NASA Tour

A friend of ours from Peninsula Bible Church has worked at NASA's Ames Research Center for 20 years and gave us a tour on Friday. It was very interesting.

We got to see the biggest wind tunnel in the "free world" (apparently there is a larger one in Siberia, so I am not sure the definition of the word "free"). We got to tour the microcomputing center where design and simulation occurs. We got to see the server room with 14,000 processors and tape back up system (where the annual budget for tapes is $2 million). The facility has an annual energy bill of $1.5 million. Even said, he was quick to point out that a year of our efforts in Iraq total decades of work at NASA, so I guess government spending is all relative.

He showed us some computer generated simulations (that looked remarkable realistic) of the new design for moon launch vehicles. The familiar space shuttle will design is nearing retirement and the new design actually includes two launches. One of the cargo, which in the shuttle was in the back of the astronauts sort of like a "pick-up truck." Now, the cargo will go up first and the astronauts will follow in a separate launch. Our friend was working on one particular piece of the design which was a safety mechanism for the manned rocket. Funny to think about that so much effort (and rightly so) was going into something he hoped would never get used. This is clearly the answer to "when will I ever use geometry in real life?" question that school kids ask. Thank goodness that lots of people are great at math!

On our way to the microcomputing offices, I was telling Douglas how they used computers to design things and test them to make sure they worked before they built them. He confidently replied that maybe our friend had a problem that Douglas could help with while he was there. I could tell he wasn't talking about the distant future (after he earns in Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering or computer physics modeling), but later that afternoon. What a character!

We ended our tour at the gift shop and Douglas got a collection of rocket and shuttle models to play with and some glow-in-the-dark stars for his new space-themed bedroom. Claire picked out a little bear with a NASA t-shirt on.