Spacefest Friday

FAR OUT FEST: We headed down to The Museum of Flight first thing this morning, as it is the site of Spacefest November 5 through the 7th.

First thing on our agenda today was checking out the special virtual reality experience that was being offered onsite. I'll let CJ tell you a little bit more about it.

On November 6th, 2015, we went to the SpaceFest event at the Museum of Flight, a frequent visit for us. Out of many fun things you could do there, including meeting an astronaut (more on that in my sister's review), they had three different stations, each with an HTC Vive, a virtual reality headset developed by HTC and Valve, a popular video game company. In the simulation, you could experiment with three different environments. The first of these environments was a landscape of Mars, based off of pictures taken by the Curiosity Rover (which you could visit). Using the hand-held controllers I was given, I was able to teleport across the surface. Next, I was put on A simulation of 67P, the comet that Rosetta and Philae landed on a while back. Like the previous simulation, I was able to teleport around. Lastly, I was put in a unique drawing program made by Google. In the program, I was able to draw in three dimensions, and multiple different tools to select from.

Overall, I enjoyed the VR experience at SpaceFest.

Editor's note - I told CJ he gets extra credit for spelling environment right. I told him that's important in COBOL (a programming language that has been in the news as of late).

For the virtual reality experience, we each donned a lightweight headset and had two handheld controllers. The kids took to it like fish in water. 

We got to walk on the surface of Mars (the whole landscape created with actual photos), and stand alongside rover MSL/Curiosity. 

Then, it was on to Comet 67P, made famous by the Rosetta mission and home to lander Philae.

Lastly, we got to test drive Google's Tilt Brush, which lets you paint in 3D. Awesome.

After that, we tore over to the mail museum, and got front row seats for the talk by the amazing astronaut John Herrington. I'll let Annabelle tell you a bit about about that.

John Herrington was the first Native American astronaut in space. Today during Spacefest, he gave a presentation about how he became an astronaut. He was born in Oklahoma. He used to play in cardboard boxes, pretending he was on a mission to the moon. Then, he moved to Colorado where he went to college. He also got interested in climbing and helped build a bridge using those skills. Eventually he decided to major in engineering, so he could become an astronaut. He even went to the same pilot school that Neil Armstrong went to! He was eventually accepted, and he flew on the STS-113 mission to the ISS. He reminded us that, even though there are a lot of astronauts that have aspired their entire lives to be on a straight path to astronaut-dom, there are also people who have “crooked” paths. Afterwards, we built gliders. I got mine signed by him! It was a short, sweet, and fun presentation, and I would’ve recommended it to anyone who wants to meet an astronaut but not listen to a long lecture.

I'll fill in a few holes in Annabelle's account. Herrington told the audience that his mother was a high school drop out, who gave birth to his older brother at age 17. Herrington's great grandmother was full blooded Chickasaw.

 Herrington was the first in his family to attend college. After a freshman year at Colorado, he had a D average and was not invited to return for a sophomore year.

 He always loved the outdoors, and  rock climbing, and when working a menial construction job, hanging off the face of a cliff, holding a glass prism which another worker bounced a beam off of to determine distance (the measurements to be used to build a highway bridge), Herrington discovered that math is actually pretty cool.

He returned to college and got a bachelor's degree in applied math. He worked as a tutor, and one of his students was an older gentleman, a retired fighter pilot who encouraged Herrington to join the Navy. He did that, and became an officer and pilot. While in flight training school, he realized that the names on a wall there of graduates included many astronauts, and he thought that maybe, just maybe, he could become one too.

His path was a bit crooked, but Herrington wound up becoming a NASA astronaut, flying on STS-113, to the International Space Station. He even participated in a spacewalk.

photo: NASA

After his talk, all of the kids in attendance (including a number from the Muckleshoot Tribal School) made gliders. 

CJ and Annabelle were pretty happy to get theirs signed by a real live spacewalker!

In the early afternoon, we went back across the street and had front row seats for a cool space-meets-the arts presentation in the museum's Charles Simonyi Gallery.

First up was Nick Malinowski, community programs manager for the Seattle Opera. He shared a compelling talk titled "In Space, No Once Can Hear You Sing." It was about how music has played a part in our space program.

For example, way back on December 19 of 1965, in the Gemini era, astronaut Wally Schirra became the first human to perform on a musical instrument in space. He played "Jingle Bells' on an 8-note Hohner "Little Lady" harmonica, accompanied by Tom Stafford, in a prank about seeing Santa. https://youtu.be/RmsOmqf7Hso


The harmonica and bells now reside in The Smithsonian.

Malinowski covered everything from songs on the Golden Record aboard Voyager to Chris Hadfield covering David Bowie' Space Oddity while on the ISS. It was all super interesting.

During the Seattle Rep Theater Company's presentation, literary director Kristin Leahey shared with us a short play from a Chicago-based theater company. Called "Laika's Coffin," it is (per its YouTube post) "an epic tale based on the biography of the doomed first animal in space. Three suitcases open to reveal remarkable miniature Sovietinspired sets while an operatic narrator and three puppeteers animate the melancholy saga."  

The play first premiered at Collaboraction's Sketchbook 2007, where it won best director and best production.
https://youtu.be/Mpg7zvJYLXA

Poor Annabelle got a little misty when the poor Soviet pup conscripted into space service met its doom. ... Probably doesn't help that we have a dog named after that space pup at home.

All in all, another amazing day at The Museum of Flight. We're so lucky to live so near such a great place of learning.

WAYBACK MACHINE: And speaking of space, four years ago yesterday, the kids' names were floating on a poster uploaded to the International Space Station. (CJ and Annabelle are on the poster's lower righthand corner). A rocket-launching friend of ours made the out of this world photo opp possible. 

In the photo is Japanese Space Agency's Dr. Satoshi Furukawa posing with our poster. NASA astronaut Mike Fossum took the shot. Note the pen floating in micro gravity. So. Cool.