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Why aren’t there coming of age stories for people in their twenties? Why aren’t there stories about young women like me who are chasing their dreams and romance isn’t involved? Where are my stories about young men trying to figure out who they are? 

Why aren’t there stories about people in their twenties who question their gender and their sexuality too? 

Why aren’t there stories about sad and lonely truth about going to university and grad school? Hell, where are my stories about transfer students that are 25 but they’re surround by 18 year olds in class?

Where are my stories where people freak out about their elementary classmates having children already because hey–they still live with mom and dad and getting a job in this economy sucks? Like who takes care of their child? Are they already successful enough to take care of a baby without the help from mom and dad? 

What do I have to do to get a character that’s not sixteen, but somehow through a random occurance, they have to save the world. They’re still innocent enough to have hope, but jaded enough to know that it can go away.

Why are all stories either about teenagers or people with families or trying to start families and all that jazz?

Just…where are there stories about me right now? 24 and trying to the best that I can.

I could really use stories like that. 

You have survived so much.

Extreme Science: Launching Sounding Rockets from The Arctic

This winter, our scientists and engineers traveled to the world’s northernmost civilian town to launch rockets equipped with cutting-edge scientific instruments.

This is the beginning of a 14-month-long campaign to study a particular region of Earth’s magnetic field — which means launching near the poles. What’s it like to launch a science rocket in these extreme conditions?

Our planet is protected by a natural magnetic field that deflects most of the particles that flow out from the Sun — the solar wind — away from our atmosphere. But near the north and south poles, two oddities in Earth’s magnetic field funnel these solar particles directly into our atmosphere. These regions are the polar cusps, and it turns out they’re the ideal spot for studying how our atmosphere interacts with space.

The scientists of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp are using sounding rockets to do their research. Sounding rockets are suborbital rockets that launch to a few hundred miles in altitude, spending a few minutes in space before falling back to Earth. That means sounding rockets can carry sensitive instruments above our atmosphere to study the Sun, other stars and even distant galaxies.

They also fly directly through some of the most interesting regions of Earth’s atmosphere, and that’s what scientists are taking advantage of for their Grand Challenge experiments.

One of the ideal rocket ranges for cusp science is in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, off the coast of Norway and within the Arctic circle. Because of its far northward position, each morning Svalbard passes directly under Earth’s magnetic cusp.

But launching in this extreme, remote environment puts another set of challenges on the mission teams. These launches need to happen during the winter, when Svalbard experiences 24/7 darkness because of Earth’s axial tilt. The launch teams can go months without seeing the Sun.

Like for all rocket launches, the science teams have to wait for the right weather conditions to launch. Because they’re studying upper atmospheric processes, some of these teams also have to wait for other science conditions, like active auroras. Auroras are created when charged particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere — often triggered by solar storms or changes in the solar wind — and they’re related to many of the upper-atmospheric processes that scientists want to study near the magnetic cusp.

But even before launch, the extreme conditions make launching rockets a tricky business — it’s so cold that the rockets must be encased in styrofoam before launch to protect them from the low temperatures and potential precipitation.

When all is finally ready, an alarm sounds throughout the town of Ny-Ålesund to alert residents to the impending launch. And then it’s up, up and away! This photo shows the launch of the twin VISIONS-2 sounding rockets on Dec. 7, 2018 from Ny-Ålesund.

These rockets are designed to break up during flight — so after launch comes clean-up. The launch teams track where debris lands so that they can retrieve the pieces later.

The next launch of the Grand Challenge Initiative is AZURE, launching from Andøya Space Center in Norway in April 2019.

 For even more about what it’s like to launch science rockets in extreme conditions, check out one scientist’s notes from the field: https://go.nasa.gov/2QzyjR4

For updates on the Grand Challenge Initiative and other sounding rocket flights, visit nasa.gov/soundingrockets or follow along with NASA Wallops and NASA heliophysics on Twitter and Facebook.

@NASA_Wallops | NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility | @NASASun | NASA Sun Science

Anxiety attacks aren’t always hyperventilating and rocking back and forth

Anxiety attacks can take different forms, such as:

Unpredictable bouts of rage or irritability

Nit-pickiness (obsessive behavior, which may be a part of OCD), and even a hypersensitivity to disarray, chaos, or any sort of change

Fast-talking, stuttering, stumbling over words

Not talking at all

Sitting rigid, staring into space, almost seeming “zoned out”

Understanding the way our or other’s anxiety works can help to decrease the stigma and help to calm a person faster and get them out of that state. These are just a few, but it gives an idea of the range in which attacks can come.

*hears a noise in my house* well not sure if that was real or a hallucination but I sure am gonna be paranoid about it!

[chokes back tears] oh god

some positive doodles for my fellow psychotics

could be paranoia-inducing i think so please tag accordingly!