Out of this World Weekend

On Friday, William and I went and saw WALL-E which was definitely out of this world. It was so good- even though there was limited dialogue. They made the movie so engaging that it didn't need dialogue. We went to at 5:30 showing (to get the discount) and the theater was PACKED- luckily, we got there a few minutes early so we were just off center on the side. I must admit that I am the biggest cry baby as I lost it at the end of the movie (not as bad as Titanic or Walk to Remember) but enough that William had to lean over and say- "Are you going to be ok?" Yeah, embarrassing.

For our next out-of-this world adventure for the weekend, on Saturday we went to the Ames/NASA Research Center and Exploratorium. It looked like it had some really interesting exhibits and programs on their website and so I was looking forward to going to it. And, best of all, its FREE.

The exhibits opened at noon so William and I got about right on time and we were quite nervous because there was only 1 other car in the parking lot. And, there was only this tent- which looks pretty small and fairly uninteresting.

We both gave each other a look and I said "I'm sorry- it looked much better on the website" and I kept thinking "What have I gotten us into". At least it was free and we could leave if it wasn't good. Three and a half hours later, we left. Needless to say, there were some REALLY great exhibits there.

But, there were some that were lacking- they had a bunch of old space items and demonstration items like this future space suit

However, the other exhibits more than made up for this. They had a big live narrated theater show where they took us on a 3-D tour of Mars and explained the new space probe that landed on the moon. Additionally, they took us through some of the other galaxies that exist. They also took us inside the 3-D imaging of one of the mummies that we had seen at the Rosicurian Egyptian Museum! I was so happy we had been there and seen the mummy "in the flesh" (hahah) before seeing its interior in 3-D. Make sure that you stay and catch this show because it is definitely worth it. There were 2 other exhibits that we spent most of our time at- one was about our current aviation system and some improvements they are making. What I tend to forget is that NASA isn't just about space but also about aeronautics. It is crazy to think that over 2 million people fly around the U.S every day. What was slightly disturbing (especially for William) to learn is that there are multiple controllers monitoring each aspect of your flight. And they then pass on your flight to be monited with only a piece of paper. We had thought that everything was computerized but I guess some things just need a human touch.

Our favorite exhibit was about current experiments that are currently being undertaken on the international space station. We watched this for at least an hour and wished that they had more of them because it was so fascinating. They illustrated how pure water acts like bubbles on the earth where it can remain suspended in the middle of a ring. They then took all of these elements and experimented to see how things function in space. Also, they showed how they have beverages on board. They eat them with chopsticks because they come out and float around in little globs. Also, they showed them eating peanut butter mixed with honey and the astronaut made it into a little space creature by pulling part of it out of the can and said the classic line- "only when you are in space can you play with your food and call it science". We wish that they would have had more about what life is like on the space station.

And what would an out-of-this world trip without me posing in one of the cutouts- they're trying to mimic the shrinking of my mass in space :-)