(A guest post by Albert :) )
Hanneke and the girls enjoyed the Museum so much, and had lot's of great stories, that it whetted my appetite. I had some days off between Hebrew and the start of the second semester and another free museum day came up. So we thought that it would make a great family day out. We went along with the Warners and the Knotts, two seminary families. I had heard that they had a good Space Exploration section, and was keen to check it out. Hanneke and the girls had also talked a lot about the Submarine that they had there as well.
The Museum was very impressive! The first thing that we visited was the train, which there are pictures of in a previous post.
From there we went on to the submarine. It was an impressive display, there were lots of posters and videos explaining how the submarine was captured. The tour inside the submarine was also very interesting. A submarine was not a very nice place to live in! They had a crew of about 60 people, but only about 30 beds. So they had to do what they called "Hot Bunking". You did your shift, and then you swapped with the person that was lying in your bunk. The Submariners only had one change of clothes, and water was something that was very precious. Apparently at the end of a tour, they didn't even bother washing their clothes, they just burnt them! Still, it was amazing to see the technology that they had back then.
Getting the submarine to where it was was also an impressive engineering feat. They dug up the front lawn of the Museum, and excavated down three stories. They then lowered the submarine into the hole, and built a bunker around it. It cost something like $6 million dollars to do!
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| The Screws of the Submarine |
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| The Inside of the Submarine |
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| Sleeping with the Torpedoes |
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This was the bath plug. The first thing that the Allies
had to do when they captured the boat was
to put the plug back on to stop it from sinking. |
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| Aaron and Andy in the Engine Room |
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| The Forward Torpedo Room, with more bunks. |
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| I wonder how they got the cow to sit still? |
My favorite part of the Museum was the Space Hall. It took me back to my childhood days of my fascination with all things Space. They had a full size mock-up of the Lunar lander that was used for training during the Apollo program. If you have seen the movie Apollo 13, where they had an astronaut on Earth trying various scenarios to bring the astronauts back home, then you would have seen what they were using for training.
They also had the Apollo 8 module that was the first Apollo mission to take man around the moon. You could see the burn marks on the Command module from it re-entering the earth's atmosphere.
There were also many videos explaining the various aspects of the Space Program, and some ideas for the future. As well as this there were many hands on activities, for both children, and the adults. There was plenty to do, and we struggled to get through it in one day. Here are some photos. It is funny how some of the 'astronauts' look very familiar.
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| Zara |
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This was a training full size mock-up
that was used during the Apollo Program |
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| Another photo of the mock-up |
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Apollo 8 Command Module.
This was the first Apollo Mission to go around the moon.
They took the famous "Moon-Rising" Picture. |
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I wonder if they need a Pastor on the
Space Station, or even MARS ? (get it?) |
Mind Games with Aaron. The aim of this exercise was to relax as much as possible. The more that you relaxed, the more the ball moved away from you. The winner was the person who made the ball reach the oppositions station. Let's just say that Albert has to work on his relaxation and that Aaron is very relaxed.
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