That big, daylight fireball April 22 along the California-Nevada border and subsequent discovery of a few small meteorites from its loud bang of an airburst are still reverberating in news. The Sacramento Bee has the latest from it staff writer Matt Weiser, which prompted an AP followup.
Weiser has a colorful all-around update on where things stand and the excitement not only of having a meteor overhead but then a big Zeppelin that NASA and the SETI Institute chartered to look for its leftovers. It appears he couldn't or didn't wrangle a free seat for the press. Too bad. It's hardly worth being a reporter unless one gets to sit in privileged chairs and not pay a dime of one's own for the treat.
I probably would not have posted on this except that my eye got snagged by a photo of the airship, the Eureka, based at Moffett Field on the San Francisco Peninsula and seen heading for the Sierra foothills from a Sacramento air strip. I've seen that airship touring around the Bay Area for a few years but it never looked orange before. It was mostly white and blue, with ads from a sponsoring insurance company, Farmers, on the side.
This morning, the darned thing flew past our front window in Berkely. White and orange as a pumpkin. I don't know who the new corporate sponsor is going to be but it looks to be in the middle of a repaint. By the way, the airship's operators posted some shots by a fellow out in the valley, a graphic designer named John McWade. . He got even better photos of this neutral-bouyancy behemoth as it droned on past.
We put the field glasses on the dirigible this morning. It is a stunning thing to see with its little tail propeller spinning like the windup toy submarine the grandkids used to play with in the bath. It has two more props on the side. The orange paint, one might mention, is not exactly a good look.
- Charlie Petit
