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I didn't have time to check this post yesterday but have been glad to know it was here to come back to! You and I seem to find the same "space things" interesting.

Space shuttle Discovery's STS-119 crew is set to fly the S6 truss segment and install the final set of power-generating solar arrays to the International Space Station.

The S6 truss, with its set of large U.S. solar arrays, will complete the backbone of the station and provide one-fourth of the total power needed to support a crew of six.

I see this crew is all male. But those on the ISS are not. This shuttle launch will be bringing down a woman. The Flight Engineer they're leaving to replace her will return on STS-127 - so I hope that means we have at least 8 more launches after this one.

I'm a little sad because this is one of the last shuttle missions. I know the next thing will be bigger and brighter, but I don't like knowing we'll have years with no manned launches. Although my cousin, a retired rocket scientist of the 60s-90s, including some Apollo missions, would rather unmanned flights - testing and mapping are more accurate w/o the movement of humans. Do we have any interesting unmanned launches after the shuttles are grounded? Or, better yet, something we launched years ago finally making its destination? Remember the excitement of first seeing that the rings of Saturn are actually boulders?

I always wondered if chimps Eros and Ham were happy or abused. I know today's sensibilities are different from the thoughts of their day, and we didn't know as much about chimps intelligence or expressions, but still. Seems callous not to name them until after their flight, because it'd be worse PR if a named chimp died. The One Small Step: The Story of the Space Chimps" story (legacy link above), and the last link answered many of my questions.

The Air Force Chimps video looked very familiar to me. We live a couple miles from the Yerkes Primate Center, and go on their tour once a year in October. http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/about-yerkes They use chimps and gorillas only for behavioral studies (not medical tests). You look in their eyes and see such wisdom somehow. (My kids always hoped a colony would break loose and run rampant through our neighborhood, but we learned that even if they did break loose, they wouldn't go far - only far enough to taunt a colony still caged.) I remember a food study: It was one of those little primates that live in HUGE colonies with serious social structure. Each got arm bands so they knew who put their hand into which bin how often. The sweet, high-fat, yummy food only had one bin. The healthy stuff was all over. They thought the alphas would get fat - protecting the yummy bin from others, overindulging it themselves. But actually it was the lowest-ranked ones who got fat. I can't quite make sense of it, but if you look around, the richest most powerful humans are usually not fat, but the poor ones are. Another study, with gorillas: their pen has 3 "labs" that open into the pen. A human stands at a door and calls the gorilla they'd like to test. If the gorilla is willing, s/he comes. Basically, it's computer games. They did matching fine, and got bored with it. They tried contrasting/opposites, and the gorillas got that too. I forgot what else they did, but discovered that gorillas are VERY intelligent and even have a great sense of humor. The door is always openable, so when the gorilla is done, s/he leaves.