jpl open house 2015

"i'll be there in fifteen," i told my friend suyu, cheerfully unaware of the bumper-to-bumper traffic that would await me on the 210 freeway. "it's, like, five minutes away."

thirty minutes later i found myself stuck between gould and oak grove with my phone ringing angrily beside me. out of the eleven of my friends who promised to carpool with me, only two remained. the threat of getting stuck in california traffic and standing in lines under 100 degrees heat overruled the desire to see exploration rovers, and i didn't blame them.

the traffic would probably thin out past the rose bowl, i thought naively. i vaguely remembered hearing about a game. it was strange that people were coming so early to see a game, because surely they weren't all trying to get to jpl. science was important but since when did it draw out such large crowds?
 
but it apparently did. once i met with my friends, we realized we had to call an Uber driver to pick us up and drop us off about a mile away from jpl. we were the lucky ones; floods of people walked from even further away. once we arrived there, sweating and out of breath from art center-induced lack of exercise, we waited in line at the entrance. we laughed nervously about feeling out of place between hardcore space nerds (characterized by their "occupy mars" and "nasa" t-shirts) and science aficianados (noted by their long and science-y words.) we were suddenly struck by how much we didn't know about all those science-y things, even though we realized how important it was to know about them.

despite the sweltering heat and long lines, we came away satisfied and a little more thoughtful about the science we'd encountered. we listened to lectures from friendly, passionate jpl scientists and stuffed our bags with neat stickers, holographic badges, and pamphlets with pretty (albeit threatening) infographics about climate change.

one thing that really took us aback was the apparent simplicity of jpl's machines. for some reason (because of hollywood, probably,) we expected to see complicated, arcane tools and materials. there was probably a lot more to those tools than we could see with our laymen eyes, but it made us realize that science wasn't just this thing that very smart people did with their million-dollar materials and equipment in lab coats. it wasn't necessarily unreachable, and it was incredible what they achieved with these machines and materials.

(Up to down: 1. "The Search For Another World"  The Habitable Zone, Confirmed, Candidates, 2. Rover running over some kids, 3. Spacecraft assembly, 4. Mars Science Laboratory, 5. Mars exploration rover)