So I stood under a Sputnik today.
Well, technically a spare Sputnik. Not a model or some after-the-fact replica, like, an actual spare Sputnik developed by the Soviet space program.
And technically there were two of them. One of them was on the ground. I was able to put my face like three inches away from it.
It has a very interesting scratch.
"Waitaminnit," you say, "how did you get that close to a piece of space history without getting chased off by museum security?"
Simple, my friends.
I was in a house.
Richard Garriott's house.
Richard Garriott Who Created Ultima Online And Went To The International Space Station For Two Weeks And Is Worth Like Eleventy Billion Dollars's house.
See, Austin is apparently the largest city in America to not have a planetarium or science center - which when phrased like that makes it sound incredibly stupid that we don't, seriously, with UT and the capitol and everything? - so the organization that's working to get us a planetarium held a fundraising shindig at Garriott's house.
And being that my dad works at the local weekly, and a couple of his coworkers were going there to cover the event, and would I like to come along, and "hell yes I would," so I did.
And. And. Oh my god you guys, this man's house. It's like, you know when you're in kindergarten, and the teacher tells you to draw the house you want to live in when you grow up, and this one kid in class draws a huge crazy mansion with all sorts of Batman-like house accessories?
Richard Garriott's house is what happens when you give that kid enough money to buy your soul.
He's got a swimming pool with a waterslide. He's got secret passageways. He's got an observatory. He's got entire rooms devoted to magic, automatons, old-timey science gear, and artifacts of the deaths of a wide variety of species (including humans.)
And on top of that, I am quite happy to say that, yes, he is one of the nice super-duper-rich people. I didn't get to talk to him much, but he made a good impression, and I probably would've just devolved into a puddle of "uhhhhhhharlblearblearbleyouwentintospaaaaaaaaace" anyway.
So yeah, basically the only reason for this post was for me to say "My dad has a cool job and I saw an awesome house and was like this close to becoming The Sputnik Bandit."
It was worth it.
And technically there were two of them. One of them was on the ground. I was able to put my face like three inches away from it.
It has a very interesting scratch.
"Waitaminnit," you say, "how did you get that close to a piece of space history without getting chased off by museum security?"
Simple, my friends.
I was in a house.
Richard Garriott's house.
Richard Garriott Who Created Ultima Online And Went To The International Space Station For Two Weeks And Is Worth Like Eleventy Billion Dollars's house.
See, Austin is apparently the largest city in America to not have a planetarium or science center - which when phrased like that makes it sound incredibly stupid that we don't, seriously, with UT and the capitol and everything? - so the organization that's working to get us a planetarium held a fundraising shindig at Garriott's house.
And being that my dad works at the local weekly, and a couple of his coworkers were going there to cover the event, and would I like to come along, and "hell yes I would," so I did.
And. And. Oh my god you guys, this man's house. It's like, you know when you're in kindergarten, and the teacher tells you to draw the house you want to live in when you grow up, and this one kid in class draws a huge crazy mansion with all sorts of Batman-like house accessories?
Richard Garriott's house is what happens when you give that kid enough money to buy your soul.
He's got a swimming pool with a waterslide. He's got secret passageways. He's got an observatory. He's got entire rooms devoted to magic, automatons, old-timey science gear, and artifacts of the deaths of a wide variety of species (including humans.)
And on top of that, I am quite happy to say that, yes, he is one of the nice super-duper-rich people. I didn't get to talk to him much, but he made a good impression, and I probably would've just devolved into a puddle of "uhhhhhhharlblearblearbleyouwentintospaaaaaaaaace" anyway.
So yeah, basically the only reason for this post was for me to say "My dad has a cool job and I saw an awesome house and was like this close to becoming The Sputnik Bandit."
It was worth it.