4/5 Bradbury Science Museum, Los Alamos, NM

OK, unfortunately this is NOT the Ray Bradbury science museum!   😢 

The museum was started by Robert Krohn, who was in charge of early nuclear tests, with the help of Norris Bradbury, who was the facility director at the labs.  It was originally located in an old ice house and then moved to a larger building open to the public in 1965 and renamed after Bradbury in 1970.

Did I mention that Los Alamos is not a big town and has very little RV parking?  Actually, it has almost none, other than a couple of large parking lots connected with shops that are usually not very full.  No street parking at all, at least that I could find on my first trip a couple of days ago.  (Yesterday was horribly windy, so I stayed at my campsite all day then.)

So, I parked about four blocks away in the same place I had parked when I visited the other museum.  It was cold, a little windy, and a bit of a hike.  Imagine my surprise when behind the museum, I found this:

 

So, basically, I could have parked right behind the museum and avoided the long walk!  When I got inside, the two ladies at the desk said hello and asked me how i was?  Well, the older I get, the grumpier I get about what I decide is incompetence, so I told them I was upset that there were no signs directing visitors driving on the main street that RV parking was available.  I asked for the card or phone number of the director so I could contact her with some suggestions.  I pointed out that like providing benches in public places for handicapped people, no one can appreciate how hard it is to find parking when you drive a big vehicle like mine.  

It is not a big museum, but I did spend about an hour there and enjoyed it.  Below is Robert Oppenheimer's chair from the Los Alamos lab. 

 

 

One of the triggering devices developed for the second bomb, Fat Man.  Amazingly complex, and it took a lot of tests to get the right design that worked. 

 

 

This is one of the cameras used to record the results of tests of the devices. 

Here are Oppenheimer and the site's general again.

Only part of the museum was about the development of the atomic bombs, so here is a photo of some of the display areas.

Here is a model of the first uranium bomb, Little Boy, that was dropped on Hiroshima.

 

 

 Here here is a model of the Fat Man plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. 

Heading back to White Rock.  Nice sunny day, but still cold for this time of year.