Port Orchard Independent, November 23, 2012 by Sound Publishing

Friday, November 23, 2012 • Port Orchard Independent

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Brian Beckley works for Sound Publishing.

Community news and notes • Kitsap Transit will not operate service on Thursday, Nov. 22. The Annapolis/Bremerton foot ferry will run with one boat on November 23. • Kitsap Transit’s routed, ACCESS and Worker/Driver buses, vanpools and the Kitsap Transit Foot Ferry will NOT operate service on Thanksgiving Day, November 22. • Kitsap Transit’s Customer Service Office, information phone lines and Administrative Office will be closed. Parking fees will not be collected at the Annapolis parking lot on Thanksgiving. The ORCA call center will be closed on both Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving. • Because service is not operating Thursday, November 22, Kitsap Transit ACCESS will not take next-day reservations on Wednesday, November 21. Reservation lines will be open on Thanksgiving Day from 8am to 4pm for next-day trip reservations. • Normally scheduled routed and ACCESS bus service will resume on Friday, Nov. 23. Bremerton/Port Orchard Foot Ferry service will operate normally. Foot Ferry service between Bremerton and Annapolis will operate a reduced schedule with just one boat operating on the day after Thanksgiving. • Worker/Driver and vanpool service may be limited on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Contact your driver for more information. • Olympic College Legislative Forum, 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26. Legislators from the 23rd, 26th, and 35th legislative districts will convene at Olympic College’s Bremer Student Center on the Bremerton campus to discuss priorities for the upcoming legislative session and solicit input from the general public. Sponsored by the Associated Students of Olympic College (ASOC), the forum will also feature Olympic College faculty and David Mitchell, president of Olympic College and student leaders.

Master of ceremonies for the event will be Erik Gray, president of the Associated Students of Olympic College. • Effective Nov. 19 the Kitsap Social Security office will be open to the public Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. – a reduction of 30 minutes each weekday. In addition, beginning Jan. 2, the office will close to the public at noon every Wednesday. While agency employees will continue to work their regular hours, this shorter public window will allow them to complete face-toface interviews and process claims work without incurring the cost of overtime. The significantly reduced funding provided by Congress under the continuing resolution for the first six months of the fiscal year makes it impossible for the agency to provide the overtime needed to handle service to the public as it has done in the past. On Nov. 23, the day after Thanksgiving, all Social Security field offices will be closed to the public. As we did last year, employees working that day will focus on reducing backlogged workloads. Most Social Security services do not require a visit to a local office. Many services, including applying for retirement, disability or Medicare benefits, signing up for direct deposit, replacing a Medicare card, obtaining a proof of income letter or informing us of a change of address or telephone number are conveniently available at www.socialsecurity.gov or by dialing our toll-free number, 1-800-772-1213. People who are deaf or hard of hearing may call our TTY number, 1-800-325-0778. Many of our online services also are available in Spanish at www.segurosocial.gov. • KISS: Kitsap Senior Singles meeting at 1 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 25 Sunday at 3201 Pine Road N.E. at the Willows Senior Apartments, first floor. All seniors singles are welcome for a potluck, bring a dish to share. Come and share your friendship, bring cards and games to play. For information call 360-275-3256 or 360-698-1175.

NOVEMBER 24 IS SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY.

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for me…) But for me, the most interesting part was the chance to climb through the small, round airlock underneath the windows and see inside the space shuttle firsthand. Here's what I learned: it's tiny inside. Like, really, really small. The majority of the Orbiter is the 61-foot payload bay. The crew compartment, which routinely housed up to seven astronauts for more than a week at a time, is actually only about 165 square feet of space. There is 100 square feet in the mid-deck, which contains the storage areas, sleeping bags and the galley (a small rectangular box built into the side of the orbiter). Up a short ladder is the flight deck, which contains an additional 65-squarefeet of space. Museum officials led four reporters into the mid-deck at a time and only two-at-atime could climb up to the flight deck. And it was cramped at best. I can't imagine what it must have been like to share that amount of space with six other people for two weeks. There must have been a huge sigh of relief from the astronauts when the International Space Station opened and they had a chance to stretch out a bit in its comparatively roomy environs. Even more surprising though was that the Soyuz capsule, which the Russians have been using for 40 years and is still in use today as the only way to get astronauts and cosmonauts to and from the ISS - is even smaller. It is about the size of a compact sedan.

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Though the FFT never went into space, the 120-foot, wingless wooden mockup does bring something to Seattle that no other location can boast. “This one you get to go inside,” Museum of Flight CEO Douglas King said during a media day that I was fortunate enough to attend. I must admit, when the press release arrived announcing the media day prior to the official grand opening, I jumped at the chance to see the orbiter. I volunteered to write a piece about it for our sister papers located closer to the museum, packed my camera and notebook into the Kia of Justice and never looked back. And I can tell you unequivocally that it was everything I hoped it would be. The FFT sits in the new Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, named for a former Microsoft developer who donated not only money, but an actual Russian Soyuz Capsule he rode into space and back as a "space tourist." It sits in the back of the gallery, part of the "After the Space Shuttle" exhibit that accompanies the FFT. The public is welcome to walk up to the orbiter, as well as through the payload section. There is even a landing simulator to give you an idea of how fast the Shuttle comes in and how precise you have to be to hit a runway from space. (For the record, I nailed it on the "novice" setting, which was admittedly very, very simple as the simulation handled some of the controls