"I love the smell of rocket fuel in the morning!" - actual shirt
The wind won the day. Not even the heat of the sun could compete, and the rainstorms last night were long gone. However, these were a special breed of freak. Liquid nitrogen and oxygen had rotted out their brains. They had more money than God, and not much to blow it on. Seeing as NASA wasn't doing it, they set their sights on space. They would conquer it. YES. Space: the final tourist trap.
I arrived late for the party. Late, and tangled. I hadn't expected a windstorm to tag along behind that thunderstorm last night, and neglected to tie my hair up. I knew immediately that there was trouble, with a capital P..
They weren't taking any chances, either...
This was disconcerting. The potential for the event to turn ugly was very real, especially considering there were at least two bars on the premises; one by the terminal, and another under a tent, where old rich women sat drinking Miller with their husbands and complaining about the wind. However, I'd paid $8 for my ticket, and by God, I was going in. What a sight greeted me past the gate...
Awestruck by this sight, my equilibrium went batty, and though I tried to take a picture of Mars the same way, I found either the world tilted, or I did..
I continued my cruise through the crowd, finding that the majority of people present were... small children and their parents. In fact, I almost believe that small children vastly outnumbered the wealthy old men sponsoring the event, and perhaps even outnumbered the adults at the event. There seemed to be approximately three children to every family, and over 75 families.
A crowd attracted my attention, and curious, I wandered over to find this nifty contraption made by Armadillo Aerospace, to learn that it had just been launched, and was now on display. The black tank was full of alcohol, and the bottom was filled with either liquid nitrogen or oxygen.
One of the volunteers talking to me about it had a sense of humor..
I bid them farewell and continued my wandering around, now thinking I could really use a cold drink. However, no drinks were to be found; none cheap, anyway. Stumbling across a V-2 rocket, I tried vainly to take a clear picture of it, but some asshole decided his children were so cute that they just HAD to be in everyone's pictures. Fine then, skippy, if my friends make sick comments about your brat, it's not my fault.
I seem to recall this one being called the Aurora something. It looked like it could spear someone if it took off horizontally like this. Again, it was a tough shot because people suck.
There weren't only families and rich people and press there, though. Some people were almost exhibits by themselves. I should've gotten this guy's name to credit him. He was awesome.
Some little kid lost their shoe, so I spent a few minutes wandering around looking for lost and found. Finally decided that police command was the lost and found, and wandered off again, my hair rapidly becoming one large knot.
Someone announced that there would be a prototype plane being sent up, so a crowd gathered at the far north fence. It turned out it was the E-Z Rocket, going for it's second time up in one day (which it hadn't even tried before)..
It then proceeded to do three or four loops around the area, cutting it's engines half the time and acting like a glider. I managed to catch it when it came by, and even got detail of the engine when it was working.
Went back to wandering around, saw some people from the Japanese press arguing about something (I didn't hear what, I just recognized snippets of their conversation), annoyed people at the tents for a while, then we made our way back to the fence for another exhibition; this time, they were firing the engine from something called the Starchaser. They didn't have it ready for launch, but they wanted us to see them fire it anyway.
Ever see it in movies when they blow something up in the desert, then a second later you hear the boom? That's how this was. The smoke cloud could probably be seen from Las Cruces, you can see the beginnings of it in that nasty black triangle. The event coordinators took it in stride, though, even joked about giving the firefighters something to do. These men aren't daunted by something as silly as explosions, no sir. They've probably all blown their eyebrows off dozens of times in the name of science.
It became clear that the afternoon was over. Tents were packing up, and people were fleeing for the exits. I took my sweet time, grabbing some pictures of Canada's contribution to the new space race..
and something nifty from Sandia Labs. SWEET JEBUS IT'S LOOKING AT ME!
The day was over. But there was still the problem of getting back into the city. By the time I left, the snipers were gone to points unknown, and a dozen buses were waiting for us. A significantly more subdued crowd returned to the fairgrounds where we were parked. However... there was the little problem of what hadn't become a mudhole last night, being dry as a bone and kicked up by leaving cars. This spawned a massive duststorm that choked out the city; I was still fighting off dust when I got home an hour later, fooded and tired.
The verdict: Children are frightening, wealthy bored people are strange, and I need to start carrying hairties on my chain.
Now to go get a drink. I leave you with this, because everyone loves explosions.
