In honor of Heathrow Airport’s new Terminal 2 – set to open this week to serve (eventually) 20 million passengers per year – here are two fun souvenirs spotted during my recent visit.
Space
Win a ticket for a flight into space
http://youtu.be/aiXGUDnbSqs
The folks at AXE ( a line of grooming products for men) have kicked off a contest to give away 22 tickets for a seat on a suborbital spacecraft – and they’re recruited astronaut Buzz Aldrin to help with the promotion. (See below).
Rules vary by country and market, but it appears that contestants outside the U.S. need to create an “astronaut profile” explaining why they want to go to space, gather enough votes to qualify for some sort of challenge that might win them a spot in a space camp in Orlando, Florida and from there possibly get chosen for one of the 22 slots on the flight.
Entrants from the U.S. appear to have it much easier. Just go to this site before February 3rd and fill out a form.
http://youtu.be/x7gu8WVQNOQ
Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride & others who left us in 2012
At the end of each year the New York Times Sunday Magazine pays tribute to some of the notable people who left us during the year. This year’s issue includes tributes to Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride, among others.
Neil Armstrong is remembered with a drawing of Armstrong’s Apollo 11 suit, by Tom Sachs, which he based on his study of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal.
Here’s the real thing, from the Smithsonian Institution’s Air & Space Museum.
Sally Ride is remembered with a soft sculpture by Debbi Millman.
Here’s a link to the full The Lives they Lived issue.
Souvenir Sunday: out of this world ice-packs
Found in the gift shop at Seattle’s Museum of Flight:
Wink at the moon for Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong, the first person to take a step on the moon, died on on Saturday at age 82.
Neil Armstrong- photo courtesy NASA
Coincidentally, on Friday I spent almost an hour talking to Cathleen Lewis, curator of International Space Programs and Spacesuits at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, about Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit.
Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit. Courtesy National Air & Space Museum
Lewis told me that the while the spacesuit was designed to withstand the extreme conditions of going to, and coming back from, space, it was not expected to last very long here on earth.
But The National Air & Space Museum got a hold of it and has been watching over this spacesuit very carefully since 1971, when NASA gave it to the Smithsonian Institution for safekeeping. The spacesuit was on display for about 30 years, but has been in storage since 2006.
Here’s one more photo I always get a kick out of that’s related to the first landing on the moon.
President Richard Nixon telling jokes to astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin
The Navy chose the aircraft carrier USS Hornet as the primary recovery ship for Apollo 11 and on July 24th, 1969, President Richard Nixon and other dignitaries were on hand when the Hornet recovered the Columbia command module and its three astronaut-occupants after it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. In the photo above, Nixon is chatting with the astronauts in the mobile quarantine facility (a converted Airstream trailer) they were confined in until it was certain they had not brought back anything contagious from the moon.
In a statement announcing Neil Armstrong death, the family asks the public to: “Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”
At Seattle’s World Fair: space was the place
This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair — an event shaped by the Soviet Union’s launch of sputnik, President Eisenhower’s creation of NASA and President Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the moon.
I’ve been working on a series of short radio pieces about the fair with public radio station KUOW and Jack Straw Productions and had lots of fun working on this piece we’ve titled “Space the Place,” which includes parts of my interview with astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, who attended the fair when she was 13 years old and already certain that she’d make her way into space.
Please give a listen and let me know what you think.
The project is funded by 4Culture in Seattle.
Preview of Shuttle Discovery arrival at IAD
Weather permitting, the space shuttle Discovery is due to touch down at Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) on Tuesday on its way to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center.
In anticipation, the 3D simulation experts at Technology Integration Services have created a computer generated simulation of what that arriving flight might look like.
In ‘real life’, on Sunday NASA mounted the space shuttle Discovery on a jumbo jet in preparation for the flight from Florida to Virginia. (Here’s a link to a story describing how they did that and what will happen next).
For updated information on the delivery and display activities of all the space shuttles (Discovery, Enterprise, Endevour and Atlantis, see the Collect Space website, which is keeping track of all the comings and goings and has some incredible photos.
NASA: savvy art collector
Turns out NASA hasn’t been focusing all its energy on poking around in space.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has also been creating a unique and, now, very valuable art collection.
Chip and Batty Explore Space, by William Wegman. Courtesy NASA Art Program
It started back in 1962 with the creation of the NASA Art Program and ever since then the agency has been inviting well known artists to document the space program.
The work includes paintings, drawings photographs, sculptures and other media by the likes of Annie Leibovitz, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol, William Wegman (above) and Jamie Wyeth.
Curious to see what they’ve got? Starting Saturday, May 28, 2011, more than 70 pieces from the collection go on view in Washington, D.C. at the National Air and Space Museum.
Here are a few more samples:
This 1965 painting by Norman Rockwell shows astronauts John Young and Gus Grissom suiting up for the first flight of the Gemini program in March 1965. As in the William Wegman photo above, NASA loaned Norman Rockwell a spacesuit so the work would be as accurate as possible.
Liftoff at 15 seconds by Jack Perlmutter, 1982
Space Shuttle Columbia rises from Kennedy Space Center on its third flight into space, on March 22, 1982.
These and close to 70 other space-related art pieces from NASA’s collection are on display as part of NASA | ART: 50 Years of Exploration at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. May 28 – October 9, 2011.
Thanks, NASA!
Souvenir Sunday at Kona International Airport
It’s Souvenir Sunday, the day StuckatTheAirport.com celebrates the fun, inexpensive items you can find in airport shops.
This week our souvenirs come from the souvenir shop at the Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka Space Center, which is located right next to the charming, open-air terminals at Kona International Airport.
The center is part museum/part education center and is dedicated to the memory of Ellison Onizuka, who was Hawaii’s first astronaut and one of the crewmembers who perished aboard the Challenger Mission on January 28, 1986.
The Onizuka Space Center is jam-packed with hands-on activities that explain space and space concepts as well as a wide variety of displays that include a piece of a moon rock, an Apollo 13 space suit and memorabilia that includes the freeze-dried macadamia nuts and Kona coffee NASA developed for Ellison Onizuka so that the Hawaiian astronaut would feel at home in space.
The museum is just a 30-second walk from the main part of Kona International Airport and is a much better way for you and your kids to spend your time than sitting out in the sun in airport’s post-security area.
Even if you don’t want to explore the space center’s exhibits, consider stopping in to check out the gift shop. It’s has a carefully selected assortment of space-related books, games and space-related souvenirs.
That’s where I picked up these cool, inexpensive and easy-to-carry fashion accessories: glow-in-the dark, Space Shaped Rubber Bands.
If you find a great souvenir while you’re stuck at the airport, please snap a photo and send it along.
The favorite souvenirs here at StuckatTheAirport.com are inexpensive (around $10), “of” the city or region and ideally, a bit offbeat. And if your souvenir is featured on Souvenir Sunday, you’ll receive a special airport or airline-related souvenir.
What I’m watching, reading..instead of working
Don’t tell me this hasn’t happened to you.
You have stuff to do. Deadlines. Work someone will pay you for if you just, you know, do it.
So you pour a cup of coffee and sit down at the computer.
But then, dang, the Internet happens.
Here’s a bit of what got me distracted today.
Air New Zealand posted time-lapse video footage of its first new domestic A320 being built and painted with all black livery.
The paint job has something to do with the All Blacks rugby team, so of course I had to visit that site and then the Small Blacks site as well.
As long as I was visiting the Air New Zealand site, I had to check in on what that wild and crazy furry creature, Rico, was up to. I found this reel of bloopers.
A quick check of email and Twitter sent me off in new directions.
Florida’s Dali Museum was opening in its snazzy new building in St. Petersburg, FL. And as someone who first came upon that museum collection, by accident, when it shared space with a factory in Cleveland, Ohio, I of course had to visit.
While there, I came across this clip of Salvador Dali as a guest on the old TV show, What’s My Line?
Then, of course, it was time to check email and Twitter and catch up on my RSS feed.
A blog post by the folks at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum – 5 Cool Things at the Udvar-Hazy Center You May Have Missed – caught my eye because the Udvar-Hazy Center is just down the road Dulles International Airport.
And then I really got tangled up in the web. A comment on the museum blog post mentioned Anita, “the spider from Skylab.” I didn’t know about Anita so had to follow that thread.
It turns out that Anita and a companion spider, Arabella, were part of an experiment flown on Skylab, a space station launched in May 1973.
According the Smithsonian website:
Scientists and students interested in the growth, development, behavior, and adaptation of organisms in weightlessness provided a variety of biology experiments for flight in the orbital research laboratory. A common Cross spider, “Anita” participated in a web formation experiment suggested by a high school student. The experiment was carried out on the Skylab 3 mission, which lasted 59 days from July 28-September 25, 1973. Astronauts Alan Bean, Jack Lousma, and Owen Garriott carried out the scientific research in space, reported the results, and returned this specimen at the end of their mission. NASA then sent Anita, a companion spider “Arabella,” and the experiment equipment to the Museum.
Anita is on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center.
Arabella is in storage.
