Last week, my husband and I zipped over to Eastern Virginia to visit our younger son who is doing a summer internship at the NASA Langley Research Center. He’d gotten a 4-hour window of clearance for us. but we had to stop by the welcome center to show them our IDs and get visitor badges printed and issued.
Once in, it was a little startling how run down the campus was. Our son had warned us about this — “Everything here is so old!” “The sidewalk system is terrible!” — but even so, it was surprising. It seemed like only a fraction of the place was being used.
After our lunch at the cafeteria, we stopped by my son’s office — a windowless cubby in the depths of a nondescript 1950s block building. Not that my son seemed to care about the lack of natural light — no, he was just thrilled to show us the stuff he’s been playing with: a little lever the size of a half-dollar, and some sort of ancient-looking box with a screen that boasted some dancing wavy lines.
Then he took us to his lab where he’s working on a stepper motor. He explained it in great detail with words I didn’t recognize and can’t recall. I do know he was referencing (or creating) some sort of computer program, and he had a notebook full of his hand-drawn sketches and codes, and instructions for the engineers who will be using The Thing* he’s working on.
Oh, and there was a fancy joystick he was enamored with, which cracked me up. Here we were, surrounded by a staggering quantity of expensive high-tech gear, and my son was excited about a joystick the size of a eggplant. What the heck!
He riffled confidently through tables overflowing with cords and gadgety contraptions, gave us a demonstration of The Thing (when it moved, it made musical beeps up and down the scale), and then took us into a side room to show us a leaky roof that had been bugging him for weeks. He’d reported it, he said, so NASA set out a bucket to catch the drips.
He’d gotten special permission for us to see one of the windtunnels. When we arrived, the team was preparing to run one of the last tests of the day, and while they waited for the plane to cool from the previous test, the lead researcher took us into the wind tunnel to see the plane. It was very hot (down to 95F from the 116F), and there wasn’t much to see — just long, garage-like room lined with black panels and windows with cameras, and in the center, a small black jet fastened to a steel pillar called a “sting.”
Back in the control room, we watched on screens as the technicians did a final check in the tunnel (because you certainly don’t want any random bits of anything floating free when the fans fire up!), and then, once cleared, we watched them run the test. The wings would occasionally tilt a little, and the wind speeds varied, but mostly, all there was to watch was a bunch of people taking measurements on their computers. Our guide described the process of experimentation and development, pulled up photos from other tests, and answered our questions. It was fascinating, but in an non-climactic sort of way. There were no explosions and no mistakes, so yay?
Next, in The Maker’s Space, we admired the rows of whirring 3D printers (arranged like library stacks), the 3D microscope, and a plethora of yet more tools, wires, and gadgets.
And then while our son finished his work day, my husband and I napped in a nearby parking lot before driving to a SweetFrog and buying ourselves some frozen yogurt — twice. (It was good.)
Back at our son’s place, the tour continued: through the goose-poop pocked yard down to the water and then back to the house where he fed us a luxurious supper of Oreos, leftover chips, and stale movie theater popcorn.
(And yes, I’m being sarcastic with my use of the word “luxurious.” All summer, the kid has been subsisting on air and shredded wheat and sandwiches, so we knew what to expect.)
The next day, we hit up a bakery before heading to Colonial Williamsburg where…
- We learned about dyeing cloth, making bricks, building shoes, printing, blacksmithing, cooking, etc.
- My husband was served a raw sausage (and then they, perhaps accidentally, refunded us for the entire meal).
- I couldn’t get over how the workers were dressed to the teeth in period-appropriate clothes and had to repeat the same information over and over to tourists, all while standing in the hot sun. It bothered me so much, I almost felt ill.
- Our son begged to ride the bus system that ringed the perimeter of the grounds. He’s recently fallen head-over-heels in love with urban planning, and could not stop talking about that bus. So at the end of the day, we took the bus back to the parking lot for (our son’s) kicks and giggles.
I want to ride the bus! Can we ride the bus? LET’S RIDE THE BUS.
And thus concludes our two-day adventure spanning our crumbling present all the way back to our glorified, uncomfortable past.
*The Thing = The Klinger Cube
This same time, years previous: one step further, the coronavirus diaries: week whatever, the quotidian (7.29.19), the quotidian (7.30.18), in the kitchen, injera and beef wat, my deficiency, do you strew?.
