An experienced public speaker, who had a nice touch with silly questions (bearing in mind that it is quite hard to ask sensible questions at public talks of this kind), but who, I felt, tried to cram too much into her hour or so, leaving me a little dazed at the end of it.
Modestly, she only claimed leadership on an instrument for measuring magnetic fields, mounted half way along a 5m folding boom sticking out of the main vehicle. The splendidly named Jet Propulsion Laboratory had pride of place with another instrument for measuring magnetic fields, mounted at the end of the boom. Except that I think she said that theirs went wrong at some point before the end of the mission.
We learned something about the house rules for such things, which had to be made of long established technology which had flown in space before. Nothing novel. No mobile phones.
We also learned that at least one of Saturn's moons contained a lot of liquid water, below the surface. To the point where the surface as a whole was floating on the water.
We pondered about what exactly the period of rotation, the length of the day to you or me, meant when the planet in question was almost entirely gas, gas which moved around rather in the way that our own atmosphere moves around. One of the mission objectives was to measure the period for Saturn, so someone must have worked it out.
Perhaps most important, she conveyed something of the excitement and wonder of this kind of work, something of why one would want to do it.
On a lighter note, she was somewhere in the vicinity when the rocket left earth. One effect of which was a shock wave which arrived a few seconds after you saw the lift-off, rocking the ground in a rather scary way.
Started off badly by wearing the wrong clothes for a cold night. Should have had woolly jacket and woolly duffel coat. Not too bad once we had boarded at Epsom. Offered a seat by a foreign looking young man on the tube to Green Park, declined. Some elaborate cardboard box shelters for rough sleepers around Green Park, who seem to have got thicker on the ground. Refreshment beforehand in the pleasant upstairs bar of the Goat. While afterwards I learned that there are 100 steps down the main flight of steps to the platforms, rather more than I care to walk up these days. Mid sixties is about my limit. Back at Epsom, further refreshment in the Rifleman, including my first shot of Mount Gay rum for a while, probably since I was using one of their promotional umbrellas, which checking the archives this afternoon, appears to have been getting on for ten years ago. But I am pleased to be able to report that I still like the stuff. On the other hand, their website seems a lot quieter than I remember. No flesh at all. Perhaps guardians of our morals and life styles have got at them. Perhaps sales are not what they used to be.
Whiled away some of the time at the Rifleman wondering about where a hybrid car got its fuel efficiencies from. Efficiencies which must certainly exist because the eco people are very keen on them and the government drops your car tax to a pittance. The saloon bar moment advertised at reference 6.
PS: waiting for the off, which was a little late, whiled away some of the time honing my skills at counting faces in auditoriums. I found that with the numbers involved in the block I was counting, about 75 faces, a straight serial count top to bottom (or bottom to top) was possible, but that something more structured was easier and more reliable, despite the increased demands on working memory.
Reference 1: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/.
Reference 2: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/m.dougherty.
Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Dougherty.
Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mount+gay+rum.
Reference 5: http://www.mountgayrum.com/.
Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/trolley-not.html.
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