Note: I am posting my old blog entries from elsewhere on the internet. This entry was originally posted on 8/10/10.
Friday night was my first real outreach experience. I’ve volunteered at JPL Open House before, but that’s mostly standing around and answering questions for 5 or so hours, and I’ve given talks to college students before, but they were all there because they had to be. This was the first time that people took their families to a “talk by a JPL scientist” and that scientist was me.
It was down at Carbon Canyon Regional Park in Orange County; I am always surprised by the pockets of wilderness you find all over Southern California, even in the heart of the megalopolis that is Los Angeles/Orange County. J. and I drove in, and were greeted by the park rangers who were so excited to have someone from NASA there. We helped them set up – there’s a huge field in the park, and they’d driven out a truck with a generator on the back. The generator was used to power this gigantic inflatable screen, as well as the projector, my laptop, and the sound system. I ate pizza and hung out with the rangers, and one of them drove me over to see the park’s redwood grove with this all-terrain type vehicle with no window or sides, but bars to hang on to as we drove over significant bumps and the extra-large plants along the trail tried to reach in as we went past. It was a little bit like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland – without the special effects. When we got to the redwood grove and killed the engine, the silence was wonderful; a coyote watched us from across the grove.
Turns out that the ranger and her husband have spent a lot of time in Ely, MN, where my father was born.
We drove back to the field, where a crowd of 110 people had gathered. Another JPLer gave a quick talk about what JPL does, and answered questions about NASA until it was dark enough for the stars to come out and my slides to be seen on the inflatable screen. And then it was my turn, as the headline lecture for the evening. I talked about MRO: what our science instruments are and what they do. I showed movies of weather on Mars, and how we can see into the polar caps with radar. I handed out 3D glasses and showed them canyons and craters and layers upon layers. I showed them the picture that I told HiRISE to take that has been picked up by several blogs. And afterwards, while some of them went over to the astronomy club that had set up telescopes, I stayed by the 1/20 scale model of MRO and answered questions about why do we study Mars, how do craters form, and do I believe in UFOs.
A family stopped by on the way out and told me that I’d kept their 7 and 10 year old kids interested and paying attention for the whole hour, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.
Once most of the audience had trickled away, I packed up my equipment and went around to thank the rangers for hosting me. They were even more enthusiastic than before, and basically made me feel like a rock star. I was giddy all the way to the parking lot of the best donut shop in LA, where we stopped for some celebratory fresh peach donuts. At that point the adrenaline abruptly left my system, and I was mostly incoherent for the rest of the weekend.
Now to assemble my slides for my next outreach event: Dragon*Con. I’m still nervous, but a little less nervous than I was before Friday.
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