Running out of Mars rocks

Testing the Rover
Originally uploaded by Beautiful Freaks

We went to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory open house today. The boys' favorite bit was where they tested a Mars rover type thingy. However, having run out of Mars rocks, they decided to do use a group of small children, all lying in a row.

There were all kinds of other exciting things there, to look at, and knowledgeable people who could talk about them. However, it was all a bit beyond the Dan and Alex, who tended to rapidly get bored (example, when looking at a model of the Cassini space probe: "Daddy, ask the man why the satellite has a long arm". Man:"That's called the magnetometer boom, it's got the magnetometer on the end, and it's long so that it avoids interference from the main satellite when it's measuring variation in Saturn's magnetic field." "Daddy. What the man say?".)

It was also darned hot. (It's always darned hot when we go to Pasadena. The forecast said 18 degrees, but I should have known better than to believe it.) And that puts the boys in a bad mood.

I got over-excited in the shop, and bought the boys model space shuttles and spacement (and models of a thing that's going to be the new shuttle that I've forgotten the name, but it doesn't exist anyway). And sun visors, that say NASA on them. And a JPL hat for me. And a NASA t-shirt. And a mug that says NASA on it (I tried to sneak that into the cupboard, but Susanne heard and said "You'd better not have bought any more darned mugs" even though it's ages since I've bought a mug.) And two pencils for Susanne (it's a bit of a tradition that when we go to places, I buy her a pencil. But I thought it might redeem the mug if I bought her two - one says JPL on it, and the other says NASA).

I wore my 404 t-shirt, because I thought there was a better chance of someone being geeky enough there to get the joke than there would be anywhere else. But if anyone did get the joke, they didn't say anything.