Tag: technology

Floating lab Gene Chaser visits San Diego.

A very unusual yacht with a very unusual name is visiting San Diego. I saw the research yacht Gene Chaser this morning docked at Broadway Pier.

Gene Chaser is essentially a super high tech floating laboratory. I had to search the internet to learn about it. This article explains the ship’s capabilities and the aim of its owner: scientist, inventor and entrepreneur Dr. Jonathan Rothberg.

The yacht is fitted in such a way that technological breakthroughs can be made while traveling the world’s oceans seeking new solutions and knowledge from nature.

The article explains: To support the fast pace of creating and using new technology, GENE CHASER has extensive rapid prototyping capabilities — best in class 3D printing, CNC, laser cutting, and electronics fabrication are all on board. All of which complement the cutting edge molecular biology laboratory and high power computational infrastructure at the heart of the ship.

Comparing my photos with that in the article, it’s apparent major changes have recently been made to the vessel. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before!

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Girl Scouts explore STEM in Balboa Park!

Hundreds of Girl Scouts from around San Diego gathered in Balboa Park this morning to take part in the Incredible Race!

Many stations were set up around the park: along El Prado, in front of museums, even in the parking area behind the San Diego Automotive Museum. Girls were being challenged to explore STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

During the Incredible Race, teams would solve riddles and proceed station to station where fun, educational hands-on activities awaited.

As I walked through the park, I saw a lot of excited young people running energetically about, enjoying San Diego’s beautiful crown jewel and learning lots of cool stuff, too!

The San Diego Model Railroad Museum demonstrates how to plan and build a model railroad.

Emily Warren Roebling was an engineer who oversaw the construction and completion of the Brooklyn Bridge.

A table with activities near the Fleet Science Center.

Learning about constellations and Women in Astronomy.

In front of the Museum of Us, Girl Scouts could learn about Women in Math.

At the Casa del Prado, one could make binary bracelets and learn about Women in Computer Science.

By the San Diego Natural History Museum, there was a fun dinosaur fossil digging activity and information about Women in Paleontology.

On the platform under the Moreton Bay Fig, curious Girl Scouts learned about electrical circuits and Women in Engineering.

Above beautiful Palm Canyon, a station recognized historically important Women in Photography.

Behind the San Diego Automotive Museum, participants could change a tire on a cool race car!

At the San Diego Air and Space Museum, Women in Flight were recognized, including Anne Lindbergh, the first woman in the United States to earn a glider’s pilot license. She made her first flight in San Diego, at Mount Soledad in 1930.

Girl Scouts could make their own gliders!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

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Creating a huge bronze mural for Balboa Park!

A couple of incredible projects are now underway that will improve and beautify the Palisades area of Balboa Park.

One project I wrote about yesterday. Two life-size grizzly bear sculptures and two flagpoles will be added to the roof of the San Diego Automotive Museum. You can read that blog post here.

The second project concerns the historical building directly across Pan American Plaza: today’s Municipal Gymnasium. This building was originally built for the 1935-1936 California Pacific International Exposition in Balboa Park and was called the Palace of Electricity and Varied Industries.

Back in 1935, a large themed mural greeted visitors above the entrance to the Palace of Electricity and Varied Industries. It was a bas-relief designed by Arturo Eneim, carved out of layers of wallboard. It’s long gone.

But that mural is coming back! And it will be made of cold cast bronze!

In late 2021 I visited the San Diego studio of Bellagio Precast where the 12′ x 20′ cold cast bronze fiber glass reinforced concrete mural is being created. You can see interesting photos from that visit, plus renderings and more description, by clicking here. And here.

I visited the same studio again a couple days ago and observed how the enormous mural is coming together, piece by piece!

Architectural plans for the Palace of Electricity and Varied Industries mural are spread near a small model at Bellagio Precast in San Diego.

A small model of the cast bronze mural, which includes industrial imagery, an electrical generator, and three human figures.

Here’s the mold used for the small model’s creation. You can see how the images are reversed.

The design for the electrical generator element that will be included in the large, finished mural.

And here is the generator! Just one element of many that will be pieced together to create a mold for the massive cast bronze mural.

More elements to be incorporated into the Palace of Electricity and Varied Industries mural include huge gears!

This monumental project is being undertaken by the Balboa Park Committee of 100.

I’ve learned the fantastic mural should be completed and installed above the entrance to the Municipal Gymnasium building around September this year!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

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Nautical History Gallery & Museum opens!

An amazing new museum had its Grand Opening at Liberty Station today! The Nautical History Gallery & Museum is jam-packed with carefully constructed displays, providing visitors with the U.S. Navy History Experience, 1775-1945.

Museum artist and curator Joe Frangiosa, Jr. has served in both the Navy and Marines. By carefully studying historical photographs, he has been able to craft very realistic miniature ship models. Many of his detailed models can be viewed in the museum’s exhibits, which cover different periods of U.S. Navy history.

The Nautical History Gallery & Museum is located in Room 108 of Liberty Station’s old Command Center. Joe has created and amassed so many artifacts concerning naval history that only a portion of his collection is on display. There’s so much to absorb, a curious visitor could spend a good long time looking at it all!

Visitors to the one-room museum can also view a historical video and Joe’s workshop area, where you might see him concentrating on another model!

If you are interested in military history, model making or the U.S. Navy, this remarkable museum is a must see. If, like me, you are fascinated by ships, the evolution of technology and human history, you’ll probably enjoy it, too!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

NASA Student Launch team in Balboa Park!

Participants in the NASA Student Launch rocket project were greeting visitors to Balboa Park today!

The NASA Student Launch Initiative is a competitive, experimental challenge where student teams design, build and launch rockets, then analyze the results.

The challenge for 2023 is to design a rocket that will reach 5000 feet. The rocket must autonomously receive NASA’s radio frequency transmissions, commanding a maneuverable camera.

The students also get to meet NASA engineers to present their findings!

Team Hydra, from MATHmania Robotics, with members from around Southern California, were in Balboa Park demonstrating how the rockets they’ve designed work. Why? Participants in NASA Student Launch are also tasked with STEM education.

Kids passing by were instantly drawn to the big rockets and were eager to learn all about them!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

1936 mural in Balboa Park predicts future!

In 1936, during the second year of Balboa Park’s extended California Pacific International Exposition, a 450-foot-long mural was painted on the inside circular wall of the Ford Building. The building is now home of the San Diego Air & Space Museum. The epic mural, which underwent a restoration in 1979, is called the March of Transportation.

The artist, Juan B. Larrinaga, depicted the progress of transportation technology over time. And at the very end of the mural he painted what he thought the future world might look like!

You can see this fantastic vision of the future near the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s exit into their gift shop.

Gazing up at the mural, I spotted strange aircraft that appeared to be a combination helicopter/flying saucer. And what appeared to be an elongated spaceship shot from a cannon. There are dirigible airships and massive skyscrapers. But the automobiles are quaintly nostalgic!

I found it difficult to take photos of the mural due to the proximity of the museum’s F/A-18 A Hornet “Blue Angel 1” and dim lighting conditions high on the wall. I apologize if the images are a bit fuzzy. But you can see how cool the imagined future is!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Exhibit celebrates San Diego aviation pioneer.

Did you know the world’s first ever controlled glider flight took place in Otay Mesa? This important late 19th century breakthrough, which preceded the invention of motorized airplanes, was the achievement of John J. Montgomery.

There’s an exhibit at the San Diego Air and Space Museum that explores the life of Montgomery and his important contributions to aviation history. Photographs, ephemera, rare documents and a video tell his story. I noticed the display today when I visited the museum in Balboa Park.

I immediately took interest because I have visited the impressive monument to Montgomery’s first controlled heavier-than-air flight. It stands upon a hilltop south of Chula Vista in West Otay Mesa. A couple years ago I blogged about the Montgomery Memorial and posted information and photographs here.

One thing I was surprised to learn while watching the exhibit’s video is that a movie was made in 1946 about John J. Montgomery’s history-making flight. It’s titled Gallant Journey and stars Glenn Ford!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

From the deepest ocean dive . . . to San Diego!

Every so often, a very unusual, one-of-a-kind ship will dock on San Diego’s Embarcadero. Today I saw a unique ship with the peculiar name DSSV Pressure Drop, so I had to check it out!

It turns out DSSV (Deep Submersible Support Vessel) Pressure Drop, a privately owned ex-US Navy ship, is absolutely extraordinary! Last year its submersible, called Limiting Factor, made the deepest manned dive ever in Earth’s oceans–it descended 10,928 meters into the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench!

This historic dive and others have produced important scientific research, such as mapping of the ocean floor and retrieval of deep sea specimens–including completely new species of living organisms!

The numerous exploits of DSSV Pressure Drop and its adventurous owner Victor Vescovo make for great reading. Here’s a recent article that provides a lot of background and detail.

I was told DSSV Pressure Drop will be hanging around San Diego for a couple of months, so if you happen to walk along the Embarcadero just north of the Maritime Museum of San Diego, keep your eyes peeled!

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Cool photographs for Star Trek Day!

Today, September 8, is Star Trek Day!

September 8, 1966 was the day when the very first Star Trek episode of the Original Series aired, titled The Man Trap. Remember the shape-shifting creature that sucked the salt out of Enterprise crewmembers?

For over fifty years, the popularity of the ever-growing science fiction franchise has persisted, providing the world with numerous movies, television series, novels, comics, video games, and even a few futuristic technological ideas that have (more or less) been realized!

In the past I’ve photographed all sorts of Star Trek related stuff: from Comic-Con cosplay and extraordinary Paramount exhibits, to artwork at IDW’s San Diego Comic Art Gallery, to the old Captain Kirk’s Coffee in South Park (a block from where Whoopie Goldberg–who played Guinan–once worked), to an amazing Gene Roddenberry exhibit at the Comic-Con Museum . . .

To celebrate Star Trek Day, please enjoy a few of these photographs!

If you’d like to see even more photos on my blog that concern Star Trek, plus written descriptions, click this tag and scroll down. You’ll notice lots of other fun stuff mixed in, too!

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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!

A cool STEAM event at Comic-Con Museum!

This week a very cool educational event is being held at the Comic-Con Museum that should interest Comic-Con attendees and residents of San Diego alike.

Today through Sunday–throughout Comic-Con week–a group of Advancement of Science (AAAS) IF/THEN Ambassadors are at the museum encouraging STEAM learning! Particularly for young women!

The event features computer scientists and environmentalists and paleontologists and astrophysicists . . . even an astronaut! Visitors both young and old (like me) can create, experiment, play games, and talk to professional woman who are leaders in their fields.

I walked around the museum’s COX Innovation Lab looking at table displays, impressed by all that I saw. I even got to watch how to make a quasi-comet!

One cool display was about how life might have evolved on the fictional planets of Star Wars. Comparisons are made between often bizarre creatures and the organisms in our own Earth’s fossil record.

Inspirational talks are held down in the museum’s auditorium, but I arrived a little too early, so I missed that. But they will be held all week.

To learn more about this awesome event, click here!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!