WIDEN YOUR HORIZONS
BALLOON DISCOVERY CENTER READY TO EDUCATE, ENTERTAIN
If you’re looking for a bit more than souvenirs and breakfast burritos along the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta’s main street, you’re in for a treat. There are new interactive exhibits waiting for you in the 7-Eleven Balloon Discovery Center at the north end of the park.
Test your knowledge at one of the new quiz tables — touch-screen games that feature questions about the history and science of ballooning. Or find out how you’d fare in the popular baggie toss competition in which pilots must hit targets on the ground with weighted baggies.
“The guests will have a chance to see what that’s like,” says Balloon Fiesta spokeswoman Amanda Molina. “It’s harder than you think.”
From simple, hands-on activities to high-tech exhibits highlighting the latest technology from NASA, visitors will find plenty to occupy them between mass ascensions and balloon glows.
The fiesta staff has worked to make the exhibits “more interactive, more high-tech and in touch with today’s guest who enjoys the digital side of things,” Molina says.
The Discovery Center is free with admission to the fiesta, and will be open from 6 to 11 a.m. and 3:30 to 7 p.m. daily. More than 30,000 visit the center each year.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been a part of the discovery center for about 10 years and will return this October with an F-15 cockpit simulator that lets the young and young-at-heart experience the pilot’s seat of the high-performance jet and a free photo kiosk that photographs you in a spacesuit on Mars or the moon. NASA also will show off some of the aeronautics technology and research work it has been doing to make commercial and military flights faster and more environmentally efficient.
“You pretty much cannot get on any commercial aircraft today without having some NASA technology behind it,” says Kevin
Rohrer, chief of strategic communications for the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. He mentioned the aircraft winglets that now are commonplace and improve fuel efficiency as well as the grooves to reduce skidding risks on runways and highways.
“The Balloon Fiesta brings together a phenomenal international audience, and NASA is all about getting our message out to the widest audience possible,” Rohrer adds.
Activities
Among the exhibits and activities at the Discovery Center this year will be:
ARTS AND CRAFTS:
Children will receive materials and assistance to create a souvenir craft.
PARTS OF A BALLOON:
Learn how a balloon is made with the help of larger-than-life graphics that highlight the critical parts for each balloon to safely take flight and return to earth.
ALBUQUERQUE BOX:
Everyone hears about the famous “box.” Find out just how the unique weather and wind pattern that makes Albuquerque the balloon capital of the world works. A banner display will illustrate how the box effect sits over Balloon Fiesta Park and surrounding areas.
WICKER WEAVING:
Not everything about ballooning has gone hightech. Most baskets, or gondolas, still are made from wicker to cut down on additional weight the balloon must lift. This year, fiesta guests will work together to weave a complete basket that will later be used as a display or photo op.
Large-radius rattan is soaked in water until it becomes pliable and then woven in a pattern in and out of vertical supports. As it dries, the rattan becomes rigid. Join the communal effort and try your hand at weaving at this exhibit.
WEATHER STATION:
Anyone who’s ever been to or watched a balloon launch understands how critical the weather is to ballooning. A working weather station at the Discovery Center helps meteorologists determine if conditions are safe for balloons to fly or not.
NASA programming
The NASA section will feature:
A motor and propeller from a 31-foot-span, carbon-composite wing section called the Hybrid-Electric Integrated Systems Testbed. That research project is a step toward the distributed electric propulsion system developed for the X-57 Maxwell, NASA’s first human-piloted experimental aircraft in decades. NASA believes using 14 small propellers across the front of the wing is more efficient than one large propeller, Rohrer says.
A display about a supersonic aircraft under development. The plane will fly more than 1,000 miles per hour, faster than sound. Unlike other supersonic planes, however, it won’t make a loud sonic boom but rather will rumble like distant thunder, Rohrer says.
Former space shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane will talk about the shuttle program and life as an astronaut at 8:30 and 10 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 8.
An infrared camera display will show attendees how the imaging used by the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, works. SOFIA integrates the world’s largest airborne infrared telescope into a NASA 747SP aircraft.
Former NASA Armstrong aerospace engineering technician Jim Sokolik will demonstrate why highaltitude pressure suits are needed to survive highaltitude flight.
A tabletop pressure chamber will explain the requirements for high-altitude pressure suits with water boiling at low temperatures and marshmallow Peeps expanding and contracting.