November 1, 2010

We split up today, with the masculine part of the family going to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville Alabama. Hélène and Iseline stayed in Chattanooga.

It took a 2 hour drive to get to the museum and the boys were deeply into their iPods during most of the trip. I had bought the Simpsons movie in DC and had transferred it to their IPods with the French audio track. To Adrian´s surprise the Simpsons family was speaking Canadian French with a thick Quebecois accent. He ended up watching it anyway. Good language training.

Once I got the GPS app up and running I was surprised to see that the trip would take only an hour, when it had said 2 hours when I entered the address and chose the route I wanted. I quickly realized that it was telling me what the time would be when we arrived. It was displaying arrival time in Huntsville, which is in the central time zone, while Chattanooga is in the eastern time zone. Bad design choice. I bet that functionality is fooling several people every single day.

I have always wondered why GPS designers in their infinite wisdom almost always choose to only display arrival time, and never display what time it is. You want to know how long it will take you to arrive, not what time the GPS will show when you arrive. When it does not show you the time you cannot even calculate traveling time without a separate time piece that you trust to be reasonably accurate. One of those every day things that irritate me. Right up there with all the different ways they have managed to make it difficult to get water out of a shower in a hotel room.

The interesting thing with the GPS system is that it is dependent on very accurate time keeping to know your position. You have to know exactly where those satellites are at a given time. The signal from the satellite contains the time it was sent and with the speed of light being known, and signals from several satellites, you can calculate the distance the signal has travelled. This is also why each and every GPS satellite carries four extremely precise atomic clocks, the most accurate timing devices ever made. The time signal from a GPS signal is accurate within 50 nanoseconds, the time it takes for light to travel 15 meters (50 feet).

The short time I worked for Nokia one of their engineers told me that having GPS on a phone can be used in an unexpected way. When you receive a GPS signal you know the accurate time in the real world. If someone tries to set the date on their phone back in time, to try to use software where their time limited license has expired, they will not be allowed to do so. The GPS signal will reveal their evil intentions. He even claimed that because of this the GPS signal was the most important signal to have in a phone. As an open source advocate I found that to be a sad point of view, but that is a completely different discussion.

Oops, sorry.

We crossed into Georgia, back into Tennessee and finally headed south into Alabama. There were scattered houses and villages along the way and it was pretty clear that this was not the richest part of the US. We stopped for gas after about an hour at a very basic gas station. It was an old worn down log cabin with gas pumps that must have been from the fifties. I have only seen pumps like that in the movies before.

The lady behind the counter was very nice and friendly and having learnt my lesson I went for a full tank. 🙂

The museum in Huntsville was great and well worth the long trip. Even though this was the third museum in the air and space genre in 9 days we had a great day.

We thought we got to see our third Blackbird SR-71:

but Wikipedia later revealed that this is an A-12, a predecessor to the SR-71.

There was a very impressive outdoor rocket collection. We could see the full scale replica of a Saturn V rocket from far away (picture taken by Adrian):

They had the German V1 from World War II

and the V2. It was first made by the Germans in 1944 and was the world´s first supersonic missile and the first real rocket (the first man-made object to go into sub-orbital space). It was later used by the US in the first space experiments in the late 40s. This is one of only 20 remaining original V2s:

Rockets galore:

Adrian caught this little critter with his camera:

We tried out the G-force simulator, were spun around at 50 miles per hour (100 kmh) and experienced 4.5G

We saw a gorgeous IMAX movie about the Hubble space telescope. The animated voyage into a 3D model of the Orion Nebula was a high point and the boys were very thrilled.

Inside the museum they had a real Saturn V which was suspended in the roof in horizontal position so we could really appreciate the enormous size. This one of only 3 remaining original complete Saturn Vs:

Look at the wall down to the left with the two astronauts to get an idea of the size. Here are the astronauts:

This is the largest piece of Skylab that was found in Australia after Skylab burned up in the atmosphere in 1979.

They had a moon rock (picture taken by Adrian):

The space shuttle landing simulator was still there and Adrian could try it again 10 years after he last sat in my lap exactly here:

The Apollo 16 command module:

Replica of a part of the International Space Station:

As you probably understand there was a lot to see and do and we had a really nice time at the museum.

On our way back we stopped by the place I used to live on Dayton Boulevard in Red Bank. I learned to dive in this pool 35 years ago (it still looks the same, Aud):

I used to live where the lower balcony is on the left.

Oh sweet nostalgia!

Eirik

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