


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 04 September 2006 excerpt ends]










JOURNAL ARCHIVE: August 18, 2006


I started trying to remember anything that could represent being on Mars. My first thought was of the Painted Desert. I forget which southwestern state that is located in. My mom mentioned it when the three of us were traveling in her VW "bug" from California back to Oklahoma. Then I remembered something about school in De Queen. Then I thought again about details from 4th grade. I remember thinking several times recently that I was being prompted to think of the 4th grade.


I started remembering a gully in some red dirt that I like to dig in during recess. It was some form of crumbly red clay that was very interesting. I couldn't remember when that was though although I could remember the school. THEN I narrowed it down: that memory of digging in the crumbly red clay was in 1976. For the first part of 1976, I was in 4th grade, then the second part I was in 5th grade. 5th grade was in a new building that was well outside town, as 4th grade was just outside the central "Hill Valley" type of downtown which was De Queen. The 5th grade building seemed like it was a very long ways outside, although, if I mapped it out, it probably would not be that far. But I think that distance is symbolic. It is symbolic of a long trip to someplace new.


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 18 August 2006 excerpt ends]










JOURNAL ARCHIVE: August 20, 2006

I started thinking that I discovered life on Mars. Some kind of sandbugs. And that explains a lot too. Something about sandkings or sand devils. Something about holes bored into the walls of a gully or cliff, as though by creatures. They would have wanted me to examine the gullies to see if they were created by water or some other force of erosion. I have severeal memories of something like that. There was also that large gully behind my dad's house on that ranch in the plains of nothern Oklahoma. As I was thinking about all this, I remember riding a go-cart around through those fields and I wonder if that represents driving some kind of vehicle that was sent down to the Mars surface with me in 1976. There was also that scene in the last TNG movie where Patrick Stewart's character was driving some kind of dune buggy, although I started wondering if that is also something SEAL related.

I figure, if I did go to Mars, I traveled 6 months to get there. I might have stayed on the surface for one month to explore and then I traveled for 6 months on my return.

According to my calculations, if I, as Thomas Ray, did go to Mars, I would have been about 17 years 4.5 months old at the time of the landing. As Kerry Burgess, I was about that same age when I joined the Navy Delayed Elistment Program, which I was in for about 11.5 months.


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 20 August 2006 excerpt ends]










JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 9/2/2006 4:28 PM
This is consistent with what I wrote earlier. They would have wanted me to explore whether water caused the erosion in the gullies on the surface of Mars. I wish I could remember. I have started wondering if my memory of stepping out onto the surface of Mars is encapsulated in my memory of the first phone call home I made from boot camp.

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/june2000/elysium_p/index.html

Evidence for Recent Liquid Water on Mars:
"Dry" Processes on One Slope; "Wet" Processes on Another

How can martian gullies--thought to be caused in part by seepage and runoff of liquid water--be distinguished from the more typical, "dry" slope erosion processes that also occur on Mars? For one thing, most--though not all--of the gully landforms occur on slopes that face away from the martian equator and toward the pole. For another, slopes that face toward the equator exhibit the same types of features as seen on nearly every other non-gullied slope on Mars.


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 02 September 2006 excerpt ends]










JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 10/3/2006 8:24 PM
I still believe those details I wrote about with discovering signs of life on Mars, as well as possible current life, but I think there are also other details that I will understand when I see them. I am not certain whether I discovered living creatures on Mars or whether I am remembering the signs I discovered. For example, those holes I found in the side of a gully, in my “memory” are represented by me actually standing in a river and wondering if something was going to jump out of them and bite me.


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 03 October 2006 excerpt ends]










http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars

NASA


Sept. 28, 2015

15-195

NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today’s Mars

New findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.

Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.

“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water -- albeit briny -- is flowing today on the surface of Mars.”

These downhill flows, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), often have been described as possibly related to liquid water. The new findings of hydrated salts on the slopes point to what that relationship may be to these dark features. The hydrated salts would lower the freezing point of a liquid brine, just as salt on roads here on Earth causes ice and snow to melt more rapidly. Scientists say it’s likely a shallow subsurface flow, with enough water wicking to the surface to explain the darkening.

"We found the hydrated salts only when the seasonal features were widest, which suggests that either the dark streaks themselves or a process that forms them is the source of the hydration. In either case, the detection of hydrated salts on these slopes means that water plays a vital role in the formation of these streaks," said Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, lead author of a report on these findings published Sept. 28 by Nature Geoscience.

Ojha first noticed these puzzling features as a University of Arizona undergraduate student in 2010, using images from the MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). HiRISE observations now have documented RSL at dozens of sites on Mars. The new study pairs HiRISE observations with mineral mapping by MRO’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).

The spectrometer observations show signatures of hydrated salts at multiple RSL locations, but only when the dark features were relatively wide. When the researchers looked at the same locations and RSL weren't as extensive, they detected no hydrated salt.

Ojha and his co-authors interpret the spectral signatures as caused by hydrated minerals called perchlorates. The hydrated salts most consistent with the chemical signatures are likely a mixture of magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate. Some perchlorates have been shown to keep liquids from freezing even when conditions are as cold as minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 Celsius). On Earth, naturally produced perchlorates are concentrated in deserts, and some types of perchlorates can be used as rocket propellant.

Perchlorates have previously been seen on Mars. NASA's Phoenix lander and Curiosity rover both found them in the planet's soil, and some scientists believe that the Viking missions in the 1970s measured signatures of these salts. However, this study of RSL detected perchlorates, now in hydrated form, in different areas than those explored by the landers. This also is the first time perchlorates have been identified from orbit.

MRO has been examining Mars since 2006 with its six science instruments.

"The ability of MRO to observe for multiple Mars years with a payload able to see the fine detail of these features has enabled findings such as these: first identifying the puzzling seasonal streaks and now making a big step towards explaining what they are," said Rich Zurek, MRO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

For Ojha, the new findings are more proof that the mysterious lines he first saw darkening Martian slopes five years ago are, indeed, present-day water.

"When most people talk about water on Mars, they're usually talking about ancient water or frozen water," he said. "Now we know there’s more to the story. This is the first spectral detection that unambiguously supports our liquid water-formation hypotheses for RSL."

The discovery is the latest of many breakthroughs by NASA’s Mars missions.

“It took multiple spacecraft over several years to solve this mystery, and now we know there is liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert planet,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “It seems that the more we study Mars, the more we learn how life could be supported and where there are resources to support life in the future.”










From 11/14/1906 ( Louise Brooks ) To 9/4/2006 is 36454 days

36454 = 18227 + 18227

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 9/28/2015 is 18227 days



From 12/1/1929 ( premiere US film "Pandora's Box" ) To 10/27/1979 ( premiere US TV series episode "Jason of Star Command"::"Through the Stargate" ) is 18227 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 9/28/2015 is 18227 days



From 8/24/2001 ( premiere US film "Ghosts of Mars" ) To 9/28/2015 is 5148 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 12/7/1979 ( Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin deceased ) is 5148 days



From 10/28/1994 ( premiere US film "Stargate" ) To 9/28/2015 is 7640 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/3/1986 ( premiere US TV series "L.A. Law" ) is 7640 days



From 5/7/1992 ( the first launch of the US space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut ) To 9/28/2015 is 8544 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 3/25/1989 ( Imdb.com: premiere US TV series episode "Star Trek: The Next Generation"::"The Royale" ) is 8544 days



From 9/20/1962 ( premiere US film "No Man Is an Island" ) To 9/28/2015 is 19366 days

19366 = 9683 + 9683

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/7/1992 ( the first launch of the US space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut ) is 9683 days





http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-briny-liquid-water-on-mars-20150926-story.html

Los Angeles Times


Life on Mars? Newly discovered water is a strong sign, NASA says

By AMINA KHAN

SEPTEMBER 28, 2015 8:41 PM

It’s one of the most intriguing questions in science: Could life exist on Mars today?

On Monday came an answer: Yes, quite possibly.

Scientists using observations from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter said they’ve found powerful evidence that briny water routinely flows on the Martian surface.

This particular water source is so salty that it would probably be too harsh for life as we know it, scientists said. But the revelation, described in the journal Nature Geoscience, strengthens the potential for life on our rust-hued neighbor — not just during its wetter past but also its arid present, experts said.

“It suggests that it would be possible for there to be life today on Mars,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Researchers haven't spied the water directly. Instead, they detected hydrated salts in dark streaks that wax and wane in a pattern that serves as a smoking gun for liquid water.

“This is the first time we’ve found flowing water on a planet that’s not ours,” said study lead author Lujendra Ojha, a planetary scientist and doctoral candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Ashwin Vasavada, project scientist for the Mars rover Curiosity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, called the discovery exciting but not surprising.

“What seemed really unbelievable 10 years ago — that Mars has modern, liquid water — has slowly become more and more an expectation,” said Vasavada, who was not involved in the research. “And to have the evidence that that team found today is fantastic.”

The atmosphere on Mars is cold and thin. That means pretty much any pure water on the surface would freeze or immediately evaporate, depending on the temperature. But if that water contained salts, it would be more stable in liquid form.

Scientists got their first tantalizing hint of the liquid in 2011 when a powerful camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spied mysterious dark streaks that grow and fade with the seasons. The streaks seemed to be influenced by temperature, lengthening as the planet warmed in the late spring and summer, then shrinking in fall and winter.

They reappeared on Martian slopes each year, and scientists dubbed them “recurring slope lineae,” or RSL. Geologists had a hunch that the streaks were caused by flows of water that were able to liquefy during the Red Planet’s warmer seasons. But they didn’t know for sure.

To see whether their hypothesis had any merit, they examined data from a key scientific instrument aboard the orbiter. The Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, can analyze the chemicals in a given spot on the surface by studying the telltale signature of dark bands in a sample of reflected sunlight.

But the RSL are tricky to study because most of them are too narrow for CRISM to see. So Ojha and his colleagues focused on four spots where the RSL were widest and discovered a strong fingerprint for hydrated salts.

In a lab on Earth, they conducted experiments to figure out which minerals were the closest match to the fingerprints from Mars. Magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate fit the bill.

All of these are salts with water locked into the mineral structure — a clear sign that briny water probably had flowed there.

“It’s incredibly exciting,” said Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary geologist at Caltech who was not involved in the new research. “When we look back at the broad scope of Mars history, it’s always in the past where there’s evidence for the most water. But if there’s liquid water even today … that says that there was probably liquid water for all of the last 4.5 billion years, just like there was on Earth.”

Where exactly the water comes from and how it’s released remain open questions, scientists said.

It’s possible that the briny flows could come from melted ice, but many of these spots are too close to the equator for water to stay frozen.

Another possibility is a phenomenon called deliquescence, in which the salts suck water molecules out of the air and hang on to them until there’s enough to form a very briny liquid.

Regardless of the source, researchers said the findings are sure to whet the appetite of astrobiologists looking to explore habitable environments on the Red Planet, both past and present.

“To me, the chances of there being life in the subsurface of Mars have always been very high,” said study coauthor Alfred McEwen, director of the Planetary Image Research Laboratory at the University of Arizona and lead scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera.

Still, the water is so incredibly briny that it's difficult to imagine microbes being able to survive with the harsh fluid.

“If I were a microbe on Mars, I would probably not live near one of these RSLs,” Grunsfeld said. “I would want to live probably further north or south, higher latitudes, under the surface — quite far under the surface — and where there’s more of a freshwater glacier.”

For the moment, the idea that such a location exists is speculative, although there is some evidence to support the idea, Grunsfeld said.

Scientists may learn more when NASA’s InSight spacecraft arrives on Mars in September 2016. It is due to land about 190 miles north of Curiosity to examine the temperature beneath the surface and learn more about the planet’s interior structure. That could help define how habitable the subsurface really is.

In the meantime, Curiosity may help fill in some details by monitoring streaks on Mt. Sharp, the peak that the rover is studying in the middle of Gale Crater. The streaks may not be RSL; they’re small and faint, and they don’t reappear with the clockwork regularity of the ones spied by the orbiter. They’re also on slopes too steep for the rover to traverse. But Curiosity may be able to study them from a safe distance, Vasavada said, taking higher-resolution and more frequent images than an orbiter could.

The new findings also give hope that there may be natural resources that future astronauts could mine when they get to Mars. Not only could the water potentially be harvested to drink and to provide oxygen to breathe, but the perchlorates also could in principle become an ingredient to make solid rocket fuel, Grunsfeld said.

“All of the scientific discoveries that we’re making on the surface of Mars … are giving us a much better view that Mars has resources that are useful to future travelers,” Grunsfeld said.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0228333/quotes

IMDb


Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Quotes


Commander Helena Braddock: So, where is everybody?

Melanie Ballard: Yeah, Friday night, the whole place should be packed.










http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000315/bio

IMDb


Louise Brooks

Biography

Date of Birth 14 November 1906, Cherryvale, Kansas, USA

Date of Death 8 August 1985, Rochester, New York, USA (heart attack)

Birth Name Mary Louise Brooks


Louise Brooks was one of the most fascinating personalities of Hollywood, always being compared with her most important characterization as protagonist: Lulu in Georg Wilhelm Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929). Along with her beauty and talent she had an independent streak and refused to accept the restrictive role that women had in American society, and pretty much went her own way, which caused quite a bit of controversy. Not everyone found her rebellious nature off-putting, though; in 1926 she was the inspiration for the comic heroine Dixie Dugan and in the zenith of her fame for Valentina of Guido Crepax. She started her career as a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway, and Hollywood soon came calling. She didn't care for the Hollywood scene at all, though, and traveled to Europe, where she made her most memorable films. Her dissatisfaction with Hollywood in general led her to quit films altogether in 1938; she was at the peak of her career, but just gave it all up.


A legendary actress of the silent film era. She epitomized the flapper age with her bobbed hairstyle, while blatantly flaunting the accepted sexual and societal roles of women at the time. She is best known for her starring roles in G.W. Pabst's "Pandora's Box" and "Diary of a Lost Girl," which were both filmed in Weimar Germany in 1929. She quit acting in 1938 at the age of 32. Several of her films are considered lost. She spent many years living in obscurity until her remaining films were rediscovered in the 1950s to great acclaim. Her status as one of the great actresses and beauties of motion pictures continues to this day.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018737/releaseinfo

IMDb


Pandora's Box (1929)

Release Info

USA 1 December 1929 (New York City, New York)










http://www.tv.com/shows/jason-of-star-command/through-the-stargate-248827/

tv.com


Jason of Star Command Season 2 Episode 7

Through The Stargate

Aired Saturday 8:00 AM Oct 27, 1979 on CBS

AIRED: 10/27/79










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0228333/releaseinfo

IMDb


Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Release Info

USA 24 August 2001










http://www.britannica.com/biography/Cecilia-Payne-Gaposchkin

Encyclopædia Britannica


Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

American astronomer

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, original name in full Cecilia Helena Payne (born May 10, 1900, Wendover, Eng.—died Dec. 7, 1979, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.), British-born American astronomer who discovered that stars are made mainly of hydrogen and helium and established that stars could be classified according to their temperatures.



http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2013/06/24/kojis-blog-light-echoes-around-a-mysterious-nova/

NASA


Light Echoes around a Mysterious Nova

By Koji MukaiJune 24, 2013

“In 1890 T Pyxidis had appeared, brightened, and disappeared. When I first came to Harvard they were still telling how it was found again during a routine survey of plates taken in 1919, and how Miss Leavitt exclaimed: ‘That star hasn’t been seen for almost thirty years!’ – the first recurrent nova to be discovered.”

– Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin in Fifty Years of Novae

Henrietta Swan Leavitt in the above quote is well known for discovering the period luminosity relationship of Cepheid type variable stars, which has since become an essential rung of the cosmic distance ladder. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin may be less widely known, but her contributions are arguably even more important than those of Leavitt’s (try typing “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy” in to your favorite search engine). Years after her thesis work, Payne-Gaposchkin turned her attention to novae, and thanks to brilliant scientists like her, we know a lot about these explosions. Yet there is still much about novae that we don’t understand, and most nova researchers would agree that T Pyxidis (or T Pyx for short) is the most puzzling of them all, recurrent or otherwise.



https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/women_gallery/gallery2a.htm

NASA


In 1925, Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin was the first person to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe and Harvard. She discovered the chemical composition of stars and, in particular, that hydrogen and helium are the most abundant elements in stars and, therefore, in the universe. Though she completed her studies, Cambridge did not grant women degrees at that time. In 1922, Harvard College Observatory began a graduate program in astronomy and a fellowship to encourage women to study at the Observatory. In 1925, she became the first person awarded a doctorate from Harvard College Observatory. Her work, however, remained unofficial and unacknowledged until 1938 when she was granted the title of astronomer. She was the first female to become a full professor at Harvard and she chaired the Department of Astronomy from 1956-1960.










http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=ghosts-of-mars

Springfield! Springfield!


Ghosts of Mars (2001)


Who are you?
Whitlock.
What are you doing
in the holding tank, Whitlock?
It's the only safe place
at the moment, okay?
Can I go back to sleep now?
HELENA: No, you can't.
I need answers.
What's going on out there?
What's your ID?
Dr. Arlene Whitlock.
I'm the Spec Six Science Officer
for the mine at Drucker's Ridge.










http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=ghosts-of-mars

Springfield! Springfield!


Ghosts of Mars (2001)


the wind takes them.
And then once their host dies, they
just drift along the rail road tracks
from town to town,
human to human.
What a perfect creation.
Vengeance on anything or anyone that
tries to lay claim to their planet.










http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=ghosts-of-mars

Springfield! Springfield!


Ghosts of Mars (2001)


After we dynamited the mountain
we discovered an entrance.
It was a tunnel
carved into the rock.
It had been hidden underneath
the outer walls for centuries
and someone other than man
had carved it.
WHITLOCK:
Jesus!
MAN: What the hell is that?
WHITLOCK: I don't know.
MAN:
Get the hell out of here!
It was me.
I opened Pandora's box.
I let them out.










http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=ghosts-of-mars

Springfield! Springfield!


Ghosts of Mars (2001)


MELANIE:
I was aware of having
thoughts
or memories.
Like I'd been invaded by something,
and it was trying to take me over.
Something inside of me wouldn't let that
other thing take over, and I fought it.
I didn't know where I was
at first, and then it hit me.
I was outside, alone...
unarmed.










http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=ghosts-of-mars

Springfield! Springfield!


Ghosts of Mars (2001)


We hid until the storm was over.
Later, I went out
to take a look around.
Thought they were all dead.
Then some of them
started to come to.
They walked around
like they were confused or lost.
A few of them seemed okay.
They was trying to help the others.
Then they started changing.
Changing? What do you mean?










http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=ghosts-of-mars

Springfield! Springfield!


Ghosts of Mars (2001)


They act different,
stand different.
Start cutting themselves
for decoration.
Filing their teeth.
Making weapons.
Killing the ones
who hadn't changed.










http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/investigators-begin-probe-of-deadly-aurora-bridge-crash/

The Seattle Times


Woman flung from Duck lauds motorists who stopped to help

Originally published September 25, 2015 at 10:16 am Updated September 25, 2015 at 8:30 pm

A survivor of Thursday's deadly Aurora Bridge crash recalled being flung from the Ride the Ducks vehicle and regaining consciousness on the pavement.

By Jennifer Sullivan

Daniel Beekman

Seattle Times staff reporters

Update at 4:36 p.m.: Katie Moody, 30, a pharmacy technician and drug research assistant from Fremont, Calif. was visiting Seattle to celebrate her niece’s third birthday.

She was “killing some time” on a Ride the Ducks tour with her parents, Greg and Patricia Moody, when she felt the vehicle begin to swerve.

“I looked up and saw the bus coming at us,” she said during an interview Friday in her sixth-floor room at Harborview Medical Center.

“Oh, no,” her 57-year-old father, Greg, heard the driver exclaim. He knew they were in trouble.

As the two vehicles collided, the impact sounded “like a really loud movie,” Katie said.

Greg remembers rolling inside the Duck boat and then onto the Aurora Bridge. “When I landed, I was looking right at it and I was going, ‘There’s no tire.’ There was red fluid and everything and I go, ‘Damn.’ ”

Katie was flung from the vehicle.

“I must have blacked out or had my eyes closed,” Katie said. She woke up on the roadway and remembers seeing bodies. She heard sirens, screaming and people yelling, “Call 911.”

Katie scrambled to get up and find her family, but her injuries forced her to lie down. “I couldn’t see my mom,” she said.

People ran from nearby cars to help.

“Everyone was actually really awesome. Some lady helped me find my mom and made sure we were OK,” she said.

When Katie saw her father, his face was covered with blood.

“It was scary,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Get a Kleenex, get it off your face.’ ”

Katie said the compassion of drivers who rushed to help renewed her “faith in humanity.”

“There’s just so many bad people out there. Seeing good people is just amazing,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “They thought it was very important for me to know my parents were OK.”

Wearing a brace around her neck, Katie said it’s going to be a “slow healing process.” She suffered fractures to her collarbone and a bone in her neck, and a burst artery in the accident.

Greg was released from the hospital Thursday, but said he still feels dazed. “Supposedly, I was interviewed yesterday by CNN and I don’t remember … you get blank spots,” he said.

Katie’s mother, Patricia, has a broken clavicle but is also in satisfactory condition.

“Fortunately, we had some injuries but we walked away. Some people didn’t,” Greg said.

Update at 3:37 p.m.: The youngest victim killed in the crash has been identified by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office as Runjie Song, 17, of China.

Original post: The driver of a charter bus carrying dozens of North Seattle College students said it appeared the Ride the Ducks driver lost control of the six-wheeled vehicle just before veering into the bus and killing four passengers, said the president of Bellair Charters.

“We were heading southbound on Aurora and the Duck boat was heading north,” Richard Johnson said Friday, recalling what the driver told company officials. “The Duck boat lost control and crossed the lanes and into our coach.

“It happened so fast,” he said.

The bus was carrying 48 students and staff from North Seattle College’s international program during an orientation trip when the collision occurred just after 11 a.m. Thursday on the Aurora Bridge. Killed were four students on the bus from Austria, China, Indonesia and Japan, and more than 40 others on both vehicles were injured.

Inspectors with the state Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) arrived at headquarters of Bellair Charters near Bellingham as well as the Ride the Ducks corporate office in Seattle Friday morning to begin investigating the cause of the crash.

The UTC inspectors are looking at the vehicles involved in the crash, their maintenance records as well as the drivers’ history.

“We want to determine whether the company was negligent and not maintaining their vehicles, or if there was anything the driver might have done to contribute to the accident,” said Anna Gill, a spokeswoman for the UTC. “Sometimes freak things happen, but we’re there to determine whether this could have been prevented or not.”

The UTC said its investigation is separate from the probe by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which has sent a team of investigators to Seattle. This is the first time the NTSB has investigated amphibious vehicle crash on land, not water, an official with the federal agency said.


Witnesses reported seeing the Duck vehicle, which was heading north on the Aurora Bridge, swerve sharply to the left, where it struck one of two charter buses carrying students southbound from North Seattle College. The impact ripped open the bus and victims were strewn around the wreckage.

The Aurora Bridge was closed for about 12 hours after the crash.

Johnson, the Bellair Charters president, said the Duck vehicle “T-boned” the upper front of the charter bus. His driver wasn’t seriously hurt, but Johnson said he’s concerned with how he’s handling the accident emotionally.

“We’ve spoken to the driver who was on the scene, our directors of safety who were on the scene,” Johnson said. “The pictures are reality. It’s just sad. It’s heartbreaking.”

While some witnesses have said it appeared the Duck vehicle had some sort of malfunction moments before the crash, Johnson said his driver didn’t tell him that.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111282/releaseinfo

IMDb


Stargate (1994)

Release Info

USA 28 October 1994










http://www.tvtango.com/series/la_law

TV Tango


L.A. Law

Premiered: October 3, 1986

Network: NBC










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056283/releaseinfo

IMDb


No Man Is an Island (1962)

Release Info

USA 20 September 1962










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708821/releaseinfo

IMDb


Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV Series)

The Royale (1989)

Release Info

USA 25 March 1989

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708821/

IMDb


Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 2, Episode 12

The Royale (25 Mar. 1989)

TV Episode

Release Date: 25 March 1989 (USA)










http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/138.htm

The Royale [ Star Trek: The Next Generation ]

Stardate: 42626.4

Original Airdate: 27 Mar, 1989


[Transporter room]

RIKER: We've locked onto something with markings on it.

PICARD: What sort of markings?

RIKER: Uncertain. Energise.

(O'Brien beams a piece of curved metal construction aboard. He and Riker go to the pad and turn it's outer surface to face us. Lo and behold, a US flag and the letters NASA. The camera drools over it lovingly. Why couldn't it be ESA for once?)

PICARD: We've got ourselves a puzzle, Number One.

RIKER: Yes sir. I think we have.










http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/138.htm

The Royale [ Star Trek: The Next Generation ]

Stardate: 42626.4

Original Airdate: 27 Mar, 1989


[Hotel room]

WORF: Commander. Some curiosities.

RIKER: Books. A novel. Hotel Royale? Summarise, please.

[Bridge]

WESLEY: Information retrieved, Captain

PICARD: Number One?

RIKER [OC]: Go ahead, Captain.

PICARD: We have the information you requested. Colonel Stephen Richey was the commanding officer of the explorer ship Charybdis

[Hotel room]

PICARD [OC]: Which had a terrestrial launch date of July 23rd, 2037. It was the third manned attempt to travel beyond the confines of the Earth's solar system.

[Bridge]

PICARD: Its telemetry failed. It was never heard from again. Do you believe that you've discovered the remains of Colonel Richey?

RIKER [OC]: Yes. And Captain,

[Hotel room]

RIKER: We've found something else. A novel by Todd Matthews, entitled Hotel Royale, which is the name of this structure. Data.

DATA: Captain, this is the story of a group of compulsive gamblers caught up in a web of crime, corruption and deceit.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708821/quotes

IMDb


Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV Series)

The Royale (1989)

Quotes


Commander William T. Riker: [reading from the diary entry of Colonel Richey] "I write this in the hope that it will someday be read by human eyes. I can only surmise at this point, but apparently, our exploratory shuttle was contaminated by an alien life form, which infected and killed all personnel except myself. I awakened to find myself here in the Royale Hotel, precisely as described in the novel I found in my room. And for the last 38 years, I have survived here. I have come to understand that the alien contaminators created this place for me out of some sense of guilt, presuming that the novel we had on board the shuttle about the Hotel Royale was, in fact, a guide to our preferred lifestyle and social habits. Obviously they thought that this was the world from which I came. I hold no malice toward my benefactors. They could not possibly know the hell that they have put me through. For it was such a badly-written book, filled with endless cliché and shallow characters... I shall welcome death when it comes."



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 02:20 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Tuesday 29 September 2015