... in Oneonta, at the New York Summer Music Festival, they irrationally combine both the very young and the very old of their species, something no other species will do. And then they all sit together in a large dark room and pluck and saw at and blow upon their lumps of resculpted impure elements and repurposed natural planetary materials ...

... and I always make certain I am there to listen to the glorious noises that spew forth.

Alas, the venerable NASA United States Space Shuttle has been shut down as of 2011. All the Orbiters have been grounded, their engines cannibalized, their ancient Microsoft Windows 95 computers repurposed as toilet bowl scrubbers in lower Burman.

NEW FOR 2013! NEW SPACE SHUTTLE DIRECTIONS

While we will forever mourn the losses of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia, there remain a few of these incredible machines just LYING around the country.

Which means that you potentially could indeed still travel to Oneonta/NYSMF via the United States Space Shuttle! All you require the following:

1. Get thee to a shuttle. Either the Atlantis in Cape Kennedy; the Endeavour in Los Angeles; the Discovery in the Smithsonian in Virginia; or the grand old Enterprise in New York Harbor.
   
   
2. Blast off into low Earth orbit (LEO), using any of a variety of yet-undiscovered technologies. Favorites include:
   • Gravitonic waves. You may argue whether gravity is a wave or a particle by reviewing this article from Scientific American. Or you can simply build a graviton emitter or artificial gravity generator and stick your tongue out at the bickering scientists.
   • Tractor beam set to repel from below, or to attract from above. NOTE: May require use of a Star Destroyer, Super Star Destroyer, Death Star, or Death Star II. Contact your local Imperial Recruitment Center.
   • Force field capable of achieving escape velocity.
   • A zillion helium balloons.
     
     
3. Skip to item 5 in the following list, "Old Space Shuttle Directions."

OLD SPACE SHUTTLE DIRECTIONS

Albeit these detailed instructions on "How to Travel to NYSMF via Shuttle" are now obsolete, just like the Shuttles Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour, you may certainly find them of some use if you are using some alternative means of transport involving sub-orbital, orbital, interplanetary, interstellar, and even intergalactic transport vehicles.

1. Join the US Astronaut Corps.
   
2. Train for five to 20 years. IMPORTANT: Remember not to wash out!
   
3. Earn an assignment as PILOT or MISSION COMMANDER of a shuttle mission. Classified missions are fine as long as you keep your mouth shut.
   
4. Go through the entire launch sequence, and achive orbit. You may complete your mission imperatives if you so desire.
   
5. Initiate landing procedures for landing at the Kennedy Space Center, but you will have to burn some reserve manuevering fuel to change your trajectory to pass over Oneonta, NY.
   NOTE: Please do NOT "eyeball" the numbers unless you want to risk skipping off the atmosphere and into deep space!
   
6. Land the shuttle on Route I-88 as close to exit 15 as you are able.
   Please note that Maple Street and Ravine Parkway will not provide you with a long enough runway to land safely, nor will the surrounding foliage permit you to deploy your drag chute effectively
   
7. Allow the hatch to cool from the 3000-degree fahernheit re-entry temperatures, and deploy emergency exit measures. NOTE: You will have to jump from the open hatch to the ground appx. 20 feet below, as we will not be able to wheel out an exit gantry to your location.
   
8. Thumb a ride up to the NYSMF site on the campus of SUNY Oneonta, or contact local taxi and limousine service. A complete list is available here.

If you have the psi power of teleportation, or even if you have simply invented, stolen, or found a working teleportation device left over from some ancient, technologically advanced civilization, here are instructions on how to arrive at NYSMF in Oneonta without exploding on rematerialization.

For an excellent, thorough, and utterly incomprehensible primer on the current scientific state of teleportation, please visit IBM Research.

POTENTIAL METHODOLOGY

Here are some possible methods:

• Squeezing one's eyes shut, making sure to make a face as if you are terribly constipated (see Masi Oka on the NBC show "Heroes" for an example)
• Reciting a magical word or phrase, or singing a magical sequence of notes
• Performing a gesture or series of gestures that intiate the warping of space/time. Note that flashing the middle finger have been proven not to work. For anything.