I was on my way to Burlington last week, but never got there. Blame the new bypass.

It had been awhile since my family and I had taken this particular route home from Racine. We were returning from my niece’s 30th birthday party, and I decided to drive through Burlington, where we could stop for gas and get something to eat.

But as we approached the city, we ended up on the sparkling new bypass that whisked us to the other side of the city. On this trip, there would be no stopping for a meal, and gas would have to wait until I got home.

It reminded me of all the places I don’t go anymore because I’m zipping past them at 65 mph.

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JANESVILLE — After covering Rep. Paul Ryan since his first run for Congress in 1998, I’ve only heard of one occasion where he’s buckled under pressure and changed his mind.

Rep. Paul Ryan shares the stage with Mitt Romney during a campaign stop June 18 in Janesville. Romney made the formal announcement Aug. 18 that he had chosen Ryan to be his running mate.Last March, Ryan was back home in Janesville to take his young sons on a Cub Scout outing. It’s the same outing my son’s Boy Scout troop has gone on for years, and involves a weekend exploring the inside of a huge cave near Richland Center, getting wet and muddy and sleeping among the elements.

PHOTO GALLERY

My son and I weren’t on this particular outing, but upon returning, our Scout master retold the story of Ryan and his sons showing up with plans to spend only the day. But after spending time with the other Scouts in attendance, Ryan’s sons begged their father to stay overnight.

That makes it the cave where Ryan, who last weekend was picked to be Mitt Romney’s running mate, caved.

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Janesville Democrats have their eyes on an Assembly seat they feel should have been theirs all along.

The first step in that direction takes place at the Aug. 14 primary, where voters will decide who challenges Republican Joe Knilans, the incumbent in the 44th District, which represents nearly all of Janesville in the State Assembly.

The four primary challengers made their case Tuesday during a forum at the Janesville Senior Center sponsored by the League of Women Voters and Forward Janesville.

The Democrats in the race are Deb Kolste, Sam Liebert, Kevin Murray and Yuri Rashkin.

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ROSCOE -- It’s been years since America’s exploration of outer space has captured the national imagination. In many ways, the same can be said about the American manufacturing industry.

But for employees of a small Roscoe manufacturing com-pany, that fascination is back as they wait for the Mars rover Curiosity to touch down on the surface of the red planet in the early morning hours Monday.

The success of the mission rests in part on some small parts made at Forest City Gear in Roscoe. (continued below)

 
Streaming video by Ustream NASA will livestream the Mars landing here.
In a story we ran last May, company CEO Fred Young told reporter Dennis Hines, “We made gears for the latest Mars rover vehicle that went up in December, so we have gears that go out of this world.”

This is the third, and most expensive and complicated, rover to be built using Forest City gears.

The gears use a new titaniumlike alloy that will help save the project thousands of dollars per ounce on the final payload.

Not only did they make all the gears for the instrument actuators and wheel drives, but we were told the gears also are used in the reverse elevator which will lower the rover to the planet’s surface.

The mission hopes to answer questions about whether the planet has ever been able to support life.

Three conditions must be met to support life, according to NASA. The main ingredient is water, followed by energy and a short list of basic chemical ingredients.

NASA will build on the “follow the water” strategy used in previous Mars missions to determine the best settings to support life.

The $2.5 billion mission comes to a head about 12:30 a.m. Monday when the craft begins its descent to Mars.

In a Jet Propulsion Lab video that’s gone viral on YouTube, the descent is described as “7 Minutes of Terror.”

The computer programming alone has nearly half a million lines of code, although scientists say there’s zero margin for error.

Everyone from the employees at Forest City Gear to NASA’s top officials will anxiously await word of the landing.

“We shall be holding our breath for a successful entry into orbit and then a safe, soft touch down,” Young said this week.

The landing sequence begins as the craft arrives at the upper reaches of Mars’ thin atmosphere.

The landing craft, which includes a sky crane and the Curiosity rover, quickly slows down from 13,000 mph, to 1,000 mph. Shortly after, the parachute deploys to further slow down the rover.

Curiosity will decelerate to 70 mph where rockets will stabilize the craft and protect it from horizontal winds.

Then, when it reaches 2 mph, the sky crane will lower Curiosity to the surface.

It takes 14 minutes for the data signal to travel from Mars to the command center here on earth, although it could be days before confirmation.

In the meantime, those who have spent years working on the project will have to wait to see if their efforts are a billion dollar success or failure.

NASA plans to live stream the landing on its website.

In either case, this mission will highlight good old-fashioned American manufacturing, and the idea that there still is a place in our economy for companies that make things that can’t be saved on a hard drive.


 

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Editor’s note: Last month, we interviewed U.S. Rep Paul Ryan about his work in the House of Representatives (HERE). Today, we visit with Democrat Rob Zerban, Ryan’s opponent in the Nov. 6 election. We’ll meet with both men again in the fall for our election preview story.

At first glance, you might think Rob Zerban was a conservative. His family struggled to get by as he was growing up, but he went on to start two successful businesses, then sold them by the age of 40 with enough money to retire.

What makes Zerban different is that he’s a Democrat.

And, he’s running against one of the most formidable opponents in the country.

Zerban, of Kenosha, is challenging incumbent Republican Paul Ryan of Janesville in the Nov. 6 general election for Wisconsin’s 1st District Congressional seat.

Success or failure, says Zerban, will come from zeroing in on voters’ concerns over changes to Medicare in the Republican budget authored by Ryan.

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Congressman Paul Ryan says the public is ahead of the political class when it comes to understanding the gravity of the problems our country faces. “They’re ready for solutions,” he said.

In an interview Monday in Delavan, Ryan said he thinks the time has come when voters want to elect people who have ideas and solutions — and he’s optimistic his ideas are the ones they’re looking for.

The Democrats, he says, just don’t have any ideas.

Ryan is back home this week traveling the district in his mobile office. In addition to helping constituents solve problems with the federal government, Ryan is sure to hear plenty about the issues that will drive this fall’s election.

Although it’s likely the political stalemate will continue from now until the election in November, the proposals pushed by each side give an insight into how each would frame the issues for the upcoming campaigns.

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