Going beyond

Last week I visited the London Science Museum. It was a mild March day, cloudy with sunny spells, and lots of people walking around South Kensington’s pedestrian walkways at a relaxed pace. Not knowing the floor plan and the sights on offer, and without even trying to find out for myself where it was I should choose to go, I wandered into a gallery that spoke of space exploration. Prototypes of machines that go to the moon, original spacesuits complete with underwear embedded with tubes that carry water to regulate body temperature, and a large contraption designed to measure things on Mercury. Seeing bits of spaceships in tangible metal really brought home how real space travel is. Data on this is usually confined to images in the news but here it took on quite a different dimension. I could imagine boarding the Apollo spacecraft as if I were boarding a plane.

I was not the only one who decided to visit the museum that day. In fact, I found it difficult to walk in a straight line on a…