Today was all about the science museum which is actually quite a long way out of town, but we managed to navigate our way there on public transport and arrived in plenty of time for our visit to the I-MAX theatre. The museum is in a complex with the Natural History museum and is in an area that historically was used for gambling and prostitution! On the land where the museum now stands was a race track, for both greyhounds and horses and wooden white houses which housed a number of brothels! One of the town mayors managed to get it shut down and the museums and a rather nice rose garden with a fountain were planted in their place! We decided to grab a bite of lunch before we went in as we have tickets for the theatre followed by viewing of the Endeavour space shuttle they have in one of the exhibition rooms. We were booked into the I-MAX 3D film about the Hubble telescope, it is the first time I have seen a big screen film in 3D and it was definitely one that suited the medium, you started by floating through the stars then working with the crew to repair the telescope, what comes across is how small it actually is, although significantly bigger than previous versions there is not a lot of room at all. The movie was strange, despite knowing that you were watching something on a flat screen every now and again something would come from behind you or to the side and you found yourself looking up, down and around to take in the whole thing, it was totally absorbing and at the end when they were showing you galaxies and stars that the Hubble has captured it was just amazing you felt like you could reach out and touch the stars, this is definitely one of the better things we have done in LA. From there we went round the static exhibit which has information about the various space programmes then we sat and watched a film about how they transported the Endeavour through the streets of Los Angeles, it arrived by boat in the marina we went to on Tuesday and over 72 hours they drove it though that city, at one point they seemed to actually drive it though a housing estate! Then it was time to go and look at the beast itself. The first impression is that it is smaller than I expected, the second that it could possibly do with a bit of a clean, but then again I suppose that if I had been into space and come back again I would probably look a little grubby! You are not able to go inside it, but you can walk round and under it and there are a lot of information sheets available as well as guides walking round to answer any questions. We spent quite some time looking around as it is fascinating, they also have one of the external fuel tanks outside which rather dwarfs the shuttle but although you can walk up to it you really have to be outside to get a good view of it. On the way out we looked round various other space exhibits they have a Gemini shuttle that the monkey went up in, I am not sure I realised before that they actually kitted it out with lights and levers which the monkey moved while in flight to demonstrate cognitive ability while in space! They also had a Mercury and Apollo capsule which all look very small now it is hard to believe that two people spent 3 days in space in the Mercury one it is basically like a 2 seater car with a few more buttons! On the way out we found a ‘water’ exhibit, basically a very large fish tank with a wave machine that had a number of fish in it then we realised that we could actually walk under it so we went downstairs and had a look round this. It was a bit weird but interesting as they had a variety of fish including leopard sharks and some very big, very ugly fish we couldn’t identify! They also had a tank of jellyfish which they had lit with UV meaning that you could actually see the very fine details of the tentacles and also see how they move around. By this time we had spent most of the day in the museum so we headed out for the bus to go back to the hotel, in the end we got back about 6pm so had a bit of a relax then went out for something to eat.
