It also has a tiny private airport and a great big exhibition center. Which makes sense considering the only other thing it has is space.
Each year it hosts a popular science festival where various research institutions show off to the public. I've been once before, when it was a small but fun affair and I got to see a 3D printer in action for the first time. This year it was much bigger, featuring not only departments from the Czech Academy of Sciences but also commercial companies like Lego, and for some reason a world championship competition in model car racing.
ESA had a big inflatable Ariane rocket...
... and also a VR display where you could look around the surface of Mars. I stood on top of a rover and made it spin around, which wasn't supposed to happen.
VR displays (and 3D printers) were almost ubiquitous. So much so that I'm making a determined effort to get back into CGI again, which has been on hold (data analysis notwithstanding) for far too long. We'll see how that works out. Though the most numerous exhibit I suppose would be a Chinese lucky cat, since it was placed in an infinity cube (which looked pretty cool and I want one, though I'd rather have an Occulus Quest).
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| "My God, it's full of cats !" |
This year the Astronomical Institute went big. The last time I went we had just a small stall with two or three people and an amateur optical telescope. This year we had a quarter-scale model of the ATHENA X-ray telescope...
... a Raspberry Pi sending messages to the ISS...
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| I congratulated them on the recent decision to welcome tourists and booked a room. |
Which was extremely cool and I liked it a lot, even if visitors did mistake it for a volcano. Maybe next year we can make it spin. Or make a giant model of a spiral galaxy or something.
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