spaceships and sand dunes

yesterday i had a relatively stationary day, staying in and around alamogordo. first off i went to the new mexico museum of space history, which is a little way up a mountain, above town. (most new mexico towns are tucked into mountainsides, it seems). i started with a 40 minute imax video about the hubble telescope, what it sees, and how they maintained it--bonus was that it was narrated by leonardo dicaprio. of course, the coolest parts were seeing the astronauts trying to eat a burrito in space, but pretty amazing to see the images the telescope has produced, billions of light years away. outside the museum was a spaceship park, which while not as impressive as that at wsmr, was cool because they were space-related, after all. that's a picture up top, with the town of alamogordo in the background.

then i proceeded into the museum itself, four stories of space history in new mexico. now, i already covered some of this in the previous post about white sands missile range. basically, it seems that while places like houston and cape canaveral get a lot of the flashy press releases concerning space shuttles, pretty much all the technology which went into the space shuttles, things in space generally, and missile were developed and/or tested in new mexico. this includes project manhigh, which sent people into the atmosphere disney-style: attached to balloons. the project was in operation from 1957-58, and sent up three flights. it helped lay the groundwork for the manned spaceship program.

the museum also doubles as the international space flight hall of fame, and includes such distinguished persons, in addition to various international astronauts, as isaac newton and galileo, who 'expanded mankind's view of the universe.' new mexico is also pushing the idea of commercial space travel very hard--the first ever commercial flights took off not far from white sands, and they are trying to create a space park to cater to such ventures, including an annual competition. the museum had a great collection of models, such as the model satellite above, as well as nick knacks from space, space suits, food, etc. it was interesting and worth the money, though it could use a facelift.






after finishing in the museum i headed back to the hotel for a siesta--it's hard to spend all day doing things when it's 90 degrees at 9 in the morning. about 4 i headed 20 miles to the south, where white sands national monument is located. white sands is an active dune field, with the dunes moving as much as 30 feet west to east each year. the sand is gypsum, created by a nearby lake. considering it is just sand, a surprising amount of plant and animals live in the dunes--many of them native in the desert around it. i went on a nature walk which pointed out a lot of the plants, many of which have great names like hoary rosemarymint, so-named because it can smell distinctly like rosemary and mint at different times of year. this was a really neat place to be, since it's almost like being at the beach in the middle of the desert. you can walk around most of the monument, up and down dunes, even rent little plastic discs to sled down the dunes. someone let me borrow their sled briefly: it's like snow sledding but the sand doesn't crunch like snow does.

i found myself a dune far enough away from the loud teenagers to sit and wait for the sunset. it was only about 5:30, so i had a while to wait. luckily, i had a book with me, as always. so i simply sat and read, enjoying the almost-at-the-beach feel. unfortunately, it was a little cloudy off to the west, so the sunset itself was not as spectacular as it could have been. this was ok, because the long shadows just before sunset, as in the picture above to the left, were fascinating. the mountains in the distance turned a beautiful color of blue. eventually, and just before it really got black (me being all alone in the middle of a dune field), i headed back to get a good night's sleep before the next day's festivities. below is a 360 degree view of where i sat and waited for the sunset.