Totally Texas -- Remembering the Apollos

Moon Day

Frontiers of Flight Museum

6911 Lemmon Avenue

Dallas, TX 75209

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It’s been more than forty years since a human being last set foot on the moon. Even my daughter’s too young to remember. But this Saturday, July 20, the Frontiers of Flight Museum near Dallas Love Field airport will celebrate the anniversary of the very first moon landing, July 20, 1969.

In cooperation with Ken Murphy of The Moon Society and the National Space Society of North Texas, the museum hosts family-oriented activities, including robotics demonstrations, close-ups of meteorites, and inflatable planetariums from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The first two hundred kids through the door when the museum opens will receive free “lunar sample” bags with magazines, stickers, posters, and more. You’ll need separate registration for the model rocket building class and “space hacker” workshop on designing and building microgravity science payloads. All other activities are included in the museum’s regular admission of $8 for adults, $6 for seniors age 65 and older, and $5 for children ages 3-17. Children under three are admitted free. And yes, there’s a break room for snacks and an indoor play area for the smaller kids.

New to Moon Day this year are chances for Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts to earn badges for STEM activities (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

The museum’s regular space flight exhibits include a room dedicated to artifacts of the Apollo missions, including the only lunar rock in North Texas, and the command module from the 1968 Apollo 7 mission of October 1968 where you can marvel at how three astronauts lived in a vehicle whose interior is smaller than that of many cars.

Is space too far out for your taste? Take a look at the museum’s collection of historic aircraft and board a complete Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 -- housed inside the
museum.

And for another break from Texas heat, the museum hosts a birthday bash the following Wednesday, July 24, in honor of pioneering woman aviator Amelia Earhart. Birthday celebrations for Earhart, who disappeared on an around the world flight in 1937, are from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with birthday cake at 2 p.m.

For more information about Moon Day and the Frontier of Flight Museum, see www.flightmuseum.com/.

For information about the National Space Society of North Texas, see www.nsschapters.org/tx/nt/.

Wordcraft -- Growing up with science fiction

Ray Bradbury originally insisted his 1953 dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451 was about censorship. But he didn't underestimate the role -- good or bad -- technology would play in our future.

From ear buds (he called them “shells”) streaming music relentlessly to twenty-four hour talk and reality programs shown on wall-sized screens to designer prescription drugs for every psychic ailment -- Bradbury imagined them all. Generations after the technology he foresaw, it was pertinent in this month of the Dallas Public Library’s Big Read emphasis on Fahrenheit 451 to consider what it was like -- and is like -- to grow up in a world shaped by science fiction.

So last Tuesday, Dallas literary organization WordSpace brought together a panel of literary and science geek speakers to discuss the role of science fiction played in their lives.

WordSpace’s programming co-chairperson Charles Dee Mitchell moderated the discussion by Dallas public media KERA’s Jerome Weeks, National Space Society of North Texas president Ken Ruffin, and WordSpace’s OffWorld Science Fiction Book club host Phillip Washington.

Joking that Washington -- obviously too youthful to have read Fahrenheit 451 at its initial appearance -- “kept this from being a panel of middle-aged men,” Mitchell asked, “what was your first science fiction experience?”

Washington cited Orson Scott Card’s 1980’s Ender's Game, “not because it has spaceships and interstellar aliens, but because it was the first book I read that made me consider long durations of time. It was mind bending.”

“My first exposure to science fiction was watching Star Trek,” Ruffin said. Too young to remember the show during its original 1960’s seasons, he saw it in later syndication. “My aunts and uncles were talking about this weird show with these fake-looking aliens -- it was ’60’s special effects. I’m eight years old, and I sat down in front of the TV and was mesmerized.”

(Not even Bradbury would have quibbled over Ruffin’s choice. Biographer Sam Weller notes that Bradbury, who would write many scripts for TV joked, “I never said I was against all television. I am just against bad television!”)

“Between the age of six and thirteen,” Weeks said, “I read everything in my suburban (Detroit) library” including anthologies that introduced him to such science fiction writers as Robert Heinlein and Bradbury. “My sister also subscribed to two science fiction magazines.”

Oh, those wonderful, pulpy science fiction magazines, Mitchell reminisced. The ones he looked at longingly on the book store shelves but couldn’t buy because their covers invariably displayed scantily-dressed women, “usually clutched by aliens, with tentacles covering the interesting parts.”

And then, somehow, the magic disappeared. No panelist except Washington would confess to reading or even watching science fiction after passing adolescence. Even science fan Ruffin said, “I have not re-read any novels -- as much as I enjoyed them when I was younger. I was afraid they wouldn’t have the same effect on me.”

What killed science fiction for them? And how do the newest generation of young adult readers view the genre? Can it -- should it -- be revived, or is it as dead as a T. rex? I'll continue the discussion in next Monday’s Wordcraft. Additional Big Read events include Bradbury biographer Sam Weller on a panel discussing censorship this Thursday, April 18, at Dallas’ Bar Belmont, 901 Fort Worth Avenue, from 7-8 p.m. The discussion is free, drinks are on you.   See www.bigreaddallas.org/.

Totally Texas -- Adventure out of this world

Moon Day 2012

Frontiers of Flight Museum

6911 Lemmon Avenue, Dallas

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Today, July 20, marks the forty-third anniversary of the first landing of human beings on the moon. (Make that Moon with a capital M.) My grandsons watched videos of space exploration at Dallas’s Frontiers of Flight Museum. They were entranced, but demanded, “Did that really happen?” Because no one has set foot on the Moon in their lifetimes.

This Saturday, Frontiers of Flight and the National Space Society of North Texas (NSS of NT) sponsor Moon Day 2012 to help keep the dream of human space travel alive. Twenty exhibitors, family-themed films, and a traveling planetarium from the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History will join the museum’s standing exhibits of the U.S. space program, including the space suit illustrating this post.

The first two hundred kids through the doors (opening at 10 a.m.) get “lunar sample” bags, and everybody gets a chance to see Moon rocks, learn how to build a comet, and hear updates on the future of space transportation in the post-space shuttle era, among other topics.

The solar system’s a bit too cozy for your taste? Take a peek inside the “portable universe” from the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science.

Want to help your children (borrow some, if necessary) build a flying model rocket? Ask at the Frontiers of Flight registration desk. (There’s an extra fee for this.) The day of good clean lunar fun lasts from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 21.

Frontiers of Flight is located on the outskirts of Dallas’s Love Field airport. Admission is $8 for adults, $3 for children ages 3-17. For more information, see www.nssofnt.org/.


And if you’re thinking of a lunar family vacation, you’ll want to ask exhibitors which of your kids’ toys will operate in the Moon’s microgravity. Because plans for civilian space flights are in the works. Space Adventures is a private company reported to be taking orders for a flight around the Moon. (Sorry -- actual moon walks aren’t on the agenda yet.) This past spring, Air & Space Smithsonian discussed what it takes to book the week-long true vacation of a lifetime. You can email Space Adventures through www.spaceadventures.com/ for details.

The Smithsonian article at www.airspace.mag.com/ provides more information than Space Adventures is willing to divulge without knowing some pertinent information
about potential clients. Like whether they’re billionaires. Yes, it will be a pricey trip. But at least we can dream for free.