by AStonesThrow | 2025-06-09 17:44:56+00:00
I also grew up in San Diego with an intimate connection to Balboa Park and the Reuben H. Fleet. Watched the original Aerospace Museum burn down; quite a warm night on the Prado.

The Fleet was where I played the Coordination Game with 2 hand controls and 2 pedals for my feet, old incandescent bulbs behind colored cels to match up simultaneously. I think I scored over 30.

The Fleet was where I took science classes in summertime. We learned how to make “Oobleck” and we used Apple ][ computers. It was where I found my first blinking cursor. I couldn’t type; I couldn’t find “g” on a Qwerty!

Fleet had the Cloud Chamber and Whisper Dishes and the big Periscope that must’ve got moved 5 times??? There was the orbital simulator where you’d roll balls down a black conical incline, and someone else threw in a coin?

We watched Carl Sagan do stuff and Jacques Cousteau. None of the IMAX films had a memorable name or stars, but they were all documentaries with obligatory aerial shots on the geodesic dome.

One science thing not in the Fleet science center but across the Prado, just as near the giant fountain: "The Nat" (San Diego Natural History Museum) hosted a giant Foucault Pendulum, 3+ stories high, toppling "dominoes" all day every day, to tell us the time!

Very late in time, it must've been ca. 2005 -- Mythbusters Live was on tour and they made an appearance at the Fleet. So it was Kari Byron and that Japanese guy who's dead now, and someone else like, I don't know, all my attention and amorous energy was focused on Kari, OK? And they had a panel discussion and then a live Meet & Greet and we posed for a photo while Mythbusters characters posed in real life next to us. And they autographed my photo I think. They had a full Mythbusters-themed display at the Fleet during that time, with hands-on.

Hands-on is the name of the game at the Fleet. You touch it! It moves! You respond! Der Blïnkënlīghts! It's a museum and a science center!

I purchased and ate genuine Astronaut Ice Cream (freeze dried) from the gift shop. A hologram sheet that was a real laser-encoded, white-light 3D hologram of a woman blowing a kiss! The Fleet Gift Shop had the best science toys and the best hard-science experiments! Reality-based, evidence-based entertainment! ("Edu-tainment"???)

The Fleet had one or two little side theaters where they would hold lectures and in-person appearances. We were rarely privileged to peek in, or much less sit in there; it seemed like a VIP experience. But they definitely had a screen and a lectern and awesome sciency science.

I believe that Tijuana eventually built their own IMAX attraction theater across the international border. You could go to smelly polluted Mexico and have your stupid turistic IMAX show. But OMNIMAX was different and something uniquely special. And plenty of mojados in San Diego proper. With clean air and crystal clear waters in the Coronado bay!

I never saw the Pink Floyd show!!! You must be mentally ill to purchase a ticket and I was diagnosed late. But the Pink Floyd Laser Show was the only laser show and it was a huge thing in the 1980s! It was like Grateful Dead jams for nerds!