One good thing about living in the suburbs of San Francisco is that it’s that much closer to Silicon Valley. And easier to get to.
Whereas my brothers didn’t have an itinerary of where they wanted to go or what they wanted to do, I wanted to indulge the geek in me and check out NASA’s Ames Research Center or rather their visitor center, which is open to the public. So everyone piled into 2 cars and we made our way to Mountain View.
Their exhibits include:
Models from previous and recent spacecraft missions.
The Mercury Redstone 1A capsule which was the last unmanned test flight in 1960, before the Mercury 7 astronauts took flight.
SOFIA (stratospheric observatory for infrared astronomy), an airborne observatory that will complement space and earth-based telescopes, including the Hubble.
Science on a sphere visualization system. Projected onto the giant orb, you can watch it slowly morph from earth to Mars (with the scar on the surface) and into other planets.
Living and working in space exhibit, that looks like it’s a set from a sci-fi movie.
A piece of REAL moon rock retrieved by the crew of Apollo 15. The small fragment is part of the 169 lbs rock retrieved during the crew’s 66.9 hour stay. And it’s a good thing the rock is so large, because if this piece was ever stolen, they can hack off another piece.
Plus there’s a gift shop. I loaded up on stickers, badges, a NASA mug and an assortment of dehydrated space food, including ice cream for Sean.
It’s too bad that we weren’t able to see the rest of the Ames Research Center. It is closed to the public, however, on October 18, the center will hold an open house – the first in 17 years! The event will mark the 75th anniversary of the research center. I only wish i could go to the open house and tour the entire facilities.
Since we were in the area, I wanted to visit Google. Last time I visited California 6 years ago, Google wasn’t even on my radar as a place of interest. but working in technology for the past 7 years, I wanted to check out the campus.
We walked around Googleplex in search of the android statues. It looked just like in the movie, The Internship. However, we found out that we were not even supposed to be on campus – it’s open only to employees and their guests, who had to check in and be cleared by security.
The android statues were located at building 44, a short drive away. The grounds were open to the public and photographs were permitted.
So although it was a bit of a damper about the not being allowed on campus, I understood. It was like that at the Electronic Arts I worked at. (still bummed though)
Course, I didn’t let it tarnish our day. Because, you know, NASA.
And NASA trumps Google any day.
View more photos of my trip on my Flickr album.
Hours:
Tues-Fri: 10am-4pm | Sat-Sun: 12pm-4pm | Closed Mon
Address:
Moffett Blvd
Mountain View, California 94035
GPS coordinates: 37.4082093,-122.0650776
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