advanced academy endurance mission space madness

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1MileCrash
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advanced academy endurance mission space madness

Post by 1MileCrash »

did anyone else get the joy of being the person that got to have "space madness"?

the counselor on board the enterprise handed me a piece of paper and it said something like "at 'such and such time' you will come down with space madness".

i was the pilot and we were beginning to get ready for landing sequence when the time hit that i was supposed to start playing. so i just turned to my commander smiled and said "it's time to go home..." and i put my arm on two consoles and hit all the switches i could. the christmas tree lit up like crazy. the commander looked at me like "what the..." before anyone could react i stood up now yelling "time to go home...time to go home..." and hittin more switches. i sat back down and by now they were tryin to get me out of the pilot seat but i grabbed the stick and made a bunch of inputs.

we had two astronauts outside on an EVA walk so they were unaware of what was going on.

they finally got me out of the seat and duct taped me to the floor. the one girl on my team i started calling her "mommy" and asking her if i could have a cheeseburger and then go outside and play with "sissy". before she could say anything i put my head on her lap and started screaming "get the aliens off the ship...they're everywhere...!"

needless to say we all died and had to perform the "hokey pokey" on the lower deck to be "reborn" and finish the mission. i successfully ate up around 20 or 30 minutes worth of time. they couldn't even begin to understand what i had done. mission control was speachless and finally they said "uhhh...everything okay up there? cause things don't look so hot down here..."

good times...good times...
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Post by SpaceCanada »

Oh, the memories...

I had homesickness and space dimensia during my ASA 1999 EDM!

Homesickness on the station was a riot. I played the part perfectly and had most of my team convinced I was homesick for real. I sat by the 'windows' and acted depressed and absent at times. Then, I broke down and shouted 'I need to go home now!' and darted towards the airlock. I got nearly there before anyone realised that if I opened the airlock we would all die. Ha! A good struggle, three guys pinning me to the floor, some duct tape, and here's the result:

Image

Then, on the shuttle I got one of those infamous cards from the ghost 'you have space psychosis'. Excellent! I was the only one on mid-deck at the time so I randomly opened drawers, threw things on the floor, mixed things up, etc. After nobody noticing me, I went up the ladder and climbed up on the centre console and started flicking switches and asking a teammate if he was my daddy and when we were going home, etc. I got really out of control with the switches and they eventually had to tackle me to the floor. Here is a snapshot. I do not remember how I ended up. I think they duct taped me to a chair or something.

Image

They also chose me to do an anomaly in the Helo Dunker over at AC. Myself and the two Australians were to try and take over the aircraft and not let anyone escape. I was the decoy, complaining that I broke a nail and the world had ended. (If you knew me, I could care less about nails, makeup, or anything girly/frilly.) I was eventually neutralised and everyone made it out safe... figures.

In 2004 we had some fun anomalies as well - frostbite, broken arms, trachaeotomies (sp?) and then in MOCR we had a nervous breakdown/psychosis, and someone with a 'for real' mild earache that we turned into a medical 'emergency' anomaly requiring surgery and everything. So much fun!

In 1998 we had a 'fire' on station and one girl forgot to brace herself and ended up with a broken back. We duct taped a cafeteria food tray to her back as a brace. Too funny... a girl walking around with a tray on her back for an hour or more. Ha!

Oh goodness, the anomalies go on and on... great stories indeed.
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Space Madness

Post by Conan »

In 1996, I was a mission specialist on Enterprise returning with my fellow MS from an EVA when we were trapped in the airlock by a power failure. She was the one the counselor whispered to and I was the one who had to throw myself on top of her when her claustrophobia caused her to try to exit into space. I remember grabbing a had set and screaming "Inco, is the Spacelab pressurized!" It took me three screams to get an answer, all the while struggling to hold down my teammates struggling body (no duct tape in the airlock!!) Finally I got a positive response and dragged her into the Spacelab where she recovered.
In the Helodunker, we also had a terrorist. I was the pilot and had both of my arms shot off, so it was also an interesting escape. Lots of fun, though!!!
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Post by rkolker »

I've been told to get sick, and even pass out, but not "go crazy", and I don't like the scenario. There are sufficient reasonable scenarios to liven up a long sim without silliness like that.
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Post by kidjim25 »

At Xmas camp '98 i was the one that actually had to restrain the "space dementia" person (duct tape wasn't anywhere to be found) I was on the station during a "meteor shower" and all of a sudden this jerk of a kid (who none of us on the team liked) grabs Stephanie of my team and trys to drag her over a table with this maniacal look on his face. He didn't say a word. First thing through my head was WTF the second was "ITS CLOBBERING TIME" so i grab him as hes grabbing her and it literally took me punching him to let her go. (yelling and pulling didn't work) after the sim ghost kicked him out (he had ripped a 3 inch long scrape/gash in Stephanie's arm from dragging her over the table) we had to stop the sim and actually have real first aid given to fix up Stephanie's arm. I had hoped they would of stopped that whole stupid space dementia thing. Personally the medical anomalies seem kind of just a way to waste time. Theres enough that can go wrong with the shuttle without having some one take a "needle in the eye" or have a heart attack...
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Post by gt0163c »

I remember a variety of anomalies from times at Level I and Level II.

On one of my Level II EDMs we had a killer bee experiment that accidentally got opened and released killer bees. Being the pilot, and, therefore allergic to bee stings, I, of course got stung. (By one of the ghosts, I think it was Allen, who had blown up a little yellow balloon and decorated it to look like a bee, using a sharpie). I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen, so as soon as I heard the bees were loose, I started heading down towards the space hab (where the trainees in the "technical" track - who did the medical stuff among other things) were doing their experiments. I got about a third of the way through the airlock before one of the ghosts told me that I passed out. But, before passing out, I managed to scream that I was allergic to bees and had been stung. One of the guys dragged me the rest of the way through the airlock and shut it behind me. By that point, everyone but the commander was in the space hab, including one of the guys who had been out on EVA...and for some reason hadn't taken his "space suit" (helmet, gloves and harness for that EVA) off yet. So, we're all stuck in there and there's an OMS burn comnig up, which I knew Melissa (the commander) needed help with. So, we're debating what to do. I decided we should send Dave (the guy still in the space suit) out the "emergency egress" and have him climb up and come in the shuttle....somewhere. There was some way we were going to get him up to the flight deck. I don't remember how, but we worked it out that no one would die. But, before we actually sent Dave, the ghosts gave me safe passage up to the flight deck.

Another time, don't remember when, one of the mission (or possibly payload) specialists got hypnotized by the red light on the video camera (for those of you old enough to remember, there was a Brady Bunch episode that covered this very situation...only not on the space shuttle and that's where the counselor got the idea...even using that example in his directions). I think I was either pilot or commander, cause I missed most of it, but apparently they never did figure out what was wrong with her. Fortunately, she wasn't violent. She just sat there staring at the camera for a while.
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Post by 1MileCrash »

ah yes Canada that's what i was supposed to get ...space psychosis. haha...glad someone else got to have some fun with that one as well.
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Post by des »

Though you have to admit it could happen. Heck, it did happen, though not in space. You know the gal who drove halfway across the country wearing Attends to try and kill the woman that had her man. Now supposedly this was a woman who passed all the various screenings NASA has done-- which I am sure are many. Whether something else happened or whatever, profiles NASA does are not perfect and certainly would be less than so in the event of a really long duration space flight.

When I went to Space Educators Conference, I heard a flight surgeon talk.
He did talk about the psychological factors. Then he said (this was about a week after the event), acted kind of embarrassed actually) that this so far, well only once has happened.

I'm sure the rigors of training and that sort of thing played a part in her break down.


--des
rkolker wrote:I've been told to get sick, and even pass out, but not "go crazy", and I don't like the scenario. There are sufficient reasonable scenarios to liven up a long sim without silliness like that.
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Post by 1MileCrash »

ya know there is obviously a certain amount of stress what with hurtling through an airless void hundreds if not thousands of miles above the surface of the planet knowing that one wrong move or one bad stroke of luck could be the end of it. then the dork that you are stuck with the next module over won't turn off his all "Rush" mix tape and it's been blaring for weeks now.

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.
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Post by rkolker »

1MileCrash wrote: 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 thinking anomalies to cause "fun" in a long sim. I want to be challenged based on my knowledge of the systems and my ability to analyze and think on my feet. I have no interest in dealing with a "it's never happened in real life", slapstick scenario ending in duct taping someone to a wall. It's stupid, it's lazy sim design, and if I ever run into it while I'm there I'm going to ignore it.
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Post by SpaceCanada »

Yes, I agree that many of the anomalies from the youth days were unrealistic but with some of the teammates I had I don't know if they could handle anything 'realistic'.

During my adult camp we had a lot more realism with the anomalies, but our team could handle them and could even invent new ways to deal with them. Orbiter electrical schematics, binders full of shuttle information, and official NASA flight manuals were flying about MOCR; the flight surgeon had an actual medical doctor's book for reference (brought by a real doctor on our team and used twice); we had some REAL anomalies as well - someone nearly passing out on their EVA due to claustrophobia in their space helmet (the counsellors didn't even know, but his comments over the comm sent me dashing from ISS MOCR to Enterprise MOCR and back to the micro-G wall with a bottle of ice water for this guy who looked pale and green when I got there), someone in shock from a scary situation (me, and sadly I forget some of the best parts of the EDM because of it), someone with homesickness/anxiety attacks (his house was damaged by a hurricane only hours before the EDM), a computer malfunction, and then some fun ones my teammates came up with based on their various background and didn't even let the counsellors know they were doing. Solar flares, space suit problems, comm problems, etc. Ha!

I think the more realism in the EDM alone made adult camp that much better than my youth camps.
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Post by airkale »

rkolker wrote:
1MileCrash wrote: 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 thinking anomalies to cause "fun" in a long sim. I want to be challenged based on my knowledge of the systems and my ability to analyze and think on my feet. I have no interest in dealing with a "it's never happened in real life", slapstick scenario ending in duct taping someone to a wall. It's stupid, it's lazy sim design, and if I ever run into it while I'm there I'm going to ignore it.
I would have to agree, but the pyschosis excuse does sound like a really good reason to bring my taser in August! Just joking, cause those things REALLY suck to get shot with. You know honestly I can't remeber having any of these elaborate counslor inspired malfunctions in any of the missions I had during my trips. Of course, in reading everyones posts throughout the BB I don't recal even having in depth missions. I know my first trip we only had one mission. When I was commander on my Acad trip for Discovery I think the whole hop was only like 3 hours... Maybe they didn't do all the elaborate missions back in the years I went, or maybe I just didn't get luck at all? I know from what I've read the sims have all changed...
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Post by rkolker »

SpaceCanada wrote: 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 burns, and had our own orbiter tracking map so we'd know when we were coming up on LOS/AOS.

Adults (and actually, I think the kind of serious teenagers who'd come to an 8 or 12 day camp) are looking for that level of realism.
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Post by 1MileCrash »

it may not have happened in real life up to this point but there is a reason that astronauts are evaluated the way that they are before being cleared to fly. this is one of those reasons. the last thing that they want is some nutjob losin control of themselves in orbit.

it wasn't that it was all fun and games about the whole thing either. the crew and ground control had to figure out what it was that had happened, what switches got thrown, and how to fix the problem. granted they didn't in time but that wasn't easy for them to do.

i don't think that it's some lame excuse for lazy councilors either. we had other things go wrong. we had a meteor shower and a solar storm. if i recall we had to land at edwards because there was cloud cover over florida. and we had a couple other things go wrong as well...a few lights shinin on the christmas tree.

i was 15 when i went to advanced academy and i was serious about the whole thing. so were the vast majority of my teammates. everyone had a good time with it.
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Post by ApolloXI »

I have said this before but mental problems appear in space which might lead to a member to at least have a follow astronaut to keep a very close eye on them. In Mike Mullane's book he talks about a fellow astronaut who was playing with the orbiter hatch while they where in orbit. After that incident NASA had a key based lock installed on the hatch and the commander has the only key.
I will say at times Space Camp does pull some silly anomalies that make no sense. I remember reading a document that listed every positions health problems and most of them would be found in out training the evaluations such as the Commander is known to have heart attacks.
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Post by SpaceCanada »

We also have to remember that, in training, NASA will throw every oddity and bizarre situation possible at the astronauts to ensure they know how to deal with it. In a sense, Space Camp pulls an interesting selection of those and gives them to kids at will. The kids (and adults) dramatise them and we end up with the stories told here.

And yes, the serious teenagers and adults love more of the deep thinking anomalies but the odd easy anomaly is always welcome. Besides, we create our own anomalies anyway to keep things fun.
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Post by rkolker »

SpaceCanada wrote: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 shuttle mission when I worked at JSC). I doubt "astronaut goes mad" is on the list. "Astronaut is incapacitated" is probably on the list, but there's a line between that and someone running around the flight deck flipping random switches.

The shuttle is a sufficiently complex flying machine to train for without IMHO wasting time on things like "Commander goes mad". It's unfair to the Commnder as well, who's there to fly the mission, not be taped to his chair.

With the new software, they could fly real RTLS and TAL and AOA sims. That would be well worth doing.
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Post by 1MileCrash »

i guess you just have your opinion on it while i have mine. i know that it was fun and that everyone else had fun with it...and to me that's what goin to camp was about...havin fun.

i don't think that it's useless training at all especially with duration missions to mars in the works it is certainly something that needs to be addressed not brushed under the table because it sounds stupid.
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Post by des »

While I still maintain it could definitely happen, it isn't likely to do really well as a simulation (unless maybe you have SpaceCanada on your team. She makes an excellent psychotic nutcase. :-p
However, we only did pretty realistic ones. For instance, we did an ATO. faulty sensors and that sort of thing. Maybe for the younger teens... OTOH, I try to keep the kids a little more focused. They are ready to gun down aliens from the Space Shuttle. LOL!

--des
rkolker wrote:
SpaceCanada wrote: 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 burns, and had our own orbiter tracking map so we'd know when we were coming up on LOS/AOS.

Adults (and actually, I think the kind of serious teenagers who'd come to an 8 or 12 day camp) are looking for that level of realism.
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Post by esftripod »

I remember during our mission we had a problem with the LIOH scrubbers on the space station which turned them all into "zombies" due to the high levels of CO2, and eventually they were all starting to pass out, however one person was able to find the extra LIOH canister however he had to wrestle it away from one of the other kids who though it was his baby. eventually he was able to get the canister in and things returned to normal. it was still space psychosis but a little more realistic.
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