I always seem to end up with extra kids...

Went to the Des Moines Science Center and IMAX theatre today with a friend, and my son, and one of his friends. We were intending to just go see "Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon." The 1:20 show.

You can all see where this if going if you watched the news this morning...

Sold out for the 1:20 show. So, we got tickets for the science center itself, then decided to go ahead and get tickets for the 4:20 showing. We spent the next two hours going through the center, exploring all of the exhibits, some more than once, and then went to listen to Andrew Chaikin give a talk about his new book, "A Man on the Moon."

The Chaikin talk was very interesting, and did not focus on his book at all. He talked about exploration, and where we are going with exploration, specifically the fact that we are going back to the moon and to Mars. I learned quite a bit from his talk that I hadn't known. There is a new type of drive that can cut the travel time to Mars from six months to three months. I was going to write down the name of the drive, but I wrote down something else instead. You know it's good if I want to take notes :)

At the end, the audience had a chance to ask questions. Besides the obligatory, "How did the astronauts go to the bathroom?" there was one question from the audience that kind of threw me.

"Why the moon and Mars? Why not one of the other planets?"

Mr. Chaikin covered very smoothly, explaining that Venus is far too hot to consider, and the others are too far away. Very nice save. They are also gaseous, and their moons are mostly in the rings, far too dangerous to risk people at this stage. There is also a little problem in the form of an asteroid field between Mars and the outer planets...

There were no conspiracy theorists in the audience to declare that the moon landings were a hoax, so that was good, although it would have added more excitement (Hey, Troy! There's something for the podcast!).

When we finally got to see the movie, I was very worried that I would end up getting motion sickness and embarrassing myself, but I did not have a single problem. The movie was beautiful! Informative, interesting, and just gorgeous. I've seen some of the high res moon photos before, as many have been released on the web, and to see it at IMAX scale was overwhelmingly beautiful. I wish I had been able to open my eyes even further to take it all in. I did not want to blink at all.

So, we're back home now, and my son bugged me into letting his friend stay overnight. I am working on tapping down my caffeine-withdrawal headache, and burritos are in the oven for dinner. The kids are battling the Empire, and trying not to accidentally blow each other up, and I am just waiting for dinner to be over so I can sit down and relax with a good book, or blog :)

Like I said in the title to this post: I always end up with extra kids whenever we go anywhere with my son's friends. Baseball games, the kids are staying here. Harry Potter book release: We plan for one extra, and end up with two. Science Center: getting an extra kid.

Yikes! Dinner is ready!

Update: I looked up the name of the magnetic thruster system that will make Mars travel more likely - VASIMR is NASA's development, and the european space agency has developed something called HDLT that is similar. Very cool stuff! I think the galactic dust bunnies were cleared away from my brain by this trip to the science center...