The drive up to Los Angeles was quick and traffic free. I’m supposing more people were out shopping thank celebrating Evacuation Day as they should have been.
We checked into hotel, registered, and had a spot of lunch at Carl’s Jr. (A fast food chain on the west coast, if you are on the East coast think Hardee’s.)
Programming I attended yesterday:

Discovering New Worlds

. This was supposed to be about what was going on in manned and unmanned space, but it turned into 60 minutes about the Mars Science Lab which launched this morning. Verdict: Interesting but could have been better.

Plastic Spaceships and Rubber Monsters:

This was a panel of three Fx, Make-up, and film actors talking about the biz of special effect particularly in low budge film making. Verdict: Pretty good, we saw a number of props and heard interesting behind the scenes stories.

Dawn at Vesta: Up Close and Personal with a Main Belt Asteroid

NASA’s DAWN mission arrived at the asteroid Vesta earlier this year, after a long cruise using an ion drive. (Only the second spacecraft to use an ion drive.) This presentation was from one of my favorite peoples from JPL and very informative. Verdict: Thumbs up

The Wonderful Future That Never Was

: This was a presentation by scientist and author Gregory Benford bbased on his book of the same title. It’s a look back as the future as predicted by Popular Mechanics. What they got right (the Microwave) what they got wrong (Nuclear piles in the home.)and what we might have made. An interesting talk from one of my favorite authors. Verdict: Thumbs up

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