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Results tagged ' ALCS '
Boy, This Game Takes You Back Sometimes
As I watched the Yankees record the final out of the ALCS tonight and advanced to the World Series to face the Philadelphia Phillies, I couldn't help to be transported back a full decade (or even more) to my youth.
As a youngster in the late 1990s, my Twins were the scourge of the American League, so come playoff time I would always latch onto another team to root for. This most often ended up being the team playing the Yankees at the time, as I despised their large-market spending and arrogant owner. Plus, it was always that same core of guys (1996-2001) who were nearly impossible to beat.
A decade+ later, four of those same guys (well five, if you count former Yankee catcher Joe Girardi, now managing the club) are still doing their thing…Derek Jeter still gets all the clutch hits, Jorge Posada keeps chugging along, Andy Pettitte never loses a big game, and Mariano Rivera is absolutely incredible.
Thus, while I still cannot bring myself to actively root for the Yanks, I do have more than a grudging respect for those four players…guys who play the game the right way and deserve any more rings they can get on their fingers.
World Series Failing? Let Rivalries Develop
This week, while reading an article in Sports Illustrated magazine, I came across a rather lengthy article (although I cannot recall by whom) discussing how the World Series needs to re-establish its place as the crown-jewel of the baseball season, as in recent seasons (most dramatically this year) the event has lost huge viewership numbers, even losing to the NBA Finals in some seasons. The author of the article layed out a few solutions to the problem, such as starting games earlier (so kids and working adults can watch them), speeding up pitching changes, and doing something to take bad weather out of the equation (like mandating that all new parks be built with a retractable roof). However, I had a much different response to that article that I wanted to share on this blog…
To me, the drop in World Series luster in the recent years has, ironically, been caused by baseball's biggest accomplishment…parity (eight different teams have played in the World Series the past four years). Think back to when the World Series was a premiere event…it was because the New York Yankees were dominating and everyone either loved them or loved to hate them. Realistically, the Yankees' last playoff hurrah was in 2004 (when the Red Sox made their improbable comeback)…since then, the World Series just hasn't been the same in terms of viewership (the Sox got a boost from beating the Yanks, of course).
So, at least in my mind, the best way to return to a star-studded World Series again is to let a big-market team dominate the playing field again. However, I am terribly opposed to that sort of economic structure (despite the excitement it brings to the playoffs, as who didn't have a rooting interest in the Yankees either way over the past decade?!), so here is what I think is the next best solution…let the natural MLB rivalries develop.
Historically, the ALCS and NLCS series' have often been more dramatic as the World Series just due to the fact that both teams (being in the same league) know each other so well. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, such rivalries as Cardinals-Astros, Braves-Mets, Yankees-Red Sox, and even Yankees-Rangers (for Texas' first-round futility against the Bombers) really fueled the postseason structure, creating steam for a big World Series matchup. Because, even though the WS does not, by definition, precipitate geographic rivalries, it can be made more exciting by teams that just came off a thrilling victory. Growing up, I was always very anti-Yankees and anti-Braves (because I despised the advantages of large market teams over "my" Twins), but that "hatred" of those teams made me watch them all the more just to see them get beat! I think the same principle could apply to MLB today, but we just have to let a few rivalries play out.
For example, Red Sox-Rays (as pictured above) could be big for years to come, while White Sox-Twins also has potential In the NL, the Phillies and Dodgers may "get up" for each other after that spirited NLCS, while the Cubs and Cardinals are always at each other's throats. Plus, who knows where new rivalries will emerge. Just last year, no one would have ever thought Sox-Rays would turn interesting, but look what happened. From my experience with the AL Central, the Twins and Royals have quite a rivalry, but it will only gain attention if the Royals win a few more games (Yikes!).
Thus, I don't think that there is a "quick fix" to restoring luster to the World Series. I would love to see games start earlier and pitching changes go a bit quicker, but that alone will not restore interest…only teams, players, and the rivalries between them.
I Don't Believe What I Just Saw
Last night, as I sat down to watch the Boston Red Sox take on the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 7 of the ALCS, I was rooting for the Sawx to win the AL pennant. I just know a lot more about the Sox and figured it would be more interesting to see them back in the World Series then the upstart Rays. When the final out was recorded (remarkably, in favor of Tampa Bay), however, I found myself feeling good for the improbable Rays franchise for two reasons: seeing former Twins succeed, and seeing a franchise that never should have been winning something significant.
I have been closely following major league baseball since 1998 (the whole McGwire-Sosa thing, you know), the same year the then Devil Rays (along with the Arizona Diamondbacks) were introduced into the game. Within a few years, once the Rays organization had time to prove to me how inept they were, I made the prediction that the Rays would never win a significant championship in the history of their franchise. I though this for two reasons: First, the Tampa Bay area really isn't suited for a major league baseball franchise, as the fan support is terrible (too much sun in Florida, I think). Second, they play in what amounts to the high-rollers division of the American League…the AL East. While the Yankees, Sox, and Orioles (although you would never know it considering how many bad decisions they make with it) have incredible streams of revenue, the Blue Jays and Rays are pretty much left in their dust. To me, the chances of someone other than New York or Boston winning the AL East were as good as someone knocking the New England Patriots off the top of their weak NFL division the last few years.
So, as the final out was recorded last night, I was glad to see the Rays bring at least some happiness to the few fans in TB who follow them with a passion (like I do my Twins). Also, I was happy for former Twins Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett (and Grant Balfour, I guess) for their winning performance. Garza clashed with enough Twins coaches to make his departure imminent, but I don't begrudge him for that, as the Twins have a very strict organizational stance on pitchers that Garza didn't feel he could work within. I liken it to the Twins telling David Ortiz to push the ball into an often wide-open left field, something he wasn't going to do and thus needed a new team to start fresh with. As for Bartlett, he never really played up to his true potential for the Twins, so I'm glad to see him step up and become a leader for another club.
Finally, I was wondering throughout last night's game what team the Twins (and specifically manager Ron Gardenhire) were cheering for. At first, I thought that perhaps the bitterness at losing Garza and Bartlett would have them leaning towards Boston, but then I consider things further and reached a different conclusion. Being a Little League coach for three years in my home town, my face always lit up when a former player experienced success elsewhere, so I bet a guy like Gardy (and a close-knit team like the Twins) were rooting for their old pals.
All season long I doubted the Rays. First, their ability to win the AL East, and second their ability to advance deep into the postseason. They have proven me wrong at every turn, and I now finally believe they have a shot at accomplishing the unthinkable…winning a World Series championship. If I were the Devil right now, I'd start getting the heaters installed, as things could get a bit chilly down there if the Rays have their way this week.
Coaching Staff: The Great Motivator
In my mind, there are two areas in which a MLB manager should be judged: Ability to motivate players, and game strategists. I would like to evaluate Twins manager Ron Gardenhire on both those characteristics:
As far as motivating players, Gardy may just be the best in the business. With his down-to-earth (yet effectively intense) attitude, Gardy gains the respect of his players, which is nice to have over a six-month season. Plus, with the kind of turnaround that major league rosters currently endure, the ability to incorporate new faces into the clubhouse is an invaluable skill.
On the game strategy side, I think Gardy is a bit lacking in one key area: pitching management. In my mind, Gardy is much too careful with his pitchers, often overworking the bullpen as a result. Rarely does Gardy ever just let a starter (much to the chagrin of TV broadcaster Bert Blyleven) even come close to finish what he started. He also plays the lefty-righty percentages a little more than I would like (instead of going with the "hot hand"), but he has had success with that strategy in the past, so I'm not too frustrated about that.
All in all, Gardy is a great skipper to lead a team like the Twins that, just because of their small-market nature, will always have a high turnover rate in players, thus needing a strong leader in the corner spot of the dugout to keep the ship afloat.
So, that concludes my review of the 2008 Minnesota Twins. Despite not making the '08 playoffs, the Twins took a huge step forward (in a year they were expected not to compete whatsoever) in player development and have just as good a chance as anyone else in the AL Central division to take the '09 crown if they can shore up one key area: the bullpen. It was a great season with many great memories, and that is what I will take from the 2008 Minnesota Twins experience.
Coming up in later posts will be my thoughts on the AL Champion Tampa Bay Rays, as well as a World Series prediction.
RP: You Are The Weakest Link…Goodbye?
Although the 2008 Minnesota Twins season was effectively ended on a Jim Thome home run in game number 163, the season realistically slipped away during the month of August, when the bullpen inexplicably failed to record any key outs (even Joe Nathan included, for a time) and lost game after game in the late innings. Any major league manager will tell you that any competitive team needs to have at least a decent bullpen, and right now that is about the only weak link (albeit a major weakness) for the Twins to potential shore up over the offseason. A quick look at how the major relievers fared in '08:
Joe Nathan (67.7 IP, 39 SV, 1.33 ERA): Despite a shaky spell in mid-August, Nathan was by and large the most dominant closer outside of Anaheim's Francisco Rodriguez for the majority of the season. No reason to be concerned here.
Matt Guerrier (76.3, 5.19): After Pat Neshek went down with a season-ending injury, Guerrier stepped up as an ace setup man, bridging the gap to the dominant Joe Nathan. Alas, Guerrier completely crumbled as the season progressed, getting to the point where he was pretty much "off limits" in crucial games down the stretch. His mindset is probably what needs the most soothing heading into '09, as he was really messed up at the end of this year.
Dennys Reyes (46.3, 2.33): Reyes turned in a decent season out of the pen (his numbers are tricky, as he rarely throws to enough batters per inning to factor into the earned runs), but needs to work on one crucial area: control. When facing good hitters in pressure situations, Reyes would often throw terrible wild pitchers (ones Joe Mauer wouldn't have a chance at stopping) and letting runners move up. So, batters would then key on the strikes and blast them, as Reyes would practically have to throw the ball right down the middle to be confidant of getting it in the strike zone.
Jesse Crain (62.7, 3.59): Crain can throw harder than any of the Twins' current middle relievers, but still completely wilts in pressure-packed situations (think of LaTroy Hawkins trying to close in 2001). He far and away led the team in walk-off hits given up, due (like Reyes) to shoddy control, allowing batters to tee off on the pitches thrown down the pipe to prevent walks. The one hope for Crain is that '08 was his first season back from arm surgery, so perhaps he was still just getting himself back into playing condition (although I don't think so).
Craig Breslow: (38.7, 1.63): All in all, Breslow (acquired in mid-season from the Cleveland Indians) was probably the most consistent reliever of the bunch. He didn't pitch many innings, but got the job done more often than not.
As if those less than thrilling reports weren't bad enough, three more Twins relievers (Brian Bass, Juan Rincon, and Eddie Guardado) turned out to be complete busts, with no chance of returning in 2009 (Bass and Rincon are already gone).
There is, however, at least some hope on the horizon. Pat Neshek, the side-winding righty that is so difficult to figure out, will be back in '09, while young Jose Mijares impressed many people in crucial late-season 2008 action. If those guys can come back strong, perhaps the Reyes', Crain's, and Guerrier's of the world can better settle into their own specific roles.
Playoff Notes:
-Is there anyone alive out there right now who DOESN'T think the Boston Red Sox are going to advance to the World Series by beating the Rays tonight?! Here is the starting pitching matchup: Jon Lester (16-6, 3.21) vs. Matt Garza (11-9, 3.70). The Sox are just following their typical playoff pattern…dominate the ALDS, come from way behind in the ALCS, then dominate the World Series. Will it continue? I think so.
CF: Spick and Span? Not With Go-Go.
When Torii Hunter (arguably the most popular Twin since their rise to prominence in 2001) left for the Anaheim Angels via free agency after the 2007 season, a gap hole was left in center field at the Metrodome. After an intense Spring Training competition for the job between Carlos Gomez (acquired from the Mets in the Johan Santana trade), Denard Span (the heir apparent to Hunter's job until he struggled in the minor leagues), and Jason Pridie (a cast-off from the Rays who had a great spring). Although Span seemed the more polished of the three come April, "Go-Go" Gomez was named the starter due to his almost unbelievable speed and the excitement he brought to the club and their fans on a daily basis.
For the first few months of the season, Go-Go was indeed the most exciting player on the team, whether it was streaking to catch balls out in the field or flying around the basepaths after driving the ball into the gap. As the season stretched on, however, pitchers began to learn how to pitch to the rookie Gomez, and the strikeouts and terrible at-bats began piling up. At one point, Ron Gardenhire considered benching the fiery youngster (after dropping him from 1st to 8th or 9th in the order), but Carlos likely saw his job saved when Michael Cuddyer went down with an injury, and Span (the guy who would have taken over in CF) came up to replace him instead.
Gomez did finish the season on a high note, and his stats are respectable for essentially a first-year player: 577 AB, 79 R, .258 BA, 33 SB. However, he also struck out a near Twins-record 142 times and also was prone to defensive lapses in CF from time to time. His blazing speed and cannon arm more often than not made up for his mistakes, but too many times would a ball roll right under his legs or he would juggle the ball at a crucial moment.
Of course, Gomez would still be penciled in as the starting CF in 2009 if not for the emergence of Span (who will be moved back to his natural position when Cuddyer returns next year). During the 2008 season, Span manned the leadoff spot in the order like no Twin has done since Shannon Stewart, working deep into counts, drawing walks, and spraying the ball all over the field. In 347 at-bats, Span hit .294 with 70 R, 50 BB, 102 H, and 18 SB. Whereas Gomez struggled in the pressure of the leadoff spot, Span thrived. Defensively, Span made some of the most athletic catches ever seen in the Metrodome, and also has a rifle arm.
So, with Cuddyer (and his shiny, long-term contract) coming back to man RF in 2009 (as he should), it should be an interesting battle for the centerfield spot. Whereas Span seems to be ready right now, Gomez is a remarkable young talent whose potential is the teflon roof. Knowing Gardy, each player will get their share of ABs in 2009, although a riskier move would be to deal one of them for a relief pitcher that the club so desperately needs (to be discussed later).
Playoff Notes:
-Perhaps it is time I stop doubting the Rays, as their 13-4 crushing of the Red Sox tonight leaves them one game away from the World Series. I still think the series will need to go back to Tampa to be concluded, but now the Red Sox are up against the wall and will find it extremely difficult to beat the young Tampa club three times in a row.
3B: The Platoon
During spring 2008, the Minnesota Twins were counting on Mike Lamb (like Adam Everett, also acquired from the Houston Astros) to man the hot corner and, more importantly, provide some pop to the offense with his seasoned bat. Neither occurred (Lamb played below-average defense and hit just .233), and within a few months the platoon of Brian Buscher and Brendan Harris took over the third stop.
Buscher (a lefty) hit .294 in just 218 at-bats and proved to be an RBI machine (47 in 70 games). His defense was a bit shaky earlier one, but tightened up as the season progressed into September.
Harris (a righty) moved to third after being exiled from both second and short on a starting basis. Harris played against lefties (and a good share of righties), hitting .265 in 434 at-bats. Harris tended to be a streaky player, going through stretches where he seemed to get all the key hits, followed by slumps that would find Buscher even starting against left-handers.
Personally, I would like to see the Busch Man installed as the everyday third baseman. I feel that he gives the lineup more pop, and his defense will only get better. The key, though, is how Buscher progresses in his development. At the end of 2008, Buscher struggled for the most part, so perhaps pitchers are figuring him out and now he needs to make the adjustment. Thus, Harris is very much worth keeping. If Buscher fails to produce up to expectations, Harris is still a prospect to keep an eye on, as he is still pretty young.
Fan response to the 2008 Twins may lean towards signing a third baseman with a little more pop in his bat than the unproven Harris or the youngster Buscher, but knowing the Twins' budget a move will almost certainly not be made. We'll have to rely on one (or both) of those two players to improve on their '08 campaign.
Playoff Notes:
-Boy, the Rays sure surprised me by thumping the Red Sox today 9-1. I never thought I'd see the day when the Tampa Bay baseball organization would make a World Series appearance, but now the world is just two more victories away from that exact feat.
-Right now, the Phillies and Dodgers are just winding down a crazy contest that I believe has featured a lead change every time a run has been scored! It is currently 7-5 Philly in the top of the ninth, but in a game like this nothing is over until the final at-bat.


text: This is Zazzle UK's Grill Master Barbecue home products page, in which you'll find a lovely assortment of Grill Master Barbecue designs set up for customisation or purchase. Almost all Zazzle products are made within 24 hours. Several of the best selling home decor items on Zazzle are keepsake boxes and pillows. Personalise home decor orders of all sizes. Upload your designs at no cost! To browse more products, please take a look at our main grill master barbecue page.

subset: commoncrawl


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Byron Keith Lee
Position: LB
Height: 6-2 Weight: 230 lbs.
Born: September 8, 1964 in Columbus, OH
High School: Eastmoor
College: Ohio St. (school history)
Drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 7th round (176th overall) of the 1986 NFL Draft.
Weighted Career AV (100-95-...): 1 (13070th overall since 1950)
Our primary support comes from users like you. Sponsor this page for $5. Your message will replace this ad.
Output includes all games from 1920 to 2015.


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Right. So I finally took some time and energy from other stuff (sports, enjoying the air, juggling, playing with Blender, working for clients, and so on) and spent a few hours getting back in touch with Gforge development.
First, now that my contract with Tim Perdue of the Gforge Group is done, I'm allowed to release my work to the general public. I therefore present you gforge-plugin-scmsvn, gforge-plugin-ldapextauth, and gforge-plugin-scmccase. The first is the much-awaited support for Subversion as an SCM for Gforge (in addition to CVS), the second is the code allowing to delegate authentication to an external LDAP directory, the third one is for Clear Case (and you don't want to use it). These three plugins have been committed to the gforge.org CVS (available at :pserver:firstname.lastname@example.com:/cvsroot/gforge if you want to check them out), and I uploaded them to my unofficial apt repository. Feel free to fix bugs in them, and send patches.
Then, Gforge proper. It's been weeks (months?) since I last followed Gforge upstream development, so I had to get back in touch, see what had changed, that sort of thing. Especially since Sarge is near, at some point after that I'll have to upload the new Gforge upstream releases to Sid (or experimental, at least).
Well, uuuurgh. It seems people have been evil while I was away.
My Perl script for reliable database upgrades has been perverted to call an external PHP script, without checking for its results, then happily proceed to whatever is next on the upgrade task list. So the table that reliably said "the database is now using version <foo> of the schema, which means all operations to upgrade to it have succeeded" now says "the database is now using version <foo> of the schema" even though some unspecified operations have failed, or been ignored, or forgotten, or whatever. Yay for dependability.
It's frightening enough already, but while I was investigating the need for that PHP script, I discovered that it's used to rename the forums. Yay. [0-9a-z_-] only from now on, no other characters. Bye bye i18n, bye bye user choice, bye bye user friendliness. I call that a regression. Imagine you have a forum named フォーラム, it'll be automagically be renamed to ----- (or maybe even ---------------, I didn't check). Lovely, eh?
Ah, but there was a reason for this renaming, wasn't there? Oh yes, there was: the forums now have email addresses. So the posts that are sent to you when you monitor them come From: Joe Bloggs <firstname.lastname@example.com>. Nice. So now BBDB asks me whether it should remember that address as a new address for Joe Bloggs everytime I read a post. And I assume there will be a problem when Joe Sixpack, who also posts to the forum, ends up with the same email address.
And why do the forums have email addresses? Presumably because you'd want to post to them by email! So what's the point of having users and passwords, if anyon can post under anyone's name? I'm even told there is similar evilness in the trackers (where anyone can post anything to any tracker simply by forging email headers). Hah.
And I fear there are other "tricks" along these lines in all the code I haven't had a look at, or heard about, yet.
So I assume people shouldn't expect too much of Gforge 4.0. Either I manage to get the release delayed until after things have been unbroken, in which case 4.0 won't be out for a couple of months, or I don't, and 4.0 will be crappy. This applies to both upstream Gforge and the Debian packages for it. In other words: every help is welcome for the packaging, because I fear this is going to end up in an ugly mess.
On a more positive note: Wichert Akkerman has been working on a replacement for our LDAP setup, whereby both Exim/Postfix and PAM/NSS would use the database directly rather than an intermediate LDAP directory. If/when that comes out, that's going to get us rid of the single most troublesome part of the packaging. So yay for him!


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Tupperware Brands said its board declared a regular quarterly dividend of 62c per share, up 72% from the previous quarterly dividend of 36c per share. It is payable on April 5, to shareholders of record as of March 20. The company also increased its target payout ratio from approximately one-third to 50% of trailing diluted earnings per share, excluding items, and continues to expect that its board will consider increasing the quarterly dividend with its declaration in the first quarter of each year.
- Finance
- Investment & Company Information


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The Longwood Police Department is comprised of 48 law enforcement officers and support staff providing 24 hour coverage to the City's residents, business community and visitors. The police department utilizes Uniform Road Patrol, Traffic Enforcement, Criminal Investigations, Community Relations, K-9, Code Enforcement/Field Services and School Resource Programs to enforce all state and local laws, while also protecting the lives and property of the citizens of Longwood. The Longwood Police Department believes in a duty to A.C.T. through accountability, consistency and transparency.
Location: 235 West Church Avenue Longwood, Florida 32750
Administrative Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm
Administrative Office Telephone: (407) 260-3400
24 hr Non-Emergency Telephone: (407) 339-1297
Fingerprinting: **Pursuant to an FBI and FDLE mandate, hard copy fingerprint cards will
no longer be accepted as of April 1, 2012. In order to comply with this
new procedure, the Longwood Police Department will only be able to
process fingerprint cards for those wishing to apply for a Concealed
Weapons Permit through the Department of Agriculture and Consumer
Services. ALL others should visit the Altamonte Springs Police
Department. A valid Florida photo ID/Driver's license is required; call (407) 571-8463 before you go.**
Fingerprinting is done on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1pm-3pm. Longwood Residents (Must Show ID)-Free Non-Residents-$15.00 Cash ONLY
Officers of the Longwood Police Department are prohibited from engaging in the practice of bias-based profiling. Bias-based profiling is defined as the selection of individuals based solely on a trait common to a group for enforcement action. This includes but is not limited to: race, ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, religion, economic status, age, cultural group or any other identifiable group.
The officers only conduct traffic stops, field contacts, and other enforcement efforts on individuals based upon the existence and accumulation of reasonable suspicion, probable cause or other legal tactics.
While the agency does engage in asset forfeiture efforts in accordance with the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act, any seizures and/or forfeiture efforts based solely upon bias based profiling are prohibited.
All officers have received training in bias-based profiling issues that included legal aspects as set forth by Florida Statutes and the Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission.
The Longwood Police Department is attempting to educate the citizens of our community and make everyone aware bias-based profiling will not be tolerated within the Longwood Police Department. Should any complaints of bias-based profiling be made, or come to light, they will be taken very seriously and investigated thoroughly. The purpose of this statement is to make all citizens aware of our agency position on this topic.
The Longwood Police Department is a progressive and professional law enforcement agency, which strives to provide its members with the best equipment and benefits available.
Current benefits for the position of POLICE OFFICER:
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Bad news and (some very limited) good news out of Copenhagen
Was the conference a bust, a success, a waste of time, or something else?
Hot air, cold facts clash at Copenhagen climate meet
Sarah Palin, climate change "skeptics," Al Gore and an island nation that may disappear under the sea - all are weighing in as world leaders debate what to do about global warming.
Worker co-ops, the Blue Green Alliance and Mondragon
Are worker owned co-ops sponsored by Mondragon of Spain, the United Steel Workers (USW), and the Blue Green Alliance (BGA) the future of alternative energy production in the U.S.?
Ice, snow, so where's the global warming?
As winter weather hits, many people confuse the current weather (cold) with the long-term direction of the climate (warmer).


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The Orange Ride to Invesco Field
Submitted by Kris Thompson on
By Ben Welnak (Twitter at @Bwelnak), with contributions by Piep Van Heuven (Executive Director of BikeDenver) and photos by Jason McRoy
Photo Credit: Jason McRoy
The 1st Annual Orange Ride to the Broncos game on Sunday, October 17th was a success! About 600 riders took advantage of the beautiful Autumn weather and free admission (an $8 value) to the Bronco Barn for food, drinks, and giveaways prior to the Broncos versus New York Jets game by participating in the inaugural ride.
The Broncos Orange Ride was a collaborative effort organized by the Denver Broncos, the City of Denver, BikeDenver, Denver B-Cycle, and the Denver Cruisers as part of the Denver Broncos Game Plan Green Program (see DenverBroncos.com/gameplangreen). The program strives to promote sustainable practices at INVESCO Field at Mile High in partnership with Xcel Energy, Round2, and RecycOil. The Orange Ride became a reality with a press release by the City of Denver and the Broncos on October 11th. Rides were organized into "pelotons" from four locations around the city, including Ginn Mill, Gov's Park, Crimson & Gold Tavern. Leading one of the pelotons to the game was Denver Mayor, John Hickenlooper. His peleton of 50 riders was a great group and showed the true spirit of the event. The other peleton leaders were Ellen Hart Pena, City Councilwoman Carla Madison, ex-Bronco Rich Karlis, and DJ Eliot Lipp.
With the wide array of cyclists in the community, great bike path access, and a growing interest in commuting, the initial expectations weren't all that clear. "We weren't completely sure what to expect, but we had every expectation that the organized rides, the VIP ride with the Mayor, and the VIP bike parking would be well-utilized. We thought we'd see about 500 riders in the planned rides and 750-1,000 bikes at VIP bike parking and in fact, it turned out that these were accurate estimates. We also planned for a possible "bike tsunami", because we knew the Broncos and the bicycling community could reach so many people via our various communication vehicles. We had additional parade barricades set up for free (outside the supevised bike corral) and a secure bike parade in case we reached capacity for supervised bike parking," notes Piep van Heuven, Executive Director of BikeDenver.
Sandy Young, the Denver Broncos Senior Marketing Manager praised the ride, saying "The Denver Broncos were proud to partner with the City of Denver, Denver B-cycle, the Denver Cruisers, and BikeDenver for the first annual Orange Ride. The Broncos not only support alternative transportation to Broncos games, but also encourage fans to participate in healthy activities throughout Colorado. It was fun to see so many Broncos fans ride their bikes and watch the Broncos game together from the Broncos Barn afterwards. The Orange Ride is part of the Denver Broncos Game Plan Green program helping promote sustainable practices at INVESCO Field at Mile High in partnership with Xcel Energy, ROUND2 and recycOil." Brad Evans of the Denver Cruisers said, "To have this many folks show up on bikes and to have each of our groups collaborate to show how easy it is to alter the habits all of us have become so accustomed to (getting every where via the auto) is awesome. First time out the gate to have this many participants is heroic!"
Photo Credit: Jason McRoy
Steve Sander, the Director of Strategic Marketing for the City of Denver was also happy with the result, "The perfect fall weather made things totally enjoyable for all the cyclists and volunteers so we have a lot to be thankful for. I hope it serves as another reminder that professional sports, regardless of wins or losses, can take a leadership role in helping to promote an active healthy community that includes a big focus on multi-modal transportation. For that we are very grateful for the opportunity to work with the Denver Broncos on this project. A HUGE shout out to the entire Broncos staff, Piep and all the BikeDenver volunteers, Brad and his team from the Cruisers who did an amazing job of organizing and leading the rides, Amanda and Andrea from Denver-B-cycle, Brent and Val from the City, and the folks at SA Elite for throwing a great reception for the VIP ride."
Piep van Heuven was happy with the result, adding "It was fantastic to see all the bikes roll into the VIP bike parking area right at the main entrance of Invesco. We're really proud of our volunteers who helped organize the entrance and exit process and monitor access to the Broncos Barn where bicyclists were treated to free entry and reduced prices on food and beverages, while they enjoyed watching NFL games, and of course, the Broncos versus Jets on the multiple screens in the venue. It was another great day to ride a bike in Denver!"
The event was well organized, the weather was phenomenal, and, based on the particpation, the next one will only be better! Keep an eye out for the 2011 version next football season!
For more information on rides, commuting, and the Denver cycling community, please check out www.BikeDenver.org.


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March 30, 2013
STANFORD, Calif. - Stanford was looking for a spark. And the Cardinal got it, but not the result.
After three consecutive losses in which it didn't even win a set, Stanford took drastic actions. Coach John Kosty started one player for the first time as a collegian, another for the second, and another for the third. All were freshmen. A fourth player started for just the fourth time.
In another environment, this would be considered shock treatment.
And dutifully shocked, the Cardinal clawed back from a two-set deficit to force a fifth, only to fall short against No. 3 Long Beach State, 25-10, 25-23, 18-25, 21-25, 15-6, in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation men's volleyball action at Maples Pavilion on Saturday.
Brian Cook had 17 kills and Steven Irvin had a double-double in kills and digs to help fuel the Stanford rally.
The No. 6 Cardinal (12-10 overall) snapped its consecutive-set loss streak at 11 when it captured the third against Long Beach, but extended its match-loss streak to four, which is the Cardinal's longest since dropping the final six of the 2007 season.
But the manner of its play is what caught coach Kosty's attention.
"We've got to find the right chemistry and demeanor for our team to be successful," Kosty said. "We were not on a good streak. We needed to find out who can play for us night in and night out."
Stanford had better find out quick because the Cardinal dropped into eighth place with five matches to play. The top eight of 13 qualify for the MPSF tournament, which determines the conference's only automatic berth into the NCAA tournament.
At 9-10 in the MPSF, Stanford is among five teams within two in the loss column occupying fifth through ninth place.
"Once we get into the playoffs, anything can happen," Kosty said. "But it's going to be a battle to get there."
The Cardinal was encouraged by Cook, who had eight kills in the fourth set and hit .353 for the match. And Irvin bounced back from difficult match Friday during a sweep at the hands of Cal State Northridge and had 10 kills and 11 digs.
Daniel Tublin had eight kills and five blocks in his fourth career start. Gabriel Vega had a career-high three kills in his first career start, and Conrad Kaminski, another true freshman, provided six kills in his second start, plus a .667 hitting percentage and five block assists in the middle. His previous collegiate best for kills was three.
In a nutshell, that's what Kosty was looking for.
"We're back on track," he said. "I'm very excited for the rest of the season."
Perhaps the best part of Kaminski's game was his consistency, providing big plays on offense and defense throughout the match. He had appeared in only 10 sets and played through all five on Saturday.
"I love his passion," Kosty said of the middle from New Berlin, Wis. "He loves to play volleyball. He loves to learn. He was solid at the net and served the ball well tonight. I thought he had a really nice match against a really tough eam."
Of course, Cook had the type of match that he's been accustomed to having in his first season as the Cardinal's go-to offensive force. But Long Beach State (19-7, 15-6) hit an errorless .750 in the fifth set and the Cardinal, which cooled off to .188 in that set, couldn't keep pace.
"I thought we had a good opportunity to beat Long Beach, but they played an almost perfect fifth set," Kosty said. "It's tough to beat a team when they play almost perfect."
Stanford can look to the positives – the team indeed showed the life, effort, and intensity it had been lacking. But …
"It was a good all-around match," Kosty said. "But it would have been nice to get the win."
-- David Kiefer, Stanford Athletics


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Korolev created the first Soviet rockets and spacecraft. He was portrayed for years as a legendary, iconographic figure that single-handedly was responsible for the early Soviet victories in the space race. He was singularly responsible for creating the first long range ballistic missiles, the first space launchers, the first artificial satellite, and putting the first man in space. His premature death led to his name and accomplishments being made public, while those of other chief designers of rockets and satellites remained secret. This resulted in an exaggerated perception that he occupied a uniquely central position in rocketry and spaceflight. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the lives and roles of other important figures in Soviet became known in great detail. In the process a more balanced view of Korolev became possible.
Korolev's story was inextricably bound up in the deep passions and resentments of the three titans of Soviet space rocketry - Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, Vladimir Nikolayev Chelomei, and Valentin Petrovich Glushko. Each had his own patrons in the Kremlin hierarchy and Politburo. Each had been deeply scarred and mishandled by the Soviet system. Each was very sure that his technical and management approach was superior. The depth of their passions in their struggle for ascendancy can scarcely be imagined.
Korolev was born to a Russian literature teacher in the town of Zhitomir in the Ukraine. He was fascinated with aircraft at an early age and became a pilot. At the age of 17 he had designed his first glider, the K-5. After attending the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, he went on to the Moscow Higher Technical University (MVTU). There he was involved in design and construction of an increasingly ambitious series of gliders, culminating in the SK-4, designed for record duration flights in the stratosphere. He became interested in the possibilities of rocket-propelled aircraft and in September 1931, together with Tsander, founded the Moscow rocketry organisation GIRD (Group for Investigation of Reactive Motion).
Similar efforts were underway abroad. In America the secretive Robbert Goddard had already flown his first liquid propellant rockets. In Germany the VfR (Verein fuer Raumschiiffahrt - Society for Spaceship Travel) was testing liquid fuelled rockets of increasing size. The VfR collapsed in 1933 as its members chose to leave the country or begin work for the Nazi government. The members that remained finally developed the A-4 (V-2) missile, the basis for all liquid fuel rockets to follow. In America the potential of his Goddard's work was unrecognised. He finally had to close up his New Mexico test range and develop small auxiliary rockets for the Navy.
In Russia, GIRD was launching the Soviet Union's first liquid-propelled rockets, the GIRD-9 and GIRD-10. GIRD lasted only two years before the military, seeing the potential of rockets, replaced it with the RNII (Reaction Propulsion Scientific Research Institute). Glushko was brought from Leningrad to head rocket engine design at RNII, while Korolev was in charge of airframes. They developed a series of rocket-propelled missiles and gliders during the 1930's, culminating in Korolev's RP-318, Russia's first rocket propelled manned aircraft, powered by Glushko's ORM-65 rocket engine.
Before the aircraft could make a rocket propelled flight, Korolev and Glushko were thrown into the Soviet prison system in 1938 during the peak of Stalin's insane purges. Glushko was arrested on March 23. Korolev, denounced by Glushko, was arrested on June 7 and sentenced to ten years hard labour on 27 September. He spent On 10 July 1940 he was sentenced to work in the Kolyma gold mines, a virtual death sentence to the most dreaded part of the Gulag. However Stalin had recognised the importance of aeronautical engineers in preparing for the impending war with Hitler. A system of sharashkas (prison design bureaux) was set up to exploit jailed talent. Korolev was saved by the intervention of senior aircraft designer Sergei Tupolev, himself a prisoner, who requested his services in the TsKB-39 sharashka. In September 1940, his health already ruined, he was transferred to work at Tupolev's bureau in Moscow. Korolev was not allowed to work on rockets except at night on his own time. His RP-318 had flown on 28 February 1940, without his involvement.
In 1942, after Tupolev's team was evacuated to Omsk, Korolev was transferred to TsKB-16 in Kazan where he served as Deputy Director for Flight Testing (although still officially a prisoner). Here he was able to return to development of rockets for aircraft and missile propulsion. In November 1944 Korolev was given charge of a team of 60 engineers and required to provide a draft project for a Soviet counterpart to the V-2 within three days. The resulting two-stage design used Lox/Alcohol propellants and an autopilot for guidance. These designs evolved into the more refined D-1 and D-2 rockets with a 75 km range.
With the war over, the immense progress that the Von Braun team had made in rocketry became apparent. Provided nearly unlimited funds, the Germans had developed the 300 km range V-2 missile, which was a decade ahead of the Soviet designs. The Russian engineers that first inspected the recovered remains of a V-2 called it 'that which cannot be'.
Stalin, fascinated with the technology, was quite annoyed that the Peenemuende team had gone over to the Americans and that American intelligence had managed to loot most of the V-2 factories and rockets, even in the Russian zone. Russian teams were sent seize available equipment and information as early as April 1945. Korolev was released from the Kazan sharashka and was in Germany from August 1945. At first he merely accompanying the team that salvaged what was left. He was present (under guard, outside the fence, while Glushko was part of the official delegation inside) at the British 'Operation Backfire' launch of a V-2 from Altenwaide on 15 October 1945. He interviewed dozens of V-2 engineers and technicians still in Germany.
On May 13, 1946 Stalin signed the decree beginning development of Soviet ballistic missiles. The Minister of Armaments, Dmitir Fedorovich Ustinov, was put in charge. In August 1946, the Scientific Research Institute NII-88 was established to copy the V-2 missile. Although not fully rehabilitated, Korolev's piercing personality and organisational abilities had clearly been impressive, and Ustinov personally appointed him Chief Constructor NII-88. Glushko was named head of GDL-OKB to design engines for Korolev's rockets. Following Korolev's selection, 234 German employees of the Mittelwerke V-2 factory were rounded up on the night of 22-23 October 1946 and sent to relatively good living conditions at Gordodomlya on Lake Seleger, between Moscow and Leningrad. Thus the jailed became the jailer. However until he had proved himself a master of rocket technology, Korolev would be forced to have his rocket designs considered in competition with those of Groettrup's German team.
The first task was to put the V-2 into production in Russia. This was a huge undertaking -- Russian manufacturing technology was equivalent to that of Germany at the beginning of the 1930's. Before this was even underway, a competition was held for design of an improved V-2. This R-2 was designed by Korolev in 1947-1948 in competition with Groettrup's G-1. When the State Commission evaluated the designs in December 1948, the G-1 was found the superior design. Korolev fought the decision for a long time, updating his R-2 design to include some of the G-1's features. Finally the decision was reversed and Korolev's design was accepted for test. State trials flights were conducted from 21 September 1949 to July 1951.
The next competition was for a quantum leap to a 3000 km range ballistic missile. The NTS (Scientific-Technical Soviet) of NII-88 met in plenary session on 7 December 1949 and subjected Korolev's R-3 design to withering criticism. In general they preferred Groettrup's G-4/R-14 design to the same requirement. This assumed fewer technical advances in engine design but greater improvements in mass fraction reduction. After heated discussion, the Soviet approved further development of technology for the R-3, but not the missile itself.
With this decision Korolev finally caved in and adopted the German aerodynamic and engine solutions with fervour in his next designs. He put the R-3 on a slow track to oblivion. Following years of trade studies, approval came for development of an intercontinental rocket with a range of 7,000 km on 13 February 1953. Korolev used a modification of the German concept for an ICBM. What started out as Groettrup's 'cluster of G-4's' (G-5 / R-15) became the R-7 when Korolev conceived of a lengthened core sustainer stage. This would allow all engines to be ignited on the pad, eliminating the problems of air start in Groettrup's design.
The German team was aware of none of this. Members of the team began to be repatriated on 3 April 1951. By October 1951 they were completely isolated and work basically stopped. The last member of the group returned to Germany on 22 November 1953. Groettrup made it to West Germany and was debriefed by the CIA in 1957, but provided some deliberately false information and downplayed the importance of the German work in order to avoid Russian retribution. The full story did not come out until the end of the century.
In order to concentrate on development of the R-7, further IRBM development was spun off to a new design bureau in Dnepropetrovsk headed by Korolev's assistant, Mikhail Kuzmich Yangel. This was the first of several design bureaux that would be spun off from Korolev's OKB-1 bureau once a new technology had been perfected.
The R-7 faced enormous development problems. Glushko's RD-105/RD-106 rocket motors had seemingly insoluble combustion chamber instability problems. The weight of the thermonuclear warhead to be carried was increased from the 3 tonnes to 5.5 tonnes. The entire vehicle had to be scaled up proportionately, and this meant that Glushko's troublesome single-chamber engines had to be replaced by the RD-107/-108 design, a cluster of four nozzles sharing common fuel pumps. This could assure stable combustion, but greatly increased the complexity of the booster, with a total of twenty main engines and sixteen vernier engines firing at lift-off, as opposed to five engines for the RD-105/106 approach. Korolev already had reason to be dissatisfied with Glushko's performance.
Korolev's enormous drive and personal attention to detail overcame all obstacles. The R-7 was first successfully launched on 21 August 1957 and then orbited the first artificial earth satellite on 4 October 1957. The first operational satellite for the launcher was to have been the Zenit military photoreconnaissance satellite. Korolev, flushed after the success of Sputnik, instead advocated that manned spaceflight should have first priority. After bitter disputes, a compromise solution was reached. Korolev was authorised to proceed with development of a spacecraft to achieve manned flights at the earliest possible date. However the design would be such that the same spacecraft could be used to fulfil the military's unmanned photoreconnaissance satellite requirement. In November 1958 the Council of Chief designers approved the Vostok manned space program, in combination with the Zenit spy satellite program. The Vostok would put the first human being into space on 12 April 1961.
The next quantum leap was a launcher designed expressly for Soviet conquest of the planets. When the time came for the 75 tonne payload N1 rocket in the late 1950's, Korolev again turned to German work. The N1 was the direct aerodynamic descendent of the Groettrup G-2 and G-4. It incorporated all of the essential features of Groettrup's designs - the 85-degree slope cone, topped by a cylindrical fore body and a sharply spiked nose, and the use of upper stages of the conical vehicle as smaller launch vehicles (the N11 and N111 in the case of the N1). It was only the limitations of Soviet manufacturing technology that forced Korolev to adopt the spherical tank design of the N1 in place of the integral common-bulkhead tanks of the Groettrup vehicles.
As development and production of rockets and spacecraft became an increasing part of the Soviet industry, other chief designers set their sights on getting a piece of the pie. Chelomei was the country's leading designer of cruise missiles. It was apparent that the ballistic missile, for which no defence could be developed for decades, would win out over the cruise missile as a weapon system. Chelomei was also anxious to be involved in the much more exciting area of space flight. When Korolev's R-7 experienced a long string of launch failures in the summer of 1957, Chelomei was quick to criticise Korolev and ask to be put in charge of the development. But the decisive event in getting a piece of the space action was Chelomei's hiring of Nikita Khrushchev's son, Sergei. This gave Chelomei sudden and immediate access to the highest possible patron in the hierarchy. He was rewarded with his own design bureau, OKB-52, in 1959. OKB-52 was immediately assigned several development projects in the explosion of military space and missile projects following the U-2 shoot down, the resulting collapse of the Geneva talks with Eisenhower, and Kennedy's accession to the presidency in the United States.
Kennedy had been partly elected on the basis of claims of a 'missile gap' with the Soviet Union. Russia's succession of Sputnik and Luna launches, combined with the bellicose claims of Khrushchev, created the public impression that Russia was far ahead of the United States in the fielding of unstoppable ICBM's and space weapons. In fact, Korolev's R-7, with its enormous launch pads, complex assembly and launching procedures, cryogenic liquid oxygen oxidiser, and radio-controlled guidance was a totally impractical weapon. The warhead ended up being overweight, giving it a range of only 6,800 km, barely enough to reach the northern United States. As a result, it would be deployed as a weapon at only eight launch pads at Tyuratam and Plesetsk, in the north of the country. More practical successors, Yangel's R-16 and Korolev's R-9, would not be available for years. The Eisenhower administration, thanks to the U-2 overflights, knew that the 'missile gap' did not exist, but in that curious logic that pertains to intelligence matters, would not tell the US public that it knew that the Soviet missile threat was virtually non-existent.
Nevertheless, having been elected on the basis of the existence of such a threat, and having selected the former general manager of General Motors, Robert McNamara, as his Secretary of Defence, Kennedy felt impelled to plunge into a massive program of ICBM construction. Evidently unable to think in terms of smaller numbers due to his motor industry background , McNamara chose the nice round figure of 1,000 ICBM's as a goal. The existing Atlas and Titan designs were too expensive to operate in such large numbers. Therefore the Minuteman program, already begun under Eisenhower, was expanded to provide a low-maintenance solid-fuelled missile that could be produced and cheaply operated in vast quantities.
The Russians, shocked into being drawn into an expensive arms race involving a thousand missiles as opposed to a few hundred, began development of equivalents. Korolev was tasked to build a solid-fuelled counterpart of the Minuteman, the RT-2. This new technology weapon encountered technical problems and was never fielded in any significant numbers. Khrushchev asked Chelomei to build a less risky, small liquid fuelled missile, the UR-100. This became the Soviet equivalent to the Minuteman, being built in the thousands and making Chelomei the leading rocket manufacturer in Russia. Yangel was to continue development of his R-16 into the R-36 'city-buster' missiles, which the Pentagon held up as an enormous threat during the three decades to come (although they never felt impelled to duplicate it by simply deploying more of the equivalent Titan 2).
Chelomei's ascendancy coincided with a huge technical dispute between Korolev on the one hand and Glushko on the other. Glushko had decided to quit developing rocket engines using cryogenic liquid oxygen. The use of hypergolic (self-igniting), storable oxidiser and fuel combinations had enormous operational advantages. The propellants could be put in the missile's tanks and stored for long periods. Such rockets, once fuelled, were available at any time for launch. Rockets using cryogenic liquids had to be loaded just before the launch, since the liquid oxygen quickly boiled off at normal temperatures. If a launch was delayed for more than a couple of hours, launchers using cryogenic liquids had to be defuelled, and refuelled again for the next attempt, leading typically to a one day recycle time before the next launch could be attempted. The drawback of the storable propellants was that they were typically very toxic and dangerously corrosive. They had to be handled very carefully in special chemical protection gear. In the case of spills, accidents, or booster explosions, a dangerous cloud of toxic gas was created and the surrounding area contaminated.
Glushko (and Chelomei, Yangel, and Makeyev) felt that the operational advantages of storable propellants outweighed the safety issues. Korolev did not, and insisted in using liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants even in missile applications. The rift was complete during development of Korolev's R-9 ICBM. Glushko only provided engines to Korolev's specifications under direct orders from the Soviet leadership. Korolev turned to Nikolai Kuznetsov's bureau, whose previous experience had been in turboprop engines, to develop engines for the later R-9 versions and the new N1 space launcher. The Soviet military sided with Glushko - it only deployed 54 of Korolev's R-9 missiles, as against 380 of Yangel's R-16 and 800 of Chelomei's UR-100 (and it should be noted, the Americans selected toxic storable propellants for their Titan 2 rocket, the French for the Ariane, and the Chinese for the Long March).
None of this gained Korolev any friends in the military. They had contributed huge sums to his R-5, R-7 and R-9 programs and he had not produced any weapons of military usefulness. Their Zenit military reconnaissance satellite, begun in 1956, was deferred after Korolev's intervention, in favour of the Vostok manned spaceflight program. He was using missiles developed with their money for the purpose of exploring outer space. While it certainly provided positive propaganda for the Communist system, it was not contributing to the security of the Soviet state.
Each chief designer therefore became identified with powerful patrons in the cliques of the Kremlin hierarchy. Korolev, and his deputy Mishin, had in their employ Yuri Semenov, the son-in-law of Politburo ideology chief Andrei Kirilenko. Glushko and Yangel, by virtue of their production of the missiles that the military actually wanted, earned the patronage of Dmitri Ustinov. Chelomei had his direct conduit to Khrushchev.
In his pursuit of his dream of manned conquest of space, Korolev divested himself of all peripheral activities. He had already passed tactical and sea-launched missiles to Makeyev, storable propellant long range missiles to Yangel, and communications and navigations satellites to Reshetnev. Korolev finally obtained approval for a Soviet manned lunar lading program in August 1964. In order to concentrate on achieving a moon landing, the remaining 'perhipheral' work of OKB-1 were spun off to others: solid propellant rockets to Nadiradze; military satellites to Kozlov in Samara; lunar and planetary probes to Babakin at Lavochkin. The overthrow of Khrushchev two months later put Chelomei out of favour and allowed Korolev to gather into his hands all manned space projects.
Korolev, despite a lack of enthusiasm in the Soviet hierarchy and a budget a fraction of the Americans, continued to engineer space triumphs. In 1964 and 1965 modifications of the Vostok were used to orbit the first multi-crew spacecraft and for the first space walk. But it was nearly the last hurrah. In 1965 the Americans began their Gemini manned space flights and began to dismantle the Soviet lead in space. Korolev's own projects were approved but required a continuous battle for resources against the higher-priority ballistic missile programs.
Korolev was diagnosed with cancer some time in 1965 but kept it a secret from his colleagues. In January 1966 he checked into a Moscow hospital. The Minister of Health himself elected to conduct the colon surgery – not his area of expertise. It all went horribly wrong, and Korolev died on the operating table. His untimely death at 59 was a huge blow to the Soviet space program. His successor, Mishin, did not have the necessary talents and standing to push Korolev's moon project through to a successful conclusion. Just two weeks after Korolev's death his Luna 9 probe soft-landed on the moon and sent back the first close-up views of the surface. It was the last significant Soviet space first.
Korolev's talents were immense vision, enthusiasm and energy that motivated his co-workers and subordinates. His personal attention to detail ensured that critical equipment was of the highest quality and that manned space flights were safely conducted. He had to be enormously persistent and convinced of the rightness of his views to push his projects forward against immense opposition and competition.
But these qualities became less appropriate as the projects increased in number and scope. Korolev's refusal to compromise on technical issues resulted in alienation of other chief designers, most notably Glushko, forcing him to lose years of time developing new sources of rocket engines. The Americans required the resources and expertise of four major contractors to develop the Saturn V booster and the Apollo spacecraft. Korolev was attempting to do the same within a single industrial enterprise. He left his successor, Mishin, with a seemingly impossible task. Then again, had he lived a few more years in good health, perhaps he could have beat the Americans to the moon…and gone on to Mars, one improvised step at a time…
Birth Place: Zhitomir.
Born: 1907.01.12.
Died: 1966.01.14.
The booster launched into a beautiful clear sky, and it could be followed by the naked eye for four minutes after launch. The third stage reached earth parking orbit, but the fourth stage didn't ignite. It was at first believed a radio antenna did not deploy from the interior of the stage, and it did not receive the ignition commands. Therefore the Soviet Union has successfully orbited a record eight-tonne 'Big Zero' into orbit. The State Commission meets two hours after the launch, and argues whether to make the launch public or not, and how to announce it. Glushko proposes the following language for a public announcement: 'with the objective of developing larger spacecraft, a payload was successfully orbited which provided on the first revolution the necessary telemetry'. Korolev and the others want to minimize any statement, to prevent speculation that it was a reconnaissance satellite or a failed manned launch. Kamanin's conclusion - the rocket didn't reach Venus, but it did demonstrated a new rocket that could deliver an 8 tonne thermonuclear warhead anywhere on the planet. The commission heads back to Moscow.
In the West, the failed Venera 4 launch is being analysed as an attempted manned flight. Some Italians claim to have picked up voices on radio from the satellite. Kamanin describes all of this as unfounded speculation -- the Soviet Union will not risk a man's life until two fully successful mannequin flights demonstrate safe recovery.
The pace quickens leading to the first human spaceflight. Kamanin coordinates matters with Korolev and Voronin, and then discusses the ECS problems and cosmonaut landing issues with Dementiev. Plans are made for a meeting with Ustinov and Kozlov. In the evening a meeting of the General Staff is held. Decisions made: 1) Announce the name of the cosmonaut as soon as he is in orbit; 2) improve VVS support (aircraft, helicopters) needed to pick up the cosmonaut immediately after landing; 3) issue a formal letter to Moskalenko on rules for filming of the cosmonaut at the launch site; 4) organise an examination of the 11 cosmonauts not in the group of six now being prepared for flights.
The payload included life-support equipment and radio and television to relay information on the condition of the pilot. The flight was automated; Gagarin's controls were locked to prevent him from taking control of the ship. The combination to unlock the controls was available in a sealed envelope in case it became necessary to take control in an emergency. After retrofire, the service module remained attached to the Sharik reentry sphere by a wire bundle. The joined craft went through wild gyrations at the beginning of re-entry, before the wires burned through. The Sharik, as it was designed to do, then naturally reached aerodynamic equilibrium with the heat shield positioned correctly.
Gagarin ejected after re-entry and descended under his own parachute, as was planned. However for many years the Soviet Union denied this, because the flight would not have been recognized for various FAI world records unless the pilot had accompanied his craft to a landing. Recovered April 12, 1961 8:05 GMT. Landed Southwest of Engels Smelovka, Saratov. Additional Details: here....
Kamanin has continued arguments over the reorganisation of VVS space units and the role of IAKM. Korolev has never supported a leading role for the VVS or Kamanin in the Soviet space program. He is complaining about the 'offences' of the VVS, Kamanin, and the cosmonauts. Korolev cites Gagarin's trauma and Titov's motor accidents. He believes cosmonauts should be selected only from OKB-1 engineers. He also believes the cosmonauts are wasting too much time on publicity tours. Vershinin and Keldysh are hearing all of these complaints.
The State Commission met again at 17:00, to decide whether to extend Popovich to a fourth day as well. Smirnov and Korolev have already discussed this with Khrushchev. It all right with them, and there are no technical reasons not to. But Popovich is much more active than Nikolayev, since he wasn't expecting a four day flight, and he has not conserved his resources as Nikolayev has. At 12:00 the spacecraft temperature was down to 11 deg C, with low humidity. Kamanin objects violently, and finally it is decided to ask the cosmonaut directly if he feels able to go for the extra day. Popovich, when contacted, immediately declares himself ready to go for an extra day and a 65 orbit mission. It is decided to study expected landing conditions for an extended mission and the physical condition of the cosmonaut before making a final decision.
The system will conduct fuellings and dockings in a 250 km altitude parking orbit, and be boosted up to 400,000 km altitude on lunar flyby missions. The system will be ready in three years. Military variants proposed are the Soyuz-P and Soyuz-R. Each spacecraft will have 400 kg of automatic rendezvous and docking equipment. Manual docking will be possible once the spacecraft are within 300 m of each other.
Korolev still insists on an unguided landing and categorically rejects the use of wings. A parachute will deploy and slow the capsule to 10 m/s. Then a retrorocket will fire just before impact with the earth to provide a zero-velocity soft landing. Korolev still insists that spacesuits will not be carried for the crew. First test flight of the 7K, without docking, could not occur until the second half of 1964.
A new problem arises -- the 'Go' light for the Block-E third stage won't illuminate on the control room console. It can't be determined if it is a failure of the stage or an instrumentation failure. It will take two to five hours to bring up the service tower and check out the stage. But if the rocket is left fuelled that long, regulations say it must be removed from the pad and sent back to the factory for refurbishment. In that case there can be no launch until August. Krylov and the State Commission would rather defer the launch to August. The last possible launch time is 17:00 in order to have correct lighting conditions for retrofire and at emergency landing zones. But Korolev, Tyulin, Kirillov, and Pilyugin have faith in their rocket, decide that the problem must be instrumentation, and recycle the count for a 17:00 launch.
The launch goes ahead perfectly at 17:00 - even all six UHF communications channels function perfectly. On orbit 4 Bykovskiy talks to Khrushchev from orbit and good television images are received from the capsule. Bykovskiy reports he can see the stars but not the solar corona. His orbit is good for eleven days.
At 12:15 Tereshkova is on the pad. Her pulse skyrockets to 140 aboard the elevator to the top of the rocket. 10 to 15 minutes later she is in the capsule and testing radio communications with ground control. There are no problems with the spacecraft or launch vehicle during the countdown - everything goes perfectly, just as it did on 12 April 1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Tereshkova handles the launch and ascent to orbit much better than Popovich or Nikolayev according to her biomedical readings and callouts. Kamanin feels reassured that it was no mistake to select her for the flight.
The launch of the first woman into space creates a newspaper sensation throughout the world. Direct orbit-to-orbit communications between Tereshkova and Bykovskiy are excellent. She talks to Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership soon thereafter. This was truly a great victory for Communism!
Many errors occurred in the entire landing sequences, including actions of the VVS recovery forces. The conditions of the cosmonauts were only reported several hours after their landings. Big crowds gathered at both landing sites. Bykovskiy spent the night in Kustan, then left on 20 June aboard an Il-14 for Kuibyshev. Tereshkova spent her first night in Karaganda, then flew in an Il-8 to Kuibyshev. Many congratulatory phone calls were received from the Soviet leadership. Korolev declared he had no longer had the time to personally direct Vostok flights and wanted to hand the spacecraft over to the military for operational use. He could then concentrate on development of the Soyuz and Lunik spacecraft.
It is reported that a lot of test stand work has been completed and is underway on closed ecological systems for recycling the air and water. One kilogram of chlorella algae can produce 27 kg of oxygen per day. Since each man will require 25 kg of oxygen per day, 2 kg of chlorella per crew member will be adequate. Therefore the problem of recycling the cabin atmosphere is considered already solved.
Food requirements per crew member are 2.5 to 3.0 kg/day, or about one tonne per year. It is expected that in two to three years development will be complete of a system that will recycle 80% of the food. A 150 kg device will produce 400 to 600 g of food per day, or 100 to 200 kg per year.
In a three hour meeting Korolev goes over his future flight plans for Vostok. The first flight will be unmanned, with a biological payload, in February or March 1964. The flight is to last 10 or 11 days and take the specimens up to 600 to 1000 km altitude, into the lower reaches of the Van Allen radiation belts. This will be followed by three cosmonaut flights of ten days with significant military and scientific experiments. A new ground control system will be installed and tested to handle all in-flight emergencies. A new autonomous on-board navigation system will be flight tested. Korolev wants the military to take over conduct of future Vostok flights - they are taking up to much of his time and nerves. He has told this repeated to Khrushchev and Brezhnev without result. Meanwhile Kamanin lobbies within the military hierarchy for the removal of Odintsev. It is decided that the matter will be taken up at the next meeting of the Military Soviet.
Kamanin is disturbed by the decision. He recalls that in 1961 flight of the Vostok with two or three crew was discussed, with flights to occur in 1962-1963. But at that time Korolev cancelled the plans, saying the Soyuz would be used for such missions. Now Soyuz will not fly until 1965, and he has changed his tune. Furthermore, the modified Vostok is inherently risky, with no way to save the crew in case of a launch vehicle malfunction in the first 40 seconds of flight. Unlike Vostok, the three crew will not have individual ejection seats or parachutes to give them a chance of escape in the event of an abort. The crew will be subject to 10 to 25 G's during an abort. There is no assurance the environmental control system can be modified to handle three crew. It all seems very unsafe, and Kamanin believes the six consecutive successful Vostok flights have given Korolev's engineers a false sense of the safety of the Vostok system. Kamanin is perplexed. How does he plan to convert a single-place spacecraft to a three-place spacecraft in a few months? Korolev has no clear answers, but asks for the cosmonauts' support of the scheme.
Korolev felt that if he had the full support of the Communist Party, the military, and industry he could achieve this goal, and this decree ordered such support. The USSR would be first on the moon. But in truth the draft project behind the decree had not solved all of the technical problems, or provided a solution on how to achieve the required payload on either the booster or spacecraft side. New technology features required for success of the scheme included an advanced guidance system in the N1 third stage equipment bay, the enormous fuel tanks in the N1 first stage, and the Lox/LH2 fuel cells needed for the LOK lunar orbiter. But the real technical problem with the N1-L3 design was the total lack of any weight growth reserve. Even thought the systems had not even been developed yet, engineers were fighting over tens of grams in their weight allocations, let alone the kilograms normally at issue.
Development of Korolev's Soyuz A-B-V, a competing circumlunar project, was evidently still authorised, although it duplicated Chelomei's LK-1.
Later the state commission meets to consider the launch of the first Voskhod. The unpleasantness at the landing trials in the Crimea reveal only the inadequacy of the design of the test capsules, and do not reflect the flight system, says Korolev. He certifies the reliability of the Voskhod for flight. The commission decides to set the launch of the next Zenit-4 reconnaissance satellite for 14 September; that of the Voskhod with mannequins on 18-20 September; the definitive landing system trial at Fedosiya on 23 September; and if that is successful, launch of a manned Voskhod by the end of September.
Finally Korolev gets to the purpose of the secret meeting. He wants Feoktistov to be aboard Voskhod 1, despite the opinion of Kamanin and the physicians. Kamanin reiterates that the most qualified crew would be Komarov, Volynov, and Lazarev; and if he gives in on Feoktistov, then Komarov, Feoktistov, Lazarev. But Korolev is opposed to Lazarev, and insists that the crew should be Komarov, Feoktistov, and Yegorov. From Kamanin's point of view this is flying a space mission with two invalids aboard. Lazarev is a qualified and fit flight surgeon, a qualified pilot as well as a physician with 15 years of research experience in aviation medicine. Korolev is adamant that the two passengers should be civilian, not military. No agreement is possible.
Aftrwards Tyulin calls Korolev, Mrykin, Kerimov, Rudenko, and Kamanin aside. He tells them the Communist Party and Soviet Ministers have now taken a personal interest in the crew selection for Voskhod. Korolev and Kamanin bitterly debate their competing preferred crews.
Khrushchev also visited a secret space fair, with Korolev, Chelomei, Yangel, and Glushko presenting their rockets and spacecraft. Chelomei presented his UR-700 heavy lift design as an alternative to Korolev's N1. This presentation was a surprise to Ustinov and Dementiev. Khrushchev ordered Chelomei to prepare a draft proposal for the design. Chelomei hoped that 12 to 18 months later, when the UR-700 draft project would be completed, the fallacy of Korolev's N1 design would be apparent to all. Korolev's N1 plans were also reviewed and approved at the meeting.
Over the two days, Khruschev witnessed five launches of rockets by Korolev, Yangel, and Chelomei, all of them successful. Gagarin and Belyayev explained the Vykhod spacecraft to him, and Leonov donned a spacesuit and demonstrated how he would exit into open space form the inflatable airlock and return thereafter. All went very well.
This was the last time Khrushchev saw the chief designers of the Soviet rocket industry. Despite his support for them not one of them visited him in his retirement.
Recovered October 7, 1964 7:28 GMT. Officially: Investigation of the upper atmosphere and outer space.
Coming before the two-man Gemini flights, Voskhod 1 had a significant worldwide impact. In the United States, the "space race" was again running under the green flag. NASA Administrator James E. Webb, commenting on the spectacular, called it a "significant space accomplishment." It was, he said, "a clear indication that the Russians are continuing a large space program for the achievement of national power and prestige." Additional Details: here....
In the evening all problems are finally solved and the Voskhod spacecraft declared ready for flight.
However it is found that of the 45 commands that can be sent to the spacecraft, four of them, including the command of the re-entry sequence, are unprotected from this kind of error. In Kamanin's opinion, in the last five years, Mnatsakanian's bureau has done nothing to ensure security of commands to spacecraft or the exploitation of this major weakness by the United States.
It is decided that the launch of Voskhod-2 can go ahead in the second half of mine. However Korolev calls Kamanin and others to be briefed at his bedside. His temperature is down to 37 deg C, normal, but yesterday it was 40 deg C - diagnosis: "unknown cause". Korolev does not want to launch Voskhod-2 until a Zenit spy satellite has flown with its re-entry capsule fitted with the same airlock ring as Voskhod-2. This will prove that the re-entry capsule is stable during descent with the airlock ring, something that could not be demonstrated by Cosmos 57. Kamanin agrees that this will be proposed to the State Commission.
However they do not part without sharp words being exchanged over the quality of VVS doctors and military versus civilian cosmonauts. Korolev notes that due to the military's complete lack of interest in space, the only military cosmonaut that will ever be needed is Gagarin.... Kamanin is wounded but realises the truth of Korolev's words, attributing the issue to Malinovskiy, who has blocked all proposals for a military role in manned spaceflight, let alone a VVS role.
Kamanin is preparing the final press packet, with the cosmonaut biographies, which will be delivered to TASS but only released by them after confirmation that the spacecraft is in orbit. Later Kamanin and forty other guests, including hero-cosmonauts and future hero-cosmonauts, throw a party for Tereshkova's 28th birthday. There is tension in the room as the cosmonauts eye each other as competitors for the flights after Voskhod-2. Volynov is the leading candidate to command the next flight, and has already been a back-up four times, but Marshal Rudenko keeps blocking his selection for flight (Volynov is a Jew). Rudenko is pushing Beregovoi for the next flight, and everyone in the room knows it...
The party then moved to the KP command point, where over the next four hours they watched the first man - a Soviet man, Alexei Leonov - enter free space. All operations - airlock deployment, airlock pressurisation, opening the hatch from the spacecraft, entering the airlock, the inner hatch closing, depressurisation of he airlock, opening of the outer hatch, Leonov's exit into space - went well. Television images showed him somersaulting in space, moving 3 to 5 m from the capsule with the earth in the background. There was some worry when the capsule began revolving at 20 degrees per second during the spacewalk, and the high concentration of oxygen (45%) in the cabin. The rotation is stopped, but after consulting with the crew, and considering the large oxygen reserves available, it is decided not to worry about the high oxygen level in the cabin. Kamanin goes to bed at 12:00, overjoyed by the success of the day's events.
This mission was originally named 'Vykhod ('Exit/Advance'). It almost ended in disaster when Leonov was unable to reenter the airlock due to stiffness of the inflated spacesuit. He had to bleed air from the suit in order to get into the airlock. After Leonov finally managed to get back into the spacecraft cabin, the primary hatch would not seal completely. The environmental control system compensated by flooding the cabin with oxygen, creating a serious fire hazard in a craft only qualified for sea level nitrogen-oxygen gas mixes (Cosmonaut Bondarenko had burned to death in a ground accident in such circumstances, preceding the Apollo 204 disaster by many years). Additional Details: here....
Kamanin does not minimise Korolev's key role in creating the Soviet space program, but believes the collectives can continue the program without him. In truth, Kamanin feels Korolev has made many errors of judgment in the last three years that have hurt the program. Mishin, Korolev's first deputy, will take over management of Korolev's projects. Kamanin feels that Mishin is a clever and cultured engineer, but he is no Korolev. Over the next three days the cosmonauts console Korolev's widow.
Korolev's surgery was done personally by Petrovskiy, the Minister of Health. Korolev was told the surgery would take only a few minutes, but after five hours on the operating table, his body could no longer endure the insult, and he passed away.
After the death of Korolev in January, a letter was sent to the Central Committee requesting that Mishin be appointed director of OKB-1. Ustinov tried to line up support for Mishin, but by the time of the first first Saturn IB orbital flight on 26 February 1966, no decision had been made. America was progressing on the path to the moon, but Russia was stalled. An alternate that had been considered was Sergei Okhapkin, another Deputy Chief Designer at TsKBEM. But Okhapkin knew only spacecraft, he had never developed complete launch-booster-spacecraft systems. By the time Mishin was appointed, it was clear that the race was lost. The American's planned their first Saturn V launch in September 1967 and their first manned flight in 1968. Mishin could not expect trials of the LK lunar lander until 1969 at the earliest. There were insufficient funds allocated, and the schedule had no allowance for test flight failures. Ustinov, Morozhin, and Keldysh pointed fingers as to who had presented such unrealistic schedules to the Politburo. Keldysh now supported unmanned robot lunar landers in development by Babakin. Even these would not land until 1970, allowing three years of flight trials to achieve reliability. Khrushchev, it seemed, was to blame for such enormous unaffordable projects. This in turn put Ustinov in danger, as Khrushchev's point man for space.


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The freedom of choice bestowed on humankind by God is the subject of the third article in Life in Christ of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The section begins with an Old Testament quotation that serves as a promise and a warning. (CCC#1730) An ancient sage praised the human freedom to seek God by choice, but his writing went on to remind that with great hope, there is also the danger of making the wrong choice.
While Catholics and Orthodox include the Book of Sirach (aka Ecclesiasticus or The Wisdom of Ben Sira), it is not generally found in other Christian or Jewish versions of the Old Testament. Even though the book was written near 180BC, it was considered for inclusion as an apocryphal book in the New Testament, but did not make the final canon as such. The writing was created by Yeshua (Jesus) Ben Sira and appears to have been used extensively as a teaching tool. It wasn't until the author's grandson discovered the significant meaning of the work that it was translated into wide distribution with the common Greek language.
Chapter 15 of Sirach begins with Ben Sira praising those who seek wisdom, something his life was dedicated to. He assured them that with their search, a most eager response would follow; wisdom would literally open her doors to the seeker. Then he turns with calm scorn to those who blame God for the choices they make, for it is nowhere in God's design to lure humans into making bad choices.
Ben Sira reminds that in the beginning, the Creator made man with complete free will. He points out that it's a free choice to obey or not obey the commandments, but it is loyalty when one chooses to do the will of God. The sage told his listeners to sit before them fire and water; to whichever he/she chooses, they should extend their hand and see what they touch. Likewise, he added, and more importantly, that everyone had the choice before them of life or death, and which one they choose is the one they receive. These are stark words that have always held a meaning for those who chose Life in Christ…or not.
The catechism article, Man's Freedom, elaborates on the Sirachian sermon. Freedom was given with the intention that people would choose God, but until the choice has been made to completely attach ones self to the Lord, the possibility of choosing evil ways lays in wait. Good choices increase freedom, and that freedom translates to human virtue, another part of life in Christ. Humans have the capacity and the freedom to deliberately choose to do good.
Humans have not been infallible in their choices. In fact, as the catechism points out, we've already shown our propensity to sin. The first sin in the Bible is disobeying God. Because of that, other evils came into the human consciousness. Thus, the biggest threat to freedom of choice is our own abuse and misuse of the privilege. The gift does not give individuals the right to say or do anything they please. There are still consequences for wrong choices. Sin is a prison, and choosing it greatly limits the ability to make right choices.
On the Fifth Sunday of Easter, the faithful heard John's Gospel reading in which Jesus said simply, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." This portion of the catechism stresses that statement to its fullest. Choose Jesus, and one finds the Way. Know Jesus, and one knows he is the pure Truth. To practice choosing and knowing Jesus, one finds the road to salvation and life. It is through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the voice of God as our guide, that humans can accomplish all that freedom and life in Christ implies. Jesus told them that if they remained in his word, that is to follow the example he taught, that they would be his disciples; they would come to know Truth, and the Truth would set them free. (John 8:31-32)
Man's Freedom concludes with a quotation from the opening prayer used on the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. It is an affirmation asking our merciful God to steer us away from harm. We ask for freedom of mind and body, in accordance with the Holy Spirit, to do his work on earth. We are therefore asking for the freedom to choose Christ and bear the responsibility of living Christlike in this world. Right or wrong, the freedom to choose is yours. (CCC#1731-48)


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Capcom held an annual shareholder meeting recently, the contents of which were made public on June 16th. During this meeting, shareholders decided against renewing the company's Takeover Defense. Originally set in place back in 2008, this defense has prevented Capcom from being taken over by one company or entity, given the unlikely scenario where someone would attempt to purchase the majority of the developer's stocks.
Granted, the dismissal of this motion doesn't necessarily leave Capcom defenseless, but it does mean that the company may not have the backing of their shareholders, should someone try to take them over. With that said, the official report states that Capcom, in the event of a possible buy-out, "will react to make necessary measures within the admissible limits of applicable laws and regulations." In addition, Capcom has stated that they will "ensure sufficient time for shareholders to examine the proposed large-scale purchase and reach a decision." This sounds as though Capcom will fight any possible takeover, and that their shareholders could still bail them out of a dire situation, if they so choose. In the end, this report is just the latest in a long line of difficulties for the developer, who has been struggling financially over the past few years.
Those worried about the company's titles should note that, just because someone could potentially purchase Capcom, doesn't mean anyone will in the near-future. Buying 51% of the company's stocks would come with a rather lofty price tag, though it would guarantee exclusivity with some of gaming's biggest franchises. These intellectual properties include Resident Evil, Mega Man, Street Fighter, Ace Attorney (which has been exclusive to Nintendo in the past), and Monster Hunter.
We'll have more information regarding Capcom's financial situation once it becomes available. For now, fans shouldn't worry too much about the company's future, as it's too early to tell whether the denial of their Takeover Defense will have any sort of meaningful impact on Capcom's immediate plans.


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Come visit me, MAY 9,2009 THE WEDDING OF SWEETPEPPER & KIDDO, KACEY & MIKEY'S WEDDING PAGE MARCH 3, 2012, Digger Sept 29, 1998 - June 11, 2005, MAXIMILLIAN AUG 25,1992-MARCH 14,2010 R.I.P., THE PROUD BIRD PIE SHOP, KACEY LUVS HER MIKEY, TIEL TERRORS BASEBALL TEAM PRACTICE FIELD & SWEETPEPPER LUVS KIDDO.
Come visit me, ~*^*~Ashlee ~ in memory of ~*^*~.
Come visit me, Jester Bean, Pressie, Honey Belle, King Grey Bird, Paris, Peatree ~ I'm 8! & Angel Budgies.
Patricia, Las Vegas, NV.
Come visit me, SUSAN, sooo Sweet!, ROCKET....rocking the house!!, Zazu R.I.P. - Waiting at Rainbow Bridge <3, OOdles, The "finchey" bunch., PEDRO...the destroyer!! Thank U 4 BOD! & ~~BUDDY ~~Thank you for BOTD! :-).
Come visit me, Shaggy--2010-2013, Ipo, Sidney ~~ALWAYS IN MY HEART~~6/1996-2/2013, Oatie Odette *Thank you for the honor 11/19/15, Sophie O'Too, Pimer--Thanks you all, Jules, Punkin *Thank You for the Honor* & Makana *I am honored as BOTD 10-17-14* Thank You.
Come visit me, Alohi Greyson"Please say a prayer for my grandma", Myron, Precious..., Princess Jazmyn"Wow!! What a surprise! Thank u all, Tweetie, Bubbles & R.I.P. Pebbles 11/28/11 LUV U, Alexander " R.I.P. Bailey 9/21/11 We ♥ U & Princess.
Come visit me, Odysseus-a little wet from a bath! & Xerxes, hoping for Bird of the Day!.
Come visit me, The Ranbow Bridge, The Abused Birds, Sunny RIP 10-27-13, The Extinct Birds, Marble and Crystal- Silkie chickens, Mango (Sorry for my inactivity, thanks for BOTD!) & Snowy Thanks for BOTD!.
*Content generated by our loyal visitors, which includes comments and club postings, is free of constraints from our editors' red pens, and therefore not governed by I-5 Publishing, LLC's Gold Standard Quality Content, but instead allowed to follow the free form expression necessary for quick, inspired and spontaneous communication.
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Royalty Free Music & Incredible Ways To Customize It
Royalty Free Music — Festive & Irish
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The following tracks match: Irish, Festive
Irish JigWe're all familiar with 'the luck o' the Irish,' but this track really attests to their energy! These players go like a startled leprechaun, and they'll have you skipping to smooch the Blarney Stone before you can say, 'Beat the Bodhran!'https://www.smartsound.com/music/images/global.jpgSingle1811-ST$ 39.951811-EX$ 59.951811-W$ 149.95Genre: Cultural, Folk, Themes, World, Irish Emotions: Energetic, Happy, Positive, Uplifting, Cheerful, Lively, Spirited, Sprightly, Festive, Upbeat Instrument: Ethnic Ensemble, Oboe, Pennywhistle, Acoustic, Instrumental Production Types: Travel, Home Videos
Irish Jig from the album Global Voyage
Irish ReelAin't nothin' like the 'reel' thing when it comes to the music of Ireland. This Ceili band delivers a lively dance that will have you moving like a snake before St. Patty. Although distinctly Irish, this sound is fast becoming loved the world over.https://www.smartsound.com/music/images/global.jpgSingle1812-ST$ 39.951812-EX$ 59.951812-W$ 149.95
Irish Reel from the album Global Voyage
Morrison's JigAn upbeat traditional Celtic jig featuring mandolin, dulcimer, penny whistle and percussion. Ideal to give an instant Irish flavor to your next festive scene.https://www.smartsound.com/producer/images/PS72_200.jpgSingle12406-ST$ 39.9512406-EX$ 59.9512406-W$ 149.95Genre: Cultural, Folk, Traditional, World, Dance, Irish, Scottish Emotions: Energetic, Happy, Lively, Pastoral, Festive, Upbeat Instrument: Guitar (Acoustic), Mandolin, Pennywhistle, Percussion, Instrumental, Guitar Production Types: Documentary, Indie Film, Nature, Travel
Morrison's Jig from the album Celtic Spring (PS72)
Galway StompIrish folk-rock at its best. Try it in your next world-themed production.https://www.smartsound.com/strata/images/BS09CA_200.jpgSingle54105-ST$ 39.9554105-EX$ 59.9554105-W$ 149.95
Galway Stomp from the album Celtic Adventures
Cat's CradleThis rollicking selection is a great all-around Irish track featuring fiddle and acoustic guitar. Works great for scenes of good times, friends and gatherings.https://www.smartsound.com/strata/images/BS09CA_200.jpgSingle54104-ST$ 39.9554104-EX$ 59.9554104-W$ 149.95Genre: Folk, Themes, World, Irish Emotions: Happy, Uplifting, Lively, Rollicking, Spirited, Festive, Upbeat Instrument: Ethnic Ensemble, Guitar (Acoustic), Violin, Acoustic, Instrumental, Guitar Production Types: Travel
Cat's Cradle from the album Celtic Adventures
Pub DanceThis fun Irish reel with a modern beat can serve well under scenes of good times. Features fiddle.https://www.smartsound.com/strata/images/BS09CA_200.jpgSingle54109-ST$ 39.9554109-EX$ 59.9554109-W$ 149.95Genre: Themes, World, Irish Emotions: Driving, Energetic, Hypnotic, Lively, Festive, Upbeat Instrument: Ethnic Ensemble, Uilleann Pipes, Violin, Acoustic, Instrumental Production Types: Travel
Pub Dance from the album Celtic Adventures
ShashkeenA cool, easy-going Irish-flavored groove based on the traditional. Features accordion and acoustic guitar.https://www.smartsound.com/producer/images/PS63_200.jpgSingle11508-ST$ 39.9511508-EX$ 59.9511508-W$ 149.95Genre: Folk, Traditional, World, Irish, Ireland, Celtic Emotions: Happy, Positive, Cool, Leisurely, Relaxed, Hopeful, Festive Instrument: Accordion, Bass (Electric), Mandolin, Vibraphone, Acoustic, Instrumental Production Types: Documentary, Nature, Travel, Home Videos
Shashkeen from the album Celtic Evolution (PS63)
DublinA jaunty Irish jig, sure to kick your heels up. Penny whistle and squeezebox help keep the celebration going.https://www.smartsound.com/music/images/acrossborders.jpgSingle4905-ST$ 39.954905-EX$ 59.954905-W$ 149.95Genre: Cultural, Folk, World, Irish Emotions: Energetic, Happy, Cheerful, Lively, Rollicking, Spirited, Sprightly, Festive, Upbeat Instrument: Ethnic Ensemble, Accordion, Pennywhistle, Instrumental Production Types: Travel
Dublin from the album Across Borders
Shamrock JigThis delightful Irish number will give a joyful lift to any scene and is particularly suited to children playing.https://www.smartsound.com/music/images/solo.jpgSingle1613-ST$ 39.951613-EX$ 59.951613-W$ 149.95Genre: Themes, Country/Folk, World, Irish Emotions: Happy, Uplifting, Carefree, Cheerful, Leisurely, Relaxed, Fun, Festive, Simple Instrument: Ethnic Ensemble, Guitar (Acoustic), Violin, Acoustic, Instrumental, Guitar Production Types: Biography, Home Videos
Shamrock Jig from the album Solo Simplicity
Jenny Dang The WeaverA peppy and positive pop cut based on the traditional Scottish tune. Features bagpipes.https://www.smartsound.com/producer/images/PS63_200.jpgSingle11504-ST$ 39.9511504-EX$ 59.9511504-W$ 149.95Genre: Cultural, Folk, World, Pop Rock, Irish, Scottish, Ireland, Celtic Emotions: Positive, Inspiring, Patriotic, Refreshing, Triumphant, Fun, Hopeful, Festive Instrument: Bagpipe, Instrumental Production Types: Commercials, Nature, Travel, Home Videos
Jenny Dang The Weaver from the album Celtic Evolution (PS63)
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