And here's 1001 things not to do with the kids and Liquid Nitrogen: http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/~ubws/nitrogen.html



But most of them are safer than trying to start a barbecue with Liquid Oxygen:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/Ambrosia_Time ... HowTo.html

What should Space Camp be doing to plan for the post Shuttle era? Building simulators for Orion, the Lunar and Mars Landers? How will they handle the smaller crew sizes and still get enough "throughput?" Create their own "next generation" crewed spacecraft? If they did that, woul...

One more thing,

Liquid nitrogen is tricky. I wouldn't use it for anything but demonstrations with kids. Plenty of stuff to do without using LN2.

I was at Home Depot over the weekend looking for (and not finding) an o-ring to repair my outdoor hose connector (they said they don't stock them because they fail too often--honestly that's what they said--I don't know how they expect me to water my front lawn without one!) and found another idea f...

Depending on the size of the bolts, you could superglue some velcro to one side of the nut and to the board to hold them. Another idea for the same basic task - threaded PVC pipe and fasteners. I bet the fasteners would be made neutrally buoyant with a little foam. The advantage would be everything ...

Des, You pretty much have what I'm thinking. Take a wrench, make it just float using some kind of foam and then use very small weights (and duct tape) until it's neutral. Don't wait for me to do this. I probably will some time this summer (my mom has a pool), but no guarantees of when. One thing abo...

"neutrally bouyant" wrench s Hmm, how would I do this? I might have to spend some time with some foam and a wrench (and some duct tape) in a pool this summer. I'm thinking the stuff they use to make buoyant "noodles". Maybe make it slightly positive, and then duct tape fishing w...

We were talking over on the team size thread and the question of making the space station shift, particularly during long sims, more rewarding came up. When I was planning the Adult Level II pilot in 1990 I proposed having the teams design their experiments during the week and implement them during ...

I think that these positions have been less popular because not enough time and effort was put into developing them in the simulations. Agreed. Looking back at my planning documents from 1990, one of the things I had the MSs doing (our teams were two pilots and three MSs, five teams of five) was de...

Now I may have to go see it, or at least rent the DVD when it comes out.

I reread the original of the PAM explosion scenario last night (I really need to clean up some time!). A few things I had forgotten. We had to train for an entire "regular" 24 hour sim, with EVAs and ISS experiments and everything, since nobody knew the explosion was going to happen. There...

What do you think makes up a good size for a team at Space Camp? Clarification: By a team I mean a crew that "flies" together, so a typical session with 16 people, 8 pilots and 8 MS would consist of four teams of four. In the past that was four teams of six, or five teams of five At one ti...

That being said, if they aren't making money on 12 day, raise the price and see what happens. And that's a double-edged sword. Raise price to make more money but you discourage others because they can't afford it. That's why I said "see what happens." It probably will somewhat negatively ...

We also have to remember that, in training, NASA will throw every oddity and bizarre situation Not quite. Think of this like "reasonable doubt". There is a limit of what is useful to train for (and I have had the opportunity to listen in on the loop during ascent sims just prior to a shut...

Orbiter electrical schematics, binders full of shuttle information, and official NASA flight manuals were flying about MOCR; Exactly. We trained from NASA 2012 astronaut training manuals, had an indexed version of the Shuttle Press Guide, wrote software to compute Hohmann transfer and prox ops burn...

From http://www.saveskylab.org She's Just Rotting Away June 27, 2007 The USSRC Skylab Restoration Effort is still on hold. Nothing has been done in 7 months to save her. This bit of US space history just keeps rotting away. The USSRC wants $2,000,000 dollars for a new building before work to save Sk...

Refresh my memory, please. What does PAM stand for? Payload Assist Module. It was the kick motor for most of the shuttle satellite deploys, particularly the "spinners". They actually had a problem with them exploding at one point (Hoot Gibson tells the story well), but always when they we...

Although there was a time I would have loved as many days as possible, 8 days is about all that is practical for me now. A week off of work (Saturday to Saturday) is possible once you're in the workforce. More than that is tough. That being said, if they aren't making money on 12 day, raise the pric...

yeah i'd have to say that it takes a very strong individual not just physically but also mentally to cope with space travel. i can definitely see some sort of a space psychosis occurring. Well, it hasn't. It's a cheap trick for councilors who aren't willing to do the research to come up with real t...

http://enterpriseteam.org/patches/t_etptch90.gif Not the wackiest, but the one which was the biggest challenge was the one we did for the 8 day pilot in 1990, where the PAM blew up right after it had cleared the orbiter, leading to lots of orbiter damage (loss of the control lines to the aft RCS an...