MSI

Plan for the day involved mostly being inside.
This worked out well, because it absolutely pissed down.

I got noticeably soaked walking two sides of a block while trying to remain under cover. The drains and gutters were not coping.

There’s really not a good way to sum up MSI, other than “They’ve Got A Bunch Of Stuff”.

Here, for example, is their U-Boat, appropriately housed in an underground bunker.

The boat was captured at sea & brought back to the US under great secrecy, and the crew were kept out of contact with … well, everyone … to keep the fact that it hadn’t vanished at sea under wraps. They eventually made it home, or at least all of the survivors of the capture of the thing did, having been assumed to be dead once the boat failed to return.

I have to wonder whether there were discussions about whether the crew should survive at all.

The first thing we saw wasn’t actually the U-Boat; It was a mirror maze.
A very well made one. Rather than making something where there are a billionty versions of you, they went with disorientation & misdirection, so you could walk right past a hallway and just not know it was there, or see someone and not realise that they were behind you down a hallway on a 60º angle to yours, not further down ‘your’ hall.

There’s a whole ‘space’ section, as evidenced by SpaceCow here.

Oh, and this Mercury capsule, which isn’t a replica.

And the Apollo 8 Command Module here, also not a replica.
This thing saw the back of the Moon.

Seeing actual space capsules was pretty damn cool.
Also, there’s piss-all room in those things; Makes me wonder how many liberties the makers of From The Earth To The Moon took with the internal dimensions when they depicted them.
And also how the hell anyone could suit up.

And I just really wanted to use this picture.

There’s a bunch of Natural Forces stuff, including the Teslacoil, which is both Loud & Very Hard To Photograph, but was tremendous fun to watch.
They also have a multi-story indoor tornado, which they’ll let you play with & in.

No idea what this will involve, but it look interesting.

And photobomb-able.
Apparently.

There was a lot more to MSI, but cellphone pictures can’t really do it justice.
More to see than you could feasibly do in a day, I think.

On the way back (the rain had stopped) we stopped at a “Cupcake ATM”.

Don’t You Judge Me.

Anyway, it was being repaired, or maybe rebooted, when we got there, and joined the other people waiting.
At 11pm.
At a cupcake-vending machine.
Then other people arrived.

Eventually there were cupcakes.

I should point out that it’s dispensing premade and preboxed cupcakes, not making them to order as you order.
That would be delicious craziness.