MAKING A SPLASH: It was north of 85 degrees today - the perfect time for the kids to hit the municipal pool for the first time this season. They swam for an hour and a half, enjoying every minute of it.
It's not the biggest or best slide, but they sure do enjoy it.
LITTLE ITALY: On Saturday morning, we took a very short trip to one of the more unique museums you'll ever see: The Advanced Composite Structures Laboratory for Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. (Lamborghini). It's literally in our neighborhood, tucked away in a utilitarian small warehouse next to the Quality Food Center in Seattle's Interbay neighborhood. It's about an 8 minute walk from our house, tops.
Open less than a year, and only open to the public one Saturday a month, by appointment only, the world's first carbon fiber technological museum is still an unknown to most of the world. We were thrilled to have a chance to look around!
We knew we'd found the place when we saw this beauty tearing around the block.
It was a super sunny Saturday. Poor Annabelle's eyes were closed in each of the four photos I took of the kids at the guest meeting point.
I'll let CJ tell you a little bit more about our visit.
On Saturday, June 6th, I went to a museum at the Automobili Lamborghini Advanced Composite Structures Laboratory, which makes different carbon fiber technologies for use by Automobili Lamborghini, a famous Italian sports car manufacturer. According to the museum guide*, some of the first carbon fiber technologies were made in Japan in the late 1950's. The museum guide also told us that Lamborghini got it's start in the 1960's, when Ferruccio Lamborghini made his own car to impress his neighbors, one of which owned a Ferrari. Inside the museum, there were engine covers of different Lamborghini automobiles, such as the Countach and the Diablo. What makes Lamborghini cars' engine placement interesting is that unlike most other cars, which either have the engine in the front or in the back (much like the ill-fated Ford Pinto), Lamborghini cars have their engine in the middle. According to the Advanced Composite Structures Laboratory's website, their mission is to provide research and education solutions in the field of composite materials, with an emphasis on damage tolerance, hail and lightning strike, crashworthiness analysis and simulation, and material characterization for customers in the automotive industries worldwide. At the end of the tour of the museum, the guide informed us that Lamborghini currently works with several other automobile companies using carbon fiber technology. At the end of the tour, we got to ask questions we had. I asked the guide which Lamborghini's current main rival company is. The guide replied by saying Ferrari is the current primary rival of Lamborghini. Overall, I thought the tour of the carbon fiber museum was very interesting.
*Our tour guide was Dr. Paolo Feraboli, the lab's director, and also a professor at the University of Washington. You can see an interview with him here: https://youtu.be/nhPKgyaY0-A
Annabelle also has a few thoughts to share about the ACSL.
On June 6, I went to the Lamborghini Advanced Composite Structure Lab. At the lab, they experiment with materials to make Lamborghini. The first Lamborghini took a long time to make and sometimes even had Lamborghini lose money every time they made one. The process was so slow they only made about 20 cars a year.
Today, one of the most prominent materials used is carbon fiber, which, when combined with resin, can be strong and light. Almost everything on display was made of carbon fiber! The carbon fiber has been used in many of their cars and other products since. The design of the Lamborghini has changed a lot over the years from a bulky car to a streamlined one, and even race cars! There was one car they made completely out of carbon fiber after Ferrari said they could make a car under 1,000 pounds. The carbon fiber car was so light, they had to put a block of lead in the back to make it exactly 999 pounds. They also displayed golf clubs and snowboard bindings made of carbon fiber. The tour was fun and it was really cool seeing what Lamborghini uses in their cars.
Inside, the lab, a couple of photos were permitted. Mine (taken with a cell phone, in a dark space) are terrible, but at least show we were there.
UFO SPOTTED OVER HAWAII: Today, NASA conducted another test flight of their Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) over the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii. A vehicle to test new technologies that will help NASA land heavier payloads than current technology will allow on the surface of planets including Mars, LDSD is saucer-shaped vehicle.
Today, the saucer was taken to about 120,000 feet aloft by a balloon. Upon release, an engine fired, rocketing it to 180,000 feet, where tests could be conducted simulating Mars' thin atmosphere. The craft is designed to test entry and descent technology using a donut-shaped airbag and a supersonic parachute that can be deployed while the vehicle is descending to its landing point, traveling several times the speed of sound.
Unfortunately, today's test was cut short when then a parachute problem presented itself. The vehicle will be recovered, and engineers will certainly be trying to figure out what went wrong.
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