Neptune is so at home

Back on the first week of February I posted that Neptune was going back to his home sign Pisces. The last time he was in his home sign was between 1848 and 1861. As I mentioned then we should prepare to see a lot of interesting Neptunian news given a planet loves being in his home sign and will usually throw himself a party.

Such is the case this week when two very Neptunian stories made the news. Movie director James Cameron (note film and movies are a Pisces/Neptune endeavor) put himself in a specially designed submarine and dove to the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean.

The Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—the deepest point on Earth—looks as bleak and barren as the moon, according to James Cameron, who successfully returned just hours ago from the first solo dive to the ocean abyss.

At noon, local time Monday (10 p.m. ET Sunday), the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, some 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Guam.

The expedition was designed so that Cameron could spend up to six hours collecting samples and video at the bottom of the trench. But his mission was cut short due in part to a hydraulic fluid leak that coated the window of the sub's "pilot sphere," obscuring his view.

"I lost hydraulics toward the latter part of dive, and I was unable to use the manipulator arm," Cameron said this morning during a post-dive press conference held aboard the Octopus, a yacht owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, a longtime Cameron friend. (Allen was on the scene for the historic dive and posted live updates of the event on Twitter from aboard his yacht, which provided backup support for the mission.)

Considering the daunting task of sending humans into the deep, such technical glitches are to be expected, Cameron emphasized: "It's a prototype vehicle, so it's gonna take time to iron out the bugs.

"The important thing is that we have a vehicle that's a robust platform—it gets us there safely, the lights work, the cameras work, and hopefully next time the hydraulics will work."

Of course, if Mr Cameron had checked in with an astrologer they would have nodoubtedly asked him to NOT do his dive during Mercury retrograde. Alas, maybe next time he'll get some feedback from our little world.

The other story that struck me, "Oh, there goes Neptune again" Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, you've heard of Amazon that is that website where you buy all your stuff so you don't want to drive all over town (Oh, I guess that is me). Anyway, Jeff Bezos financed his own undersea exploration and guess what he found---Rockets!

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced today that an underwater sea expedition he financed has discovered artifacts from the Apollo 11 mission to the moon at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, nearly 43 years after they landed there.

Bezos says that F-1 rocket engines were found 14,000 feet below the surface using deep sea sonar, and he intends to raise at least one, maybe more, above sea level.

The first-stage Apollo 11 engines that Bezos claims have been found helped lift Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins toward the moon in 1969, Scientific American reports. Bezos does not say how the team was able to prove their authenticity.

The efforts to find the engines were privately funded by Bezos, and he says that the plan to bring them up would also be privately funded. He isn't the only tech founder interested in space, as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has his own endeavors, including plans for a commercial spaceship. And this isn't the only deep-sea news of the week either, as film director James Cameron successfully emerged from his Mariana Trench dive.

What is funny about these stories is the proliferation of geeks with money. Cameron, Bezos, Paul Allen...do you see a theme? As a mother of a geeky son which I say with love, I can only wonder what else we will see geeks do between now and 2026 when Neptune leaves Pisces. Neptune is clearly speaking to his tribe of warriors, I guess I should have known it was the geeky world since they are always in some dreamy lala land.

Finally one other piece of news that is tied more to Pisces than Neptune is the health care law being debated in the supreme court. Pisces rules health care (along with Virgo). I have zero idea where it is going to fall but the fact that it is even being debated is not a surprise give Neptune entry into his home sign.