Reflection on the Space and Rocket Center

If you're in on this pokemon craze--or Ingress--spend a day at the rocket center. You won't regret it.

Now that that's out of the way.

I finally learned what the heck Steve wanted when he said he wanted a storyboard, because the man I talked to showed me an example of one he made earlier this week. He also gave me some useful tips for placating The People In Charge--come up with several options for things like color schemes was an easy one.

He was amused to learn that we were the ones who got the ATS-6 satellite, because they wanted it too. We had a better claim; our facility developed and talked to the thing, whereas they wanted to use it to tell the story of Von Braun since he also developed it. They're going to have to fabricate a model. He also suggested having our curator reach out to them if we want to borrow anything from their archives. Since we're the closest space science center, it's ludicrous that we don't have some kind of relationship with their facility; I'm going to push the notion of forming one. Hard. 

We also discussed the importance of telling a story in exhibit galleries and how even subtle things like varying colour choices can make distinctions within a single room. Also, some tips for graphics: Have them wrapped on the edges unless the edges are effectively framed, or people tend to destroy things. I also took special note of something I've seen in quite a few museums: It's possible to compose a museum with relatively few artefacts (chosen to highlight important points) if the graphics are very well done, interesting, and informative. The timeline from 1950-1955 or so in the Davidson center is like that.

I was gratified to learn that SketchUp, while possibly not any kind of industry standard, is the modelling software of choice at the USSRC. So I'm learning the  a right software for this field, at any rate, not just shoehorning some software into an application its badly suited for.

I have a few more notes and some photos, but I'm tired. So I'll write something more coherent on Monday.

Yawn.