Hi everyone,
This morning, we heard from Jonathon Firth of Virgin Galactic. He spoke of his work advancing the space industry. Virgin Galactic currently allows people access to several minutes of space flight and microgravity (for a prohibitive price), and are developing a satellite delivery service. They offer positions to non-American citizens (something that most US space agencies do not, due to complicated legal regulations), and would be an exciting place to work.
Following the presentation, I visited the London Eye. The view was spectacular, although the 45 minute line was not. Following the eye, I joined several Australians and a fellow Canadian on a stroll around London. We visited the National Gallery, which displayed many masterpieces depicting various scenes – so many that one person refused to look at “another painting with people in it”. Following it, we visited Trafalgar square and Westminster Abbey, wandered around London, then found our way back to ICL in time for supper. By the end of the day, we calculated that we’d walked over 14 km through damp, rainy streets.
I should mention a couple of inside jokes that have developed over LIYSF 2017. Firstly, due to the sheer number of Australians attending, the question period following the first few lectures were dominated by Australians asking questions. This led to this meme being posted on the LIYSF Facebook page:
It reached a point where I prefaced a question with “Hi, I’m Perrin, and I’m not from Australia”, which amused the crowd. Today, yet another Australian asked a question at the Virgin Galactic talk, prompting a laugh and round of applause from the audience (and utter confusion from the guest speaker). However, the following presentation yielded no questions from the Australians. A couple of hours later, the following meme emerged:
It shall be interesting to monitor the ongoing meme-ology of LIYSF 2017. But for now, I should sleep; I need to be up early for Stonehenge tomorrow.