ThatDutchGirl96: Space Expo.

Hello, fellow inhabitants of spaceship earth.

To give you some more information on space, my obsession with it, and some random anecdotes on one of the best days of 2016, I decided to take you along on my day at the Space Expo and ESA ESTEC terrain in Noordwijk.

A very quick review of how I walked around there, and these are the exact words my friend used: "You literally jumped around the expo, there wasn't even one moment where you were just walking normally, like a properly functioning human being." To help all the non-visual thinkers out there, this is what I was like that day:

But who cares, I just get really excited about space and space travelling. So we arrived there pretty early, which meant we were there before there were a shiston of people to judge our behaviour. Besides the exposition you can also go to the ESA Estec terrain, which is basically where astronauts learn how to practise the experiments they have to do in space and where a lot of developments and tests are ran. This tour was what we decided to do first, and we had a really awesome tour guide who functioned on the same meme-level as my friend and I. Which is a very high level of meme. On this tour we saw a lot of super interesting things, anddddd we got to touch an actual rocket! Now because I went to the lecture on space travel by André Kuipers I knew a lot of the things our tour guide told us, but that just made me feel smart. Plus it allowed me to walk and look around me more as I didn't have to pay that much attention to what our guide was telling us. However it was very interesting and I would go on that tour again any day. Plussss we got badges, like official guest on the ESA Estec terrain badges, how awesome is that?!!!!!

After the tour we attended every presentation, and experiment there was at the expo. These were all given by the same woman and all of them were very very interesting. The last one we attended was by and about the Soyuz capsule with which André Kuipers went to actual space and landed back on earth. At one point the woman asked at what speed the ISS (international space station) moves through space, it got very silent and no one answered so I did (28000 km/h). The woman looked at me and went like: "Very good! I've seen you at other demonstrations and presentations as well haven't I?! You're completely ready to become an astronaut." This obviously made me blush as I'm not too good with compliments and as the entire crowd turned to look at me. My friend just laughed. Thanks bro!

Then the exposition in general, it contained a lot of information on space travel, especially focused on the space travel and times André Kuipers went to space. At the ceiling hung real life satellites, a small model of the ISS and we got to take a look at a (real life size) replica of a part of the ISS including the glass cabin from which the amazing pictures of space are taken!!! I also skidded around the Soyuz capsule of André Kuipers, we saw a space capsule that looked like BB8 from Star Wars andddd the LEM capsule. At the LEM capsule I got into astronaut mode and felt the gravity fall away from underneath me, leaving me flying around weightless (in my mind of course). In reality it looked more like:

In the end, we went back home. A two hour trip ahead of us, filled with discussing our day at space expo, our common interest in space and how it had only grown today, some new facts we learned that day and a lot of karaoke to our favourite songs! Yeah the day at the space expo was super awesome! Despite knowing some things already thanks to the astronaut André Kuipers, I still learned a lot of things and the entire expo and how it was set up just blew me away. I was in total awe and I still am.

And since I'm not quite able to describe my day at the spac expo in words, I'll leave a little photo impression because nothing says it like a picture!

Lots of love,

ThatDutchGirl96