NASA day today. The
Museum opens at 10am, and the car needs a fill-up, so we headed off about 8.30
so we could get gas and breakfast en-route.
Dora spat the dummy again this morning, she had been programmed with the
Space Centre as destination the night before but got her panties in a wad and
would give us directions but not show us the map, nor accept any instructions
to take us via a gas station. So between
using google maps on the phone, missing a few instructions and improvising a
little we made it to a nearby gas station with only a couple of minor tanties and
topped up with $20 of the cheap stuff (had to pay cash at the cashier first,
the 00000 post code trick would not work this time). By this time Dora had gotten her act together
and we were off, or go for launch – ha ha - Space Centre bound. It was a relatively quick and easy trip out
there, most of the traffic was flowing into the city, and was gridlocked. We diverted via McDonalds where we had a McGriddle,
which is a weird combo of maple pancake used to sandwich sausage pattie, egg
and cheese like a burger. Tasted ok and
the coffee was drinkable. Apologies if I’ve
already covered this, but here, sausage is a pattie, if you want what we think
of as sausages, these are called ”links” – as in they are in a link, not a flat
pattie.
So we arrived at NASA without incident and paid another $6
for parking, on top of the already exhorbitant entry fee (we’ve spent a small
fortune this trip on entry fees – Gnnnnn !!) and managed to find a park in the
shade not too far from the entry. My
internal compass is so out of whack I have no idea if we will still be in the
shade by the time we get back to the car or not, but we should get a 5 degree
reduction in internal car heat for making the attempt. It’s quite warm here, 30 degrees, not a cloud
in the sky but a dirty smudge of smog on the horizon. We’ve been told everywhere that it’s much
warmer than is usual at this time of the year.
I digress, back to the Space Centre.
It really is impressive, very large, lots of displays that are very well
done and informative, lots of interactive stuff for kids, and perhaps most
impressive of all, some pretty good historical artefacts.
When we first arrived there were about a thousand school kids
outside, all pushing and shoving each other, yelling and generally being
obnoxious. Well it felt like a thousand,
but was probably about a hundred. So they
were herded in before us and scattered like sheep all over the place. I managed to avoid most of them by going to the
International Space Centre exhibit, which was really good.
The Centre also has several genuine spacecraft, including
three capsules from the early days of manned flight when the whole capsule was
recovered. They’re tiny and looking inside it beggars belief how an Astronaut
in bulky gear could deftly manipulate the mind-boggling number of buttons, toggles
and switches all while being in the most inhospitable environment operating a craft
that really, always must work first time!
We’d booked a tour of the Space Shuttle and the 747 that had
been adapted to return the shuttle from it’s landing point to it’s launch
pad. The plane was the actual real
thing, the shuttle on top was a model.
To prove that the concept of attaching the shuttle to the 747 would
work, some pretty keen modeller built a remote controlled model of the two, and
that included “releasing” the shuttle from the 747 in flight and landing it by
itself. One chap who was manning rhe flight deck as a volunteer was most informative
to chat to. He told us that the traditional Shuttle cockpit would normally have
up to 3,000 switches, buttons & dials, but the newer craft coming online
(notably the Orion project for deep space missions) will be more a touch-screen
environment as the younger generation of Astronauts are more comfortable and familiar
with these that the “steam-gauge” Astronauts of yore.
Once we’d finished there we had a quick bite of lunch and did
some more wandering before our 1pm booking for the tram tour. This loaded us all onto a trolley bus and
took us to three separate buildings at the space centre. First and most interesting was Mission
Control for the Apollo missions – the actual Mission Control that managed the
moon landing, plus the aborted Apollo 13 which made such a good movie that I am
a big fan of. They had the flag that had been to the moon and back (not from
the first moon landing but a subsequent one and sadly I can’t remember exactly
which one). They also pointed out the
speaker that broadcast those famous words “one small step ….” you know the
rest.
We all herded back on the trolley and off to the next stop. This was the Space Vehicle Mock Up facility,
which is basically a huge long hanger filled with cool stuff they have
developed or are developing to help with advances in space travel. The next project on the list is Mars, and
they had, literally under wraps, a project that is being worked on in
conjunction with Tesla, which will help them reduce the cost of sending an
astronaut up to the International Space Station. Due to the demise of the shuttle program,
they now have to pay the Russians something like 80 million dollars to send one
astronaut up there. Tesla is aiming to
do it much more cheaply (we can’t agree between us what the savings were, but
they were significant) plus it has the advantage of making America more autonomous
in the space race. Yes it’s still a
race, and Mars is the next goal now the moon is old hat. There were hardly any people on the floor,
and I did wonder why that was, I expected it to be a busy hive of mad scientists
beavering away. We did wonder if this
was mostly for show and the real stuff is done away from the plebs. Amongst some of the cool stuff that was
there, though not being used, was an air floor, that blew air up from the floor
to simulate weightlessness. They also
had vehicles that looked like they were used in a science fiction file with
multiple legs, plus a couple of robots that were able to turn pages in books
without tearing the paper (something I have not managed to achieve and why I
love my Kindle) and write a text paragraph without using autocorrect, again, something
I have not yet achieved.
Once we’d all filed through the building it was back on the
trolley for another stop at the Saturn 5 rocket hangar. This is enormous, and so hard to comprehend,
let alone convey the scale of it. It’s
big.
Back on the trolley again and back to the main museum. While what we saw was pretty interesting, the
trolley ride was turgid, way too many people, all yapping when they should have
been listening and not following instructions.
You could have whipped around all those places is half an hour with a decent
sized group, rather than the 90+ minutes that it took. Sigh.
Time for a quick sit-down with a coffee and some more
exhibits, including touching actual moon rock – ooooohhhhhh 3.8 billion years
old !
Finally a stop at the gift store and six hours after we
arrived, we headed back to the motel.
Dinner was the same place as last night – hey if you like
it, why not ???
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