New Scientist Live

It was pretty impressive - New Scientist Live - as was the Aston Martin DB Eleven. this was the second year that the NS held it's science fair, again at ExCel in East London's darkest dockland.

It was a four day fest of all things scientific; except it wasn't really. It was really all about technology. From the mega touring car - mega expensive at over £150k, and the £60m  "Bloodhound"jet car aiming to travel at 1000 mph - a real throw back to the days of British engineering supremacy.

We'd bought VIP tickets at £50 each, but since I'm a subscriber to the NS we got them at half price. That enabled us to skip the queues - but it didn't. We had our own queue which never moved because no one had a scanner to read our tickets. Then there was the VIP lounge, cloakroom and entrance to the main stage. We were able to queue up for a cup of awful coffee while the woman on the till tried to figure out how it worked.

We went last Thursday because on that day first up were three astronauts badged as "Legends of Space Exploration". Tim Peake, Helen Sharman and Al Worden. The three pretty much covered the history of man's flight into space. Tim spent months in the ISS in 2015/16, Helen went up in the early 1990s - the first Brit to do so and Al went to the moon but didn't land in 1971 on Apollo 15.

They were incredibly interesting. All three were consummate public speakers. Al who is an astonishing 85 clearly had spoken a billion times about his experience on the Apollo mission, but all three sounded so fresh and not at all rehearsed. You got a real sense of their experiences in space. the novelty, the excitement, the preparation and some of the medical problems. Apparently we weren't so aware of them when Al and Helen went into space, but by the time time was in the ISS there was considerable evidence of the adverse impact on the body of zero gravity. 

There was masses of other talks - we went to one on the World's largest radio telescope and how to make Mars livable. In fact there were so many on so many topics you needed the 4 day pass to just scratch the surface.

My favourite stand was "Hug a Bug". I held a cockroach in my hands and what fascinating little critters they are. The company Rent a Beast rented out these creepy crawlies and loads of other bugs to whoever wanted them. They didn't skimp on animal welfare: they delivered the bugs to your door to make sure the environment was right for their darlings. They also supplied the correct food for their stay.

I fell in love with the robots. They were so cute if a little reluctant to engage, although they loved being stroked. What was really encouraging were the number of university science, engineering, robotics, computing, chemistry, physics and mathematics faculties at the show. Lots and lots of kids were getting hands on experience, asking great questions and hopefully going away with an ambition to be the next Isaac Newton.

Finally, I took away a leaflet from the British Gliding Association stand. I'd spent a day with my mate catching the thermals about 13 years ago and at the stand it all came back to me. The sheer excitement of the launch and hanging in the sky supported by wings and thermals - I'm tempted to have another go.