#if you want to imagine what my face looks like imagine a divers or astronauts helmet. or a full face mask

[nbrights]

also first meet the artist since umm (checks watch) 2019 probably

[purplepersnicketywrites]

Pro-heroes Bakugou and Kirishima take a day off from work to spend time with their kids drabble???

OH I’ve never written any krbk kids before! Ikiiiiind of have a hc that Mina would offer to be a surrogate for them. I just.Imagine Mina and Bakugou’s quirks combined. Lotsa boom, from all over. I also like theidea of a kid with hardening but the hardening turns Weird Colours, so thoseare concepts I’ve been throwing around in my head.

I’ve been thinking like, maybe both are girls?Definitely the Bakugou one. Less sure about the Kirishima one, could go either way.Maybe they’re nb?

I haven’t had the opportunity to doodle design ideas for ‘emyet (thanks, missing tablet pen) but I made a couple of really really roughpixelly things here:

Leaning towards Atsuko and Shinobu as names?

So with all THAT in mind as context, I can beginthis drabble!

Life was always a lot more interesting when you hadan eight-year-old who could set her arms on fire.

“Not in the house!” Eijirou cried, watching Atsuko scrunchher little face up in the way that reminded him of Katsuki when he was mad.That expression was always a precursor to her quirk activating, so he reallyhad to head that off before it happened.

“Where’s Daddy, Papa?” she grouched, dark eyesgleaming with eight-year-old rage. “We can’t decorate the tree until he’s hereand he’s not here.”

“He will be, Atsu,” Eijirou said. While Eijirou had been ableto take the day off for the beginning of December, Katsuki hadn’t been quite solucky. He checked the time. “He should be on his way home by now.”

Atsuko scowled some more, but she seemed to find that anacceptable answer and stalked across the room to where Shinobu was colouringsomething intently. Eijirou had never met another three-year-old with suchfocus before. Atsuko certainly hadn’t been so quiet at that age.

He couldn’t help but wonder if this was going to be part ofShinobu’s quirk or not. It was still too early to tell.

“What are you drawing, Shi?” Eijirou asked.

Shinobu pointed at the green mass on the paper. “Tree.”

“Obviously,” Atsuko said. “See, Shi-shi wants to decorate it too!”

“And you will,” Eijirou said. “We just need to wait for Daddyto come home. We have to be heroes even at Christmas, you know.”

Atsuko pouted. God, she looked like her father with that expression. “When I’m ahero, I’m never going to be late to decorate.”

Eijirou felt his eyebrows raise. Atsuko hadn’t ever reallymentioned wanting to be a hero before. Her job aspirations so far hadincluded astronaut, rhinoceros and deep-sea-diver vet. He couldn’t say he wastoo surprised, though. “You wanna be a hero, baby?”

“Yeah!” her eyes sparkled. “I’m gonna be Demon Queen of DeathPlanet!”

Eijirou bit back a laugh. Of course. Of course that was whatshe wanted her hero name to be. He would expect nothing less from the genes ofBakugou Katsuki and Ashido Mina. “Bit of a long name, that one. Might need itto be snappier.”

Atsuko frowned. “Hm.”

Eijirou could already hear Midnight’s disapproving sighechoing in his head. “You’ve got a lot of time to think about it!”

The sound of a key in the door made Eijirou’s heart leap. Katsukiwas back! The kids both gasped and rushed for the door, piling onto Katsuki assoon as he stepped through. Katsuki laughed, the sound like music to Eijirou’sears, and scooped both of them up.

“Finally, Daddy,” Atsuko said. “We need to decorate the tree!”

“Tree!” Shinobu repeated.

“Oh yeah?” Katsuki replied, pressing a kiss to each of theirheads. “Well we’d better make it the best dang tree anyone’s ever seen, right?”

“Right!” both kids yelled, slamming their fists together.Katsuki set them down and they scampered towards the boxes of baubles alreadysitting by their fancy fake tree.

“Hey,” Katsuki said, this time directed at Eijirou, with asmile crinkling his eyes.

“Hey to you, too,” Eijirou said, crossing the distance betweenhimself and his husband to pull the blond into a kiss.

“Ew!” Atsuko jeered from the tree. “Come on, you need to putthe lights on first! Kiss later!”

“We will,” Katsuki said, grinning and pulling Eijirou over tothe tree by one hand. Atsuko pulled a disgusted sort of face and a set ofmulticoloured fairy-lights from a box. “Auntie-mama Mina said she might stop bylater, so we need to have all this stuff up before she gets here.”

Both kids brightened at the prospect.

“Hey, speaking of Auntie-mama Mina,” Eijirou said. “Tell Daddywhat you want your hero name to be.”

“You said it was too long,” Atsuko pouted.

“Hero name, huh?” Katsuki asked. “Papa doesn’t know anythingabout good hero names, let me hear it.”

“Demon Queen of Death Planet!” Atsuko said, primly.

“Yes,” Katsuki said, red eyes sparkling. Eijirou repressed asigh. “That’s fudging perfect.”

“I know, right?” Atsuko said. She ran a hand through herfluffy blonde hair. “Papa has no taste.”

Eijirou opened his mouth to point out that his hero name had been accepted the first time around, but-

“Tree,” Shinobu insisted, pulling everyone back to the task athand. “Sparkly.”

“Sure thing,” Katsuki said, ruffling the three-year-old’s darkpink locks. “Let’s sparkle this beach up properly.”

[tagsecretsanta]

From Akireyta

to @nibenhutracycas​

I do not own this piece of art/fiction. @akireyta​  is the original creator and has agreed to this being posted on this blog for Secret Santa 2017.

 John and a sleepy bro

hope you don’t mind Five Things fics, nonny :)

1) Technically, Scott is babysitting them.

Scott is thirteen, nominally a teenager and thus in a class apart from the rest of them, the kids. Scott is already imagining learning how to drive, how to fly, imagining joining the adults at a dinner table where his feet fully touch the floor.

He’s much closer to the latter than the former.

But Scott is taking athletics and a starring role in the Mathletes team, already on the honor roll, and running for a spot on the student council. Scott is up before dawn to go run laps, stays at school late with study groups and to wallpaper the halls with his election posters, and a dozen other things John doesn’t think anyone else in this family fully understands.

John tiptoes in, one ear tuned to the sound of the movie from down the hall.  It sounds like it’s still holding everyone else’s attention, enough at least that they hadn’t noticed Scott disappearing to ‘study,’ or John following him out less than an hour later to go find out what he was really up to.

Scott’s snoring softly, his cheek resting against the now-dark tablet propped up on a stack of library books. John considers the scene, a simple three body problem when one of the bodies in question is fast asleep in a rolling desk chair.

Scott stirs slightly as his chair bumps into the side of his bed, but he’s more asleep than awake as John decants him onto the mattress. He’s fully asleep again in the time it takes John to untie his sneakers and toss a blanket across Scott’s legs.

He pauses at the door, checking the scene one last time. The lights go out with a click, and John pads back up the hall to sit on the little ones until their parents get home.

2) Virgil’s growth spurt hit with the speed of a freight train. Which is what John estimates he now weighs. “Ease up on the fruit loops, Virgil,” he mutters he tries to take more of the weight through his knees.

Virgil just tries to pat John’s cheek and misses, mussing up John’s hair instead. “You’re a good brother….” he slurs exhaustedly, swaying on the spot.

John exhales, recognizing the futility of his situation. “Who really, really didn’t want the top bunk,” he snaps, even as he gently lowers Virgil into the warm nest of blankets that had been John’s haven until Virgil had staggered in late and stood on John’s face instead of the ladder.

The bunks at the farmhouse feel insanely rickety, no matter how many times their mother insists they’re solid. John climbs up slowly, slipping between cold sheets and trying to ignore the sensation of swaying as, beneath him, Virgil starts snoring like a chain saw.

3) Gordon goes off like a firecracker, and fizzles just as fast. He’s still not lost his goofy grin though, even if he’s all but sprawled on the sofa, surrounded by the detritus of his victory party.

“How many potato chips did you eat?” John asks, impressed despite himself.

“Potato chips are not allowed from tomorrow on, so I ate them all,” Gordon beams sleepily.  “No regrets.”

“Your food baby might say otherwise,” John teases even as he drops down on the sofa next to Gordon. John loves his brother, but he doesn’t always like him, sixteen and too-confident in a way John still isn’t. But tired and full and teasing Gordon is probably Gordon at his most tolerable. “Congrats, by the way, if I didn’t say it before.  On making the squad.”

“Thanks, Jay,” Gordon says, sincere for once. He lets his head fall on John’s shoulder the second he’s in range. “To be honest,” he adds in a quieter voice.  “I still can’t believe I made it in. I mean, Maloney is faster…”

John’s hand is still long enough to cover even Gordon’s big mouth. “Shush,” he says firmly. “Belittling your achievements is my job. No poaching.” He can feel Gordon’s smile against his palm. “You made it, Gordon.  No one can take that away.”

Gordon nods, shuffling in to lean more heavily against John’s side. Everyone else has turned in; there are no witnesses. John slings an arm around Gordon’s shoulders and lets him rest before the madness begins again in earnest.

4) Kayo goes to ground when she feels vulnerable, hates sleeping with anyone else in the room. But for some reason, she tolerates the hologram. “Tell me about your day,” she asks, tucked up under too many blankets considering the tropical heat of the island.

John’s got a forest fire in Brazil, a tsunami alert active for Hakodate, and a stuck cave diver in Florida. But he’s always got time for his family. “I got to deliver a baby today. Well, the purser delivered, I just walked her through it….”

Kayo’s smiling by the time her eyes fall closed and stay that way. John keeps the line open anyway, just in case.

5) Space is exhausting. Only an astronaut can really appreciate how you can deplete every reserve trying to push against a resistance that isn’t there. It takes months of practice just to override the monkey instinct to trust gravity and friction to help you start and stop.

Alan’s yawn nearly splits his face, and John feels himself responding autonomously.  “Urgh, stop that.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Alan murmurs, his syllables almost slurring together. “Long day.”

John looks over the ash and scorch marks that still scored Alan’s uniform, a sign of how close he’d come. Three is in no state to go all the way back down, and neither is Alan. “Come on,” John says, grabbing Alan’s sash and towing him easily down Five’s core to the ring. He spins it up slowly, half-speed, just enough to draw their feet down onto the glass, give them a sense of ‘down’ at all. Even at half grav, Alan all but sags into John. “This way.”  

There are guest bunks in Five, still wrapped in plastic, and John doesn’t even bother with them. He just shoves Alan into the shower unit, takes the moment to swap uniform for soft pjs. They swap positions just long enough for John to swill the taste of bile off the back of his tongue. When he comes out again, Alan is still frowning, bare-chested, as he tries to figure out the arm holes of the soft, worn old NASA hoodie John had shoved at him in passing.

Dressing Alan reminds John of when Alan was tiny, relying on his brothers for everything, resisting his earlier bedtime in favour of crawling in with any sibling who’d let him. “Come on, Alan,” John says kindly as he tows Alan over and shoves him into his own bunk. It’s too narrow for two people, really, but they’re both slender men, and after today’s debacle, there was no way on Earth or off it John was letting the nightmares take Alan alone.

He wraps his arms and legs around Alan, almost pinning him against the bulkhead in a way he knew Alan found comforting. Alan’s breathing slows to match John’s.

John keeps up the rhythm until Alan finally falls asleep.

[goarticletec-blog]

The NASA astronaut who refused to shave his beard is searching for Atlantis

New Post has been published on https://www.articletec.com/the-nasa-astronaut-who-refused-to-shave-his-beard-is-searching-for-atlantis/

The NASA astronaut who refused to shave his beard is searching for Atlantis

Growing up, Paul Scully-Power didn’t want to be an astronaut. It just sort of happened.

He spent his youth surfing Sydney’s immaculate beaches, a passion that would see him become the first head of the Australian Navy’s oceanography division. In the 1970s he successfully applied to be an investigator at NASA and then used the space agency‘s infrared satellite data to survey the ocean.

Recognizing his unique expertise, NASA tapped him to join the 13th flight of the space shuttle program, mission STS-41G.

After months of flight training, Scully-Power was strapped into a seat in the crew module of the Challenger space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, as a payload specialist. It was Oct. 5, 1984.

Wires and tubes connected the seven-person crew to communications and vital oxygen. Extensive checks were completed with mission control.

Upon launch, Scully-Power, then 41 years old, would set numerous records. He would become the first Australian-born person to leave Earth. He would become the first oceanographer in space. And with a face full of brown-white hair, he’d be the first person in space with a beard.

He’d also go on to help Australia build its own space agency, develop life-saving drone technology for Australian beaches and set out a plan to find the lost city of Atlantis.

But 34 years ago, as he lay horizontal to the ground in the middeck of the Challenger, waiting for launch, Scully-Power wasn’t thinking about any of that.

He was asleep.

The space shuttle Challenger, on mission STS-41G, blazes a trail through the sky on its ascent to low Earth orbit.

NASA

Journey to space

At 74, Scully-Power, in a simple button-up shirt and navy blue blazer, looks more grizzled than the 41-year old who flew on the Challenger, but he shows no signs of slowing down.

He’s sitting across from me in a small recording studio in Sydney still sporting the same record-setting beard, now silvery and thin, and cupping a hot coffee. He speaks buoyantly, but matter of factly, about his time in space, with only the subtlest hint of nostalgia. When he tells me he was asleep before the Challenger’s launch, I guffaw in astonishment.

At possibly the most important point in his life, Scully-Power was snoozing.

“You’ve got to be relaxed,” he smiles.

Now playing: Watch this: NASA at 60: Celebrating its incredible legacy

7:38

But ahead of the launch, there was a big hurdle: Scully-Power’s beard.

“NASA said to shave it off,” he remembers. The beard was a safety issue, NASA argued, making it difficult to achieve an airtight seal with the helmet. The agency threw a battery of “impossible tests” at him, but Scully-Power, the payload specialist and professional diver, showed NASA he could create the seal, no problem. The agency relented and he was cleared to fly, beard intact.

The superstitious were rattled by STS-41G. It was the 13th flight of the space shuttle program, and the crew photo was taken on Friday the 13th. But despite the portentous omens looming over the mission, Scully-Power had great faith that things “would be fine.”

Paul Scully-Power dons his helmet, beard and all.

NASA

His lack of fear was born partly from NASA’s rigorous flight training, which saw him embedded with the crew, up at 3 a.m. and engaging in flight simulations over a matter of months. By the time he got to the real thing, he describes it as a sense of “Gosh, I’ve got to do this one more time?”

For eight days and across 132 orbits of the Earth, it was Scully-Power’s job to inspect the oceans. During the mission he discovered that eddies, swirling masses of ocean water, were fairly ubiquitous across the globe.

On the last day of the Challenger’s mission, Oct. 13, he woke up to the sound of Elton John’s Rocket Man and readied for atmospheric re-entry. Coming back to Earth was “fairly benign,” he says, though the craft was traveling at 25 times the speed of sound and the cockpit glowed orange. It landed at Kennedy Space Center not long after midday.

Paul Scully-Power never wanted to be an astronaut, but he’d just become one.

Earthbound

“The NASA training, as good as it is, the one thing they cannot train you for is the view.”

For those of us bound to Earth, space is a flat, black canvas dotted with pinpricks of white light we can only glimpse when the sun sets. Our understanding of the cosmos has improved exponentially in the last century, but there’s much we can’t see — or grasp.

For the brave ones who venture beyond the planet’s gravitational pull, space becomes all-consuming. An obsidian tide that washes over everything. Bodies, spacecraft, satellites, moons, planets, stars. A cognitive realignment takes place. I can hear it in Scully-Power’s voice when he talks about seeing the planet from low Earth orbit.

“Anything anyone down here on Earth has seen of space is two-dimensional film photos,” he tells me. “The view with the human brain and two eyes is absolutely three-dimensional and that changes totally everything.”

This idea that seeing Earth from space can alter your psyche is known as the “overview effect.” Astronauts who look back upon the planet have reported being overwhelmed with “bliss, timelessness” and a “profound sense of connectedness.” When Scully-Power looked out of the Challenger’s window and saw the curvature of Earth floating against the nothingness of space, that connectedness — the connectedness of humanity — became apparent. The borders used to delineate countries on an atlas or on a classroom wall ceased to exist.   

“You look at [the Earth] and you say: My God, the whole of human endeavor, I’m looking at it and most of the wars have been about boundaries and I can’t even see them.”

The space shuttle Challengerfloats upside down over the Earth.

NASA

It’s a perspective that only a lucky few will ever share. That collection of cosmic travelers to date numbers less than 600.  

I’ve often wondered what it might be like to feel weightless, floating through space, looking back at the planet hanging against the infinite dark like a blue-green bauble. I’ve gazed up at the stars at night and tried to imagine what it must feel like to float through the silent vacuum of space.

But perhaps I’m looking in the wrong direction.

“For years we’ve been talking about space up there,” offers Scully-Power sagely, glancing upward.

“I’m now talking about space down here.”

Space 2.0

The space sector has dramatically changed since the manned shuttle missions Scully-Power flew on 30 years ago. Existing space technologies and infrastructure have allowed enterprising types — billionaires named Musk and Bezos and entrepreneurial startups — to begin the commercialization of space.

“Space today is Space 2.0,” says Scully-Power.

The concept has seen Scully-Power’s home nation, Australia, create its own space agency after a government-led review revealed a growing need to support the country’s space capabilities. The agency officially opened its doors on July 1, 2018, and will spend AU$41 million (US$30 million) on space activities over the next four years. That may sound like a lot, but it pales in comparison to NASA’s 2018 budget of nearly $21 billion.

We’re not talking about putting humans in space anymore. We’re talking about using space as an enabler in many, many industries.

Paul Scully-Power

That kind of investment means Australia’s agency is focused on building strong industry ties, using Australian-developed technology for shared missions to space with countries such as the UK, Canada and France and continuing research into the sector. Scully-Power, as one of only two Australians to head to space, was excited by the news and took on a role as a state ambassador for the agency. He plays a critical role in informing Australia’s federal government on how the country can take full advantage of Space 2.0.

“We’re not talking about putting humans in space anymore,” says Scully-Power. “We’re talking about using space as an enabler in many, many industries.”  

The key is data.

“Within five years, we’re going to have tens of thousands of nanosatellites — very small satellites — in orbit … and they’re going to revolutionize the world.”

Nanosatellites, weighing roughly 10 kilograms and measuring less than 12 inches, will “envelop the Earth,” giving industries access to mountains of data. Scully-Power describes them as “smartphones in space”. His example: In the near future farmers will be able to use nanosatellites to analyze their farms, maximizing crop yields and streamlining routine activities such as herding animals or planting seeds.

He hopes the new agency will also inspire the next generation of spacefarers, create jobs and improve industries on the ground. Australia houses one of the world’s most advanced radio astronomy facilities, has seen startups launch their own satellites and attracted the eyes of space industry partners such as Boeing, which tapped a Melbourne-based video games studio to help train astronauts in virtual reality.

Thus, Scully-Power believes, the country is in a unique position to export its space-based services and products worldwide through strong industry ties and world-class expertise.

A view of the Himalayas, taken aboard the Challenger during mission STS-41G.

NASA

To Atlantis and beyond

In an interview with the Weekend Australian in 2016, Scully-Power noted one of his more unusual ambitions: trying to find the lost city of Atlantis.

The existence of Atlantis, the Platonic ancient island nation supposedly swallowed up by the ocean, is considered by most scholars and historians to be unlikely. The underwater utopia is usually surmised to be a nation of grand wealth and excess, and its sudden disappearance has captivated inquisitive minds for hundreds of years.

Don’t you think the world’s first oceanographer in space should go and find the lost city of Atlantis? 

Paul Scully-Power

All manner of hypotheses have been suggested as to its location — submerged islands in the Strait of Gibraltar, off the Irish coast and even somewhere underneath Antarctica. But no solid evidence has been discovered of Atlantis ever having existed, which only serves to make the mystery all the more alluring.

For Scully-Power, there’s a certain romance to finding the lost city.

“Don’t you think the world’s first oceanographer in space should go and find the lost city of Atlantis?” he offers.

If it is real, Scully-Power believes we now have the capability to find it. He suggests that advances in nanosatellite tracking, underwater drones and “a bit of smart academic work” is what’s required to finally solve the mystery. 

Beyond his search for mythical cities, Scully-Power’s current activities involve his ambassadorship and further development of the Little Ripper, a lifesaving drone that can deploy a flotation device. It’s intended for search and rescue missions across Australia’s 37,000 miles of coastline. Earlier this year, the drone saved two men from powerful surf conditions at Lennox Head in eastern Australia.

The drone developers are looking to make improvements that allow the Little Ripper to work longer and more efficiently — but they also want to make it smarter.

“We have developed artificial intelligence to find sharks, and we are developing AI to actually tell us when people are in trouble, automatically,” Scully-Power says.

The shark-finding technology, developed in conjunction with the University of Sydney, recently took a national award for artificial intelligence innovation of the year. And the drone’s applications are likely to extend further inland, too, with the team partnering with a development company in Sydney’s northwest to enable it to deliver medical supplies and first aid.

Juggling all of his responsibilities could be an unenviable task, but Scully-Power seems used to it.

He has won the world’s most prestigious awards in oceanography, underwater acoustics and aviation, uncovered important ocean phenomena and helped develop life-saving drone tech in a career spanning five decades. To this day, he has no idea where he will end up tomorrow. He wouldn’t have it any other way. He has a fearlessness. The same fearlessness that allowed him to fall asleep on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center more than three decades ago.

But wherever he is tomorrow — developing drones, helping build a space agency, searching for Atlantis — Scully-Power’s eyes will be wide open.

Want to know more? Oceans to Orbit: The Story of Australia’s First Man in Space, by Colin Burgess, is an excellent look at Scully-Power’s life and the STS-41G mission.

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