Trip to Los Angeles to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour

Our nephew Riley and his gal pal Rachel came for a vist last week.

The two previous years he brought his guy pal Chris along and it was a different kind of visit. I guess we all gotta grow up sooner or later. Me soon too I hope.

Riley has turned into a bright, interesting and polite young dude.

You did good Jeff and Polly.

Since the beer drinking was scaled wayyyy back we decided a bit of culture and learning might be in order. So we drove into Los Angeles to have a look at the space shuttle Endeavour that is "museumed" at the California Science Center. They moved it here a couple years ago.

There are some really cool photos at this site showing the journey.

Here's a YouTube video showing the move too.

The science center is a very cool place but there are at least 10,000 very young kids here. Very noisy, easy to trip over them. I honestly can't imagine what 5, 6 and 7 year olds gain from a trip to a place like this. The admission is free so I suspect it's just a way to get the little bu$$ers away from their school to give everyone there a break.

See video following...Frank's version of hell...part 2

I have always wondered about many things about going into space...how do you eat...how do you take a shower...etc, etc...but the one thing that has always mystified me is how do you go to the bathroom...?? I mean if some of your food or water from your shower gets on the loose and goes floating around it's not a big deal - right??? - but what if you fall off the can in mid-process????

There's just certain things you don't want floating around.

Now this reminds me of a great song, by Donovan, from the seventies that dealt with this exact issue... click here

Now this is such a great song you're going to be humming it for weeks after hearing it so just on case you want all the lyrics here ya go.

Anyway this is the poop-a-torium.

It looks pretty complicated and probably not something you'd want to have to use while half asleep in the middle of the night.

It comes with plenty of instructions though.

Zoom in to read the fine print.

So here's a few pictures of Endeavour from different angles. It's quite large actually.

The three engines at the back provided 15% of the thrust duringtake off. I think that one or more of them also steered the shuttle during take off. The other 85% of thrust was provided by the solid rocket boosters that were jettisoned at certain points on the way to orbit.

This is an actual engine. Not real huge but very compicated.

And all the fire and enerygy came out of this wee small hole - I'd say it was probably about 10 inches in diameter.

Some info on the engines.

So here's the video I spoke about earlier and like I said it's kind of my idea of what hell might be like.

After an hour or so we decided lunch was in order so we zoomed over to Santa Monica for a bite on the pier.

Here's Riley and Rachel again.

And the retardees.

And the beach. Feb 19th and the beach is happening!