Kelly and Bruce - A composite I made to illustrate an article about the SOFBALL experiment during mission STS-107 on board of the Space Shuttle Columbia. SOFBALL stands for "Structure Of Flame Balls At Low Lewis-number" and the tests researched into the behaviour of little flame balls. This sounds as odd as it was, but the experiment was successful and eventually the last test (in which a flame ball called "Kelly" almost made it around the earth) had to be stopped because the crew had to take preparations for landing the shuttle. The shuttle never landed but tragically turned into a flame ball itself and so no-one knows which flame ball in the picture was named Kelly, because the knowledge and the data was lost together with the seven astronauts.

The man in the back is my main spaceman Bruce McCandless again and here are the links to the story:

http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/general_info/31jan_kelly.html

http://ronney.usc.edu/Columbia.shtml