Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

I find the entire notion of Jeff Bezos building his own spaceport in west Texas pretty interesting. Yet it verreally matters to me because of where he is doing it, Culberson county.

I used to spend every summer in west Texas looking for snakes. Even up until a few years ago when I had kids I was still snake hunting (when I worked for IBM I had one client location in San Antonio and somehow always needed to be near there in June, hmmmm).

I have hunted a few times in Culberson county, just on a whim, but never caught the "target species" - alterna.

I have come across alterna in other locations, just not Culberson, yet I find the entire region fascinating and really enjoy visiting.

One of the reasons I like it so much is that snake hunting in the desert is a nighttime activity and the stars and planets, the entire milky way even, are very visible (no light pollution, some elevation - heck I have caught snakes in the Davis Mtns, not far from the McDonald Observatory - the "boy scout road" for those who are familiar with snake hunting).

For some reason there has always been an intangible connection between west Texas snake hunting and astronomy (the books we take, the sky we are looking at, the moon phases and how they affect the conditions, etc). Now that connection will just get a little more tangible if Jeff's plans become a reality (and the Internet itself has helped finance a private spaceport in prime snake hunting area).