"Hey Max.... Guess what we just did!...."
Said Lauren on our car ride home from the Los Angeles World Affair Council, while speaking to her lover max over speakerphone.
Max: What?
Lauren: We met Buzz Aldrin!
*Silence....
Max: "Really?"
Lauren: "Yea"
*More Silence
Max: Son of a Bitch
Car: *Laughter
The end of a phenomenal night.
It all started when I got to robotics around 4:30 or so today, and we talked about tons of different drive/articulation systems we are going to build using vex to show off to more kids later on (some crazy stuff, but that's a different blog). So around 6, I get changed into my clothes and Neil shows up at the same time. A few minutes later we follow Mr. Harder into the parking lot, and he totally leaves us and goes back to CAMS, leaving us just standing there looking like idiots....
Fastforward 10 minutes of random picture taking and talking, and Mr. Harder still hasn't shown up again. Eventually we go back down, and he's just walking around, and we all throw our arms up in frustration. Finally after another five minutes we get on our way to the Beverly Hilton Hotel (which is in Beverly Hills...surprise surprise).
We get there and go inside, and it is bustling with people in fancy clothes wandering around. We even walk accross a red carpet, I am amazed by how many people there are, and how big of an event it is. However, to my total dissapointment, we end up being in some random room in the back with about 60-80 other people.
We get our tickets, go in the room, and start eating. The food was delicious (I thought), started off with a nice cold salad, moved on to some bread, the main plate was baked chicken with spinach filling (mmmm!). Of course Brett complained about being vegitarian, and when she asked for the Vegitarian meal, they brought her something...weird... but of course it LOOKED like chicken, so she wouldn't eat it. She ended up asking the waiter if their was meat in it and he said no. After the main course, some delicious custard and coffee before Dr. Charles Elachi, Director of NASA's Jet Propulstion Laboratory (JPL), & Vice President of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) started talking. But for the longest time, the 5 of us were at a table made for 8, and we were wondering who else was going to join us. Just then 2 guys sit down and start to eat, we found out their names were John and John.... One was the Camerman from Los Angeles 36...some kinda cable news show or something, he was the camera guy. The other John worked at JPL and was in charge of the media section, so during the presentation, he got behind his laptop and controlled the media and stuff. We started talking a bit, and the Camerman John told us that Buzz Aldrin was there, I couldn't see him from where i was sitting ( some table in the back), but it remained on my mind the whole evening.
The presentation was fascinating, he started off with why we even bother to explore space, when we have a bunch of problems here at home, we should be spending money to fix our problems not go "explore". He said, it was just like a few hundred years ago, when Luis and Clark were paid to go off explore the west side of the United States. Think about it, if they didn't do that, most/all the people who will read this won't be where we are right now ( Californa). He then talked a bit of history and random facts about Mars, and presented a video of what it was like in the control room, and simulated video of the lander landing. He goes on to explain how the lander works, gathering rock and ice and analyzing it in its oven. Afterwards he went on to talk about where water was on mars 3 million years ago. The Time flew by, I don't even know how long it took, to me it seemed like it just started when it was time for Questions and Answers, most of the questions were very intelligent, i was very surprised by the intelect of the people there.... Of course they are all physicsics and Engineers haha.
So after the presentation, I ask John if he could introduce us to Buzz Aldrin, and he said yea, follow me! At this point my heart is racing, I have a huge smile on my face, and I was just so excited to meet Buzz Aldrin in person!! Neil, Brett, and Lauren had similar faces to mine! (If you don't know who Buzz Aldrin is..... I shouldn't be talking to you... hahaha juss kidding. Guy on the space mission with Neil Armstrong, second person to get on the Moon. So John tells him we are from CAMS, and we introduce ourselves. Out of the blue, he starts talking about this huge dome they are going to build near CAMS, thats going to be 4 times bigger then the Long Beach dome, and it will look like Mars on the outside, and be an (inverted) crater on the inside i guess? It was really cool when he was telling us about it. So, I had my Camera, and Mr. Harder told me to give it to him so he could take a picture of us. And of course i do. Harders asks Buzz if we could take a picture, and he says yes of course. When we are trying to get in place, he says "Let me get betweent he two girls, you two (neil and i) can get on the outside" We all laughed. Harder snaps the pic, and some other person grabs him away from us.
From Lef to Right:
Me (Marcus), Lauren, Buzz!!!, Brett, Neil
We all walk away with huge smiles on our face... It was a great moment, completely inspirational to me. When we made it back outside, the moon never looked more spectacular. I just met one of the only people on Earth to ever go there. So I snapped a beautiful picture of it.
Never in my lifetime, could something so far away, be any closer to home.
It was a phenomenal night.
One of my favorite qoutes of the night:
"It's always good to be smart, but it never hurts to be lucky." - Dr. Charles Elachi
Max: What?
Lauren: We met Buzz Aldrin!
*Silence....
Max: "Really?"
Lauren: "Yea"
*More Silence
Max: Son of a Bitch
Car: *Laughter
The end of a phenomenal night.
It all started when I got to robotics around 4:30 or so today, and we talked about tons of different drive/articulation systems we are going to build using vex to show off to more kids later on (some crazy stuff, but that's a different blog). So around 6, I get changed into my clothes and Neil shows up at the same time. A few minutes later we follow Mr. Harder into the parking lot, and he totally leaves us and goes back to CAMS, leaving us just standing there looking like idiots....
Fastforward 10 minutes of random picture taking and talking, and Mr. Harder still hasn't shown up again. Eventually we go back down, and he's just walking around, and we all throw our arms up in frustration. Finally after another five minutes we get on our way to the Beverly Hilton Hotel (which is in Beverly Hills...surprise surprise).
We get there and go inside, and it is bustling with people in fancy clothes wandering around. We even walk accross a red carpet, I am amazed by how many people there are, and how big of an event it is. However, to my total dissapointment, we end up being in some random room in the back with about 60-80 other people.
We get our tickets, go in the room, and start eating. The food was delicious (I thought), started off with a nice cold salad, moved on to some bread, the main plate was baked chicken with spinach filling (mmmm!). Of course Brett complained about being vegitarian, and when she asked for the Vegitarian meal, they brought her something...weird... but of course it LOOKED like chicken, so she wouldn't eat it. She ended up asking the waiter if their was meat in it and he said no. After the main course, some delicious custard and coffee before Dr. Charles Elachi, Director of NASA's Jet Propulstion Laboratory (JPL), & Vice President of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) started talking. But for the longest time, the 5 of us were at a table made for 8, and we were wondering who else was going to join us. Just then 2 guys sit down and start to eat, we found out their names were John and John.... One was the Camerman from Los Angeles 36...some kinda cable news show or something, he was the camera guy. The other John worked at JPL and was in charge of the media section, so during the presentation, he got behind his laptop and controlled the media and stuff. We started talking a bit, and the Camerman John told us that Buzz Aldrin was there, I couldn't see him from where i was sitting ( some table in the back), but it remained on my mind the whole evening.
The presentation was fascinating, he started off with why we even bother to explore space, when we have a bunch of problems here at home, we should be spending money to fix our problems not go "explore". He said, it was just like a few hundred years ago, when Luis and Clark were paid to go off explore the west side of the United States. Think about it, if they didn't do that, most/all the people who will read this won't be where we are right now ( Californa). He then talked a bit of history and random facts about Mars, and presented a video of what it was like in the control room, and simulated video of the lander landing. He goes on to explain how the lander works, gathering rock and ice and analyzing it in its oven. Afterwards he went on to talk about where water was on mars 3 million years ago. The Time flew by, I don't even know how long it took, to me it seemed like it just started when it was time for Questions and Answers, most of the questions were very intelligent, i was very surprised by the intelect of the people there.... Of course they are all physicsics and Engineers haha.
So after the presentation, I ask John if he could introduce us to Buzz Aldrin, and he said yea, follow me! At this point my heart is racing, I have a huge smile on my face, and I was just so excited to meet Buzz Aldrin in person!! Neil, Brett, and Lauren had similar faces to mine! (If you don't know who Buzz Aldrin is..... I shouldn't be talking to you... hahaha juss kidding. Guy on the space mission with Neil Armstrong, second person to get on the Moon. So John tells him we are from CAMS, and we introduce ourselves. Out of the blue, he starts talking about this huge dome they are going to build near CAMS, thats going to be 4 times bigger then the Long Beach dome, and it will look like Mars on the outside, and be an (inverted) crater on the inside i guess? It was really cool when he was telling us about it. So, I had my Camera, and Mr. Harder told me to give it to him so he could take a picture of us. And of course i do. Harders asks Buzz if we could take a picture, and he says yes of course. When we are trying to get in place, he says "Let me get betweent he two girls, you two (neil and i) can get on the outside" We all laughed. Harder snaps the pic, and some other person grabs him away from us.
From Lef to Right:
Me (Marcus), Lauren, Buzz!!!, Brett, Neil
We all walk away with huge smiles on our face... It was a great moment, completely inspirational to me. When we made it back outside, the moon never looked more spectacular. I just met one of the only people on Earth to ever go there. So I snapped a beautiful picture of it.
Never in my lifetime, could something so far away, be any closer to home.
It was a phenomenal night.
One of my favorite qoutes of the night:
"It's always good to be smart, but it never hurts to be lucky." - Dr. Charles Elachi