Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Off to Space at the California Science Center

I was flipping thru the channels in my house recently when I saw a movie trailer that caught my eye. There was a quote in particular that made me do a double take, which was that this movie was billed itself as “best sci-fi movie since Avatar”. I had to find out what movie this was for and found out that the movie was “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”. Given that the movie was a sci-fi movie, we took a few moms from our L.A. Mamacitas network and teamed up to check out “real” science at the California Science Center.

We specifically focused on the most famous display that the museum has, which is the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The Endeavour, for those who don’t know, was a space shuttle that was built by NASA and was in operation from May 1992 to May 2011. Seeing this thing up close made me appreciate the vision that movie directors have when making films such as “Valerian”. These directors must get inspiration from a starting point, such as a space shuttle, and flip it completely and make it futuristic. I am in no way or form wanting to start a career as a movie director or writer, but I wanted to learn about the space shuttle since it is, a really beautiful thing that is on display. Among the fun facts we learned and saw:

-We learned one of space travel’s most pressing issues: how in the world do astronauts go potty? (Maybe they can give me out-of-this-world advice because I sure need some for Julianna right now!)

-We visited the galley, the kitchen in space for astronauts. We learned that most astronauts like to eat tortillas instead of bread because it doesn’t crumble so much.

-We were able to touch the tires of the space shuttle. This was really cool because instead of using air, space shuttle tires are filled with nitrogen, thus making them fire-proof.

All in all, it was a very fun experience learning about the space shuttle and how “Valerian” writers use inspiration such as this to create fun and exciting movies for us to enjoy.