Thanks for the Memories, Les Miles!

Dear Tiger Fans,

The past few days have marked a time of transition for our football program, but I can assure you this season still holds great promise due to the dedication of our talented student-athletes and the contagious enthusiasm of Coach Ed Orgeron and his staff.

Coach O and the Fighting Tigers will represent our university and our state with tremendous pride and energy, and I encourage you to support their efforts over the next two months of the regular season and beyond. There are no limits to what can be accomplished in the coming weeks!

I know you’ll join me in offering sincere thanks to Les Miles for his substantial contributions to our football program and for the first-class manner in which he always represented LSU and Louisiana. We are very grateful to Coach Miles for the impact he made upon the lives of his players, and we wish him and his family the best in all of their endeavors.

We have five home games remaining, beginning this Saturday at 6:30 p.m. when Missouri visits Tiger Stadium for the first time. LSU and Mizzou have met on the gridiron just once before – at the 1978 Liberty Bowl – and this weekend’s matchup should provide plenty of excitement as the Tigers take on one of the nation’s leading passers, Missouri’s Drew Lock.

The LSU offense, under the guidance of new coordinator Steve Ensminger, will look to provide fireworks of its own with adjustments in its style of play. Saturday is also Homecoming on the LSU campus, and we’re expecting gorgeous weather for all of the festivities leading up to kickoff.

The atmosphere you’ve created in Tiger Stadium has inspired LSU teams for decades and has earned Death Valley enduring recognition as college football’s greatest venue. LSU has a remarkable record of 100 wins and only 15 losses at home since 2000, and that’s due in large part to the passion of the Fighting Tiger faithful.

Let’s make this Louisiana Saturday Night versus Missouri a memorable evening for Coach O and the players, and I look forward to seeing you in Tiger Stadium!

As always, we welcome your comments at athletics@lsu.edu. Unfortunately we cannot answer every e-mail we receive, but please be assured they are all read.

Geaux Tigers!

Joe Alleva
Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics

Check out the letter at LSU Sports.

I am very sad to see Coach Miles go! He is a class act and one of the most highly respected coaches in the country. He still has the love of our fan base, and we are confident that he will have a prominent position somewhere soon. Thanks for the memories, coach!!! Let's see some highlights...

GEAUX TIGERS!!!

Be A Martian!

Mars needs YOU! In the future, Mars will need all kinds of explorers, farmers, surveyors, teachers… but most of all YOU! Join us on the Journey to Mars as we explore with robots and send humans there one day. Download a Mars poster that speaks to you. Be an explorer!

Explorers Wanted on the Journey to Mars

Hike the solar system's largest canyon, Valles Marineris on Mars, where you can catch blue sunsets in the twilight, and see the two moons of Mars (Phobos and Deimos) in the night sky.

Work the Night Shift on Martian Moon Phobos

Night owls welcome! If you lived on Mars' moon Phobos, you'd have an office with a view, mining for resources with Mars in the night sky. Settlers below on Mars would see Phobos rise and set not once, but twice in one day!

Farmers Wanted for Survival on Mars

Got a green thumb? This one's for you! In space, you can grow tomatoes, lettuce, peas, and radishes just like you would find in your summer garden. New ways of growing fresh food will be needed to keep brave explorers alive.

Surveyors Wanted to Explore Mars and its Moons

Have you ever asked the question, what is out there? So have we! That curiosity leads us to explore new places like Mars and its moons, Phobos and Deimos. Just what lies beyond the next valley, canyon, crater, or hill is something we want to discover with rovers and with humans one day too.

Teach on Mars and its Moons

Learning is out of this world! Learning can take you places you've never dreamed of, including Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. No matter where we live, we can always learn something new, especially with teacher-heroes who guide us on our path, daring us to dream and grow!

Technicians Wanted to Engineer our Future on Mars

People with special talents will always be in demand for our Journey To Mars. Whether repairing an antenna in the extreme environment of Mars, or setting up an outpost on the moon Phobos, having the skills and desire to dare mighty things is all you need.

Assembly Required to Build Our Future on Mars and its Moons

Are you someone who can put things together, solving challenges to ensure survival? Dare to forge our future with space-age tools - build spaceships to carry us to Mars and back, and habitats to protect us while we're there.

We Need You

We need many things for our Journey To Mars,
but one key piece is YOU!
Check out the feature at NASA Mars Exploration.

Will we actually see the colonization of Mars in our lifetime?

If human exploration and colonization of Mars is a subject that interests you, I highly recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy - consisting of Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. In this awesome work of science fiction, Robinson delves into the technological, social and political aspects in a realistic future of Martian colonization and terraforming. You'll find no light-sabres or warp drives in these books... just down-to-earth, scientifically-feasible sci-fi!!!

D-Day - June 6, 1944

SAINTE MERE EGLISE, France -- It was the middle of the night and the town of Sainte Mere Eglise was on fire. Occupied by the Germans since June 18, 1940, the town had survived several allied air raids.

A stray incendiary bomb from one of those raids had set a building near the town square on fire and it was spreading. The townspeople formed a chain to ferry water from the pump in the town square to the fire.

At about 1:30 a.m. that day -- June 6, 1944 -- the sky filled with hundreds of American paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division. Well lit by the flames beneath them, the paratroopers were easy targets for the startled German soldiers on the ground. One of those paratroopers was Pvt. John Steele of F Company, 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Steele was already a combat veteran, with combat jumps into Italy and Sicily under his belt prior to D-Day.

During his landing, Steele's parachute became caught in the steeple of the church in the middle of the town square. Shot through the foot, Steele hung there for two hours pretending to be dead before the Germans noticed him and cut him down.

"There were some paratroopers who landed nearby, but they didn't help him because they thought he was dead. The Germans thought he was dead also, but they wanted whatever papers he had on him and that is when they discovered that he was alive," said Patrick Bunel, a curator at the Airborne Museum here.

The German soldiers took him prisoner, but Steele was able to escape once tanks that had landed at Utah beach arrived. At approximately 4:30 a.m. Sainte Mere Eglise became the first town in France to be liberated. The fighting around the town continued until June 7, when the Germans were finally pushed back. Steele was awarded the Bronze Star for valor and the Purple Heart for his actions during the invasion.

Today a uniformed mannequin hangs from a parachute and rigging on the steeple, in honor of Steele (who actually landed in back of the church), his fateful jump and the liberation of the town below.

"When I first saw it (the mannequin), I didn't know that it had actually happened," said Pfc. Cory Peppeard of the 230th Military Police Company, 18th Military Police Brigade, one of hundreds of U.S. servicemembers here to support this week's 65th anniversary commemoration of D-Day. "It's pretty impressive that he was able to survive that."

Sainte Mere Eglise secured Steele a place in history as a Soldier in the division that helped to liberate the town, but also as the paratrooper who landed on the church. It was a scene that would be recreated 18 years later in the 1962 movie, "The Longest Day," in which Steele was portrayed by the actor Red Buttons.

Steele regularly visited here before his death in 1969 from cancer. But he was not the only American the town remembers.

Their actions here have also been captured in two stained glass windows in the church. One was designed in 1945 by a local artist named Paul Renaud, who was 14 years old when the paratroopers landed and 16 years old when he drew the sketch for a window made by Gabriel Loire in the village of Chartres.

It depicts the Virgin Mary and child above a burning Sainte Mere Eglise with paratroopers and planes around her. An inscription below the figures reads: "This stained glass was completed with the participation of Paul Renaud and Sainte Mere, for the memory of those who, with their courage and sacrifice, liberated Sainte Mere Eglise and France".

"My father worked with the parish to come up with an idea to replace the original window, which had been destroyed," said Henri Jean Renaud, whose father was the mayor of Saint Mere Eglise at the time. Renaud was 10 years old when the paratroopers landed.

A second window depicts Saint Michael, the patron saint of paratroopers. The 82nd Airborne Division, the lion of Normandy, the Sainte Mere Eglise insignia, and symbols for each of the combat jumps made by the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II are also represented in the window.

The idea for the window began at the 25th anniversary of the jump and was donated by the veterans of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, in 1972. The same artist that made the first window also made the second. The inscription at the bottom reads: "To the memory of those who through their sacrifice liberated Sainte Mere Eglise."

While the mannequin and windows are but inanimate objects, Renaud said, they help keep the memory of very real heroes alive.

"We are really very devoted to the veterans," said Renaud. "For me, when they landed, they were like heroes in a movie. Now they are brothers."

Check out the article at The Official Home Page of the United States Army.

NEVER FORGET D-DAY!!!

Be sure to visit the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana for some exciting events going on today!

If you are interested in accurate D-Day and WWII history, I highly recommend the following books by Stephen Ambrose. He has written other WWII books, but those four are by far the most notable and my favorites:

• Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
• D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II
• Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany
• Pegasus Bridge

The HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, inspired by Stephen Ambrose's book by the same title, is a must-see for any WWII history buff. I have found the series to be one of the most historically accurate movies made on the topic... I highly recommend checking it out!

There are MANY movies made in the WWII setting, check out World War II on Film at www.worldwar-2.net and the Wikipedia List of WWII Films.

A Giant Landing for Mankind

Why SpaceX's Rocket Landing On A Drone Ship Is A Big Deal

There couldn't have been a more perfect launch than yesterday's. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze was blowing, and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket took off right on schedule. As we watched from a few miles away, the glare of the rocket's flames was searingly bright, hard to look at but impossible to look away from, like the sparklers kids play with on the Fourth of July. The sound, too, was like Independence Day, the boom and shake of a thousand fireworks going off, crashing through the sound barrier.

The cargo made it safely into orbit, where it's on its way to the International Space Station. But the real magic was in what happened after the launch. For the first time ever, the Falcon 9 came down for a gentle (non-explosive) landing on a drone ship. The achievement is critical in developing reusable, relatively low-cost spaceflight.

“It's another step toward the stars,” said Musk during a press conference.

Traditionally, rocket boosters fall into the ocean after launch, never to be used again. But Musk often compares that to throwing away an airplane after every flight. Reusing the booster could shave millions of dollars off of launch costs, and the first step to that is getting the boosters back to Earth safely.

SpaceX landed its rocket on solid ground in December, but landing on the drone ship was key to SpaceX's reusability strategy.

That's because about half of all launches bring the rocket over the ocean. After that, the rocket doesn't have enough fuel to turn back around and head for land. The autonomous ship gives SpaceX a movable landing pad, but landing on it proved difficult. It's akin to a jet landing on an aircraft carrier—the target is small and moving—except that the rocket comes down at about 17,000 miles per hour.

Unlike the booster that landed on land last year SpaceX is planning to reuse this one. After the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You brings it back to port, the company will test fire the engines about 10 times, and if all is working well, they could fly it again as soon as May or June.

Eventually, the company hopes to “hose off”, tune up, and re-launch each rocket in a matter of weeks, Musk said. If they can do it on a reliable enough basis, it could shave millions of dollars off the cost of launching.

It costs about $60 million to build a rocket, but just 2 or 3 hundred thousand to refuel it. Inspecting and tweaking each booster could cost some time and money, but Musk says they're expecting reusability to bring costs down “100-fold”.

It should be noted that the space shuttle program had similar goals—it was hoped that reusing the vehicle and launching often would bring down costs over time. Unfortunately, the price stayed constant around $450 million per flight.

But SpaceX has already changed the face of spaceflight and ISS resupply with its $61.2 million dollar launches, compared to $225 million for its competitor ULA.

If reusability pans out as well as Musk hopes, a 100-fold decrease would bring the cost of each launch from roughly $60 million to about $600,000.

That figure isn't counting the cost of having to build new rockets—Musk estimates that each rocket could be good for 10 or 20 launches. But even if it's somewhere in that ballpark, such a dramatic price cut would revolutionize access to space, opening it up for business, research, and tourists. It would make the Falcon 9 into the Model T of space exploration.

There's still a lot that could go wrong before that happens.

By the end of this year, SpaceX intends to amp up its launch frequency to every other week, and most of those launches will be accompanied by landing attempts. So if the reusability plan really works to cut costs, we should know it sooner rather than later.

Check out the article at Popular Science.

Private industry is the way of the future in space!

Check out:

• SpaceX's Dragon Soars As Its Rocket Lands: An Epic Spaceflight in Photos
• Falcon 9 Overview
• CRS-8 Dragon Mission
• CRS-8 Science Haul
• Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM)

Of course, here is the video of the now-famous landing!