Today we went to a talk by astronaut Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid). Throughout the summer NASA organizes talks from cool speakers; from scientists and engineers working on interesting projects, to astronauts. Wiseman was on the ISS from May 2014 through November 2014 (Expedition 40/41), and was a Navy test pilot prior to becoming an astronaut. 

His talk was focused on the beauty of earth from space, during his time on the ISS he was able to take some fantastic aerial photography (is it even aerial photography if you’re in the vacuum of space, I suppose there is air in the space station…). All the astronauts are trained in advanced photography techniques before they fly and the ISS contains some very high-end camera equipment. This results in a large quantity of amazing photographs from a very unique perspective. 

The talk was great and I was pretty motivated to get straight back in the lab to work my way towards space, but you could tell some of his photos were faked, for example this one of London is clearly photoshopped to remove all of the the clouds!

https://www.twitter.com/astro_reid/status/529625794709319680/photo/1

 Wow… Google is awesome! the first thing that hits you when you walk into the ‘Googleplex’ is how colorful the place is, everything is Red Green Blue and Yellow from the guest name badges to the bikes. We were visiting one of our friends, Cory, (He works on chrome) who checked us in at a computer that printed out name badges for us. We then made a beeline for the cafeteria, which was full of super tasty food! There was food from at least 10 different countries and I genuinely struggled to decide what to try.

After eating we explored the main campus where they have everything from a giant dinosaur to places dedicated to playing guitar hero. There are also loads of micro kitchens full of more tasty food and drinks (there seems to be a running theme here, I guess a well-fed googler is a hard-working googler). The kitchens even have barista style espresso machines! – NASA, take note!

We then grabbed google bikes (which are awesome) and headed to the android garden. This is where they keep all of the different android statues; every time google releases a new version of android they make new logo. All of the android OS’s are named after candy and so the statues consist of an android made of candy (like ice cream sandwich) or holding candy (lollipop). We took pictures with all of them before we headed to one of the other buildings to play time splitters in one of googles free arcades.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to see any google secrets, but we did get to see how googlers spend the time when they’re not working- I just need to get NASA to put free espresso machines everywhere! Google just became the landlords for the Ames Research Park, so fingers crossed for free google food at NASA.