Jay Lake (jaylake) wrote,
Jay Lake
jaylake

[travel|photos] Visiting Goddard Space Flight Center

On Monday, September 17th, prior to my second oncology consult at John Hopkins, I went to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center with Ace Jordyn and Lisa Costello. We were guests of EW, a friend of Lisa's, who'd invited us over to show us a few things on the campus. We also had a generous invitation from a Goddard manager and blog reader, though time constraints kept us from also meeting up with her.

Thanks to a security snafu, Ace couldn't come on the grounds with us, but after some discussion, Lisa and I proceeded with our host. We were tight for time, so only saw a fraction of what there would have been to see there. EW took us first to see the assembly room where the James Webb Space Telescope is being built, then the centrifuge where they test space-based components. We then drove over to his office, where I met fellow SF writer Alan Smale. We also discovered NASA's secret stash of Doc Brown Delorean time machines while out there.

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EW and Lisa Costello, at the assembly facility

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Me and Alan Smale

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A mission logo

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The assembly building

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Yes, that really is the JWST down inside all that yellow scaffolding

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The spacecraft's chassis

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An engineering model of one of the mirror segments

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The centrifuge, a real beast

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Access to the test chamber

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The test chamber from an exterior view

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A small, temporary clean room area within the centrifuge chamber

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NASA's attic, stuff stored beneath the rotational path of the centrifuge — pretty sure the Lost Ark is in there somewhere

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EW and Lisa explore the secret Delorean stash

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One of the Deloreans close up

As usual, more at the Flickr set.

Photos copy; 2012, Lisa Costello and Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

Creative Commons License

This work by Lisa Costello and Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tags: acejordyn, baltimore, cool, personal, photos, radiantlisa, science, travel
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