8-Day Programme in Review!

SpaceCanada · Post by **SpaceCanada** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 3:14 pm

For anyone who may be interested in an overview of the adult eight day programme, here is an overview:
(I would post my journal, but at 60 pages, it is far too long...)

Saturday morning we (my friend and I travelled together) arrived at Space Camp. We met some of our other team mates and went to the gift shop before the tight schedule took over. When I say tight schedule, I mean it - we hardly had any time to do our own things except after 10 PM when the older trainees went to bed. I usually spent that time writing my overly lengthy, and extremely detailed, journal.

We went into a classroom upstairs where we introduced ourselves, told some stories, met our counsellors, some management people, and the programme director. Soon thereafter we were on a tour of the Mission Center Complex and the various facilities we would be using throughout the week. We had a lovely presentation on Survival from one of the Aviation Challenge counsellors, Lurch. It was then off to the AstroTrek bubble to spin ourselves silly in the MAT. As simple as that is, our first day was technically over. Some of us spent some time roaming rocket park taking pictures of everything lit up at night and, of course, raiding the freezer in the cafeteria for ice creme!

The next morning it was straight off to AREA 51, where we did some highly classified (team-building) activities. The pilots spent the better portion of the day over at the Aviation Challenge simulators while the mission specialists went on a 'fox hunt'. We had to use GPS and radio antennae to locate a black box somewhere on campus - which turned out to be on the far side of Aviation Challenge. That evening we spent time familiarising ourselves with what we needed to do for our first two-hour mission.

Day three began, once again, at Area 51. It was followed by a team photograph under Pathfinder. We began to build our rockets and our robots sometime that day too. Oh yes, and we had great fun making a huge mess with our water rockets that night. It was hilarious! As crazy as it was, we still had more to do that night - practicing for our second two-hour mission! Yes, it was a busy day. Followed the scheduled bits, we spent an hour or two in the mess hall discussing our upcoming missions and generating scripts and personal profiles to help us along.

Day four started at the UAT where we did SCUBA. I love to SCUBA dive, so I was in high glory that morning. Proceeding SCUBA diving was our first two-hour mission. It was great! As a mission specialists, my friend an I got to hang from the ceiling and fly around the payload bay to construct a solar array. Great fun! We had some time in the evening to work on our robots again. The rest of the day was spent doing a tour of the museum and going to the gift shop.

It's day five, and the X-Prize was won while we were putting the final touches on our model (from scratch) rockets. Our second two-hour mission went well from Mission Control's perspective. I think we only left one mission specialist floating in space. We had the honour of having Irene Wilhite, the curator of the US Space & Rocket Center, give us presentation of all the neat things the museum has that are not on display right now. Wow, there is so much stuff! Anyway, the day ended with some fum in the 1/6th gravity chair, a video from the 'Earth to the Moon' series, and several games of high-tech hide and go seek in Rocket Park.

Morning number six was spent out at the launch pad - it was time to launch our rockets. Some rockets faired really well. Ours, unfortunately, was damaged in our drop test, so it went up, did a 90 degree turn over our heads, and headed straight for the forest - lovely! May our rocket rest in peace... After our rocketry debriefing we were treated to a picnic at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens. (Which, conveniently, is located on US Space & Rocket Center property beyond Aviation Challenge.) The evening was concluded with a trip to Aviation Challenge where the pilots flew the mission specialists from Houston (where we did our training) to Kennedy Space Center (where we will be launching from for our mission). Being in the Aviation Challenge simulators was such a rush! We had a much needed snack (cookies and vegetables) before we trodded back to the Habitat to prepare everything for our EDM the next day.

The next morning was our EDM! We ate a traditional astronaut breakfast of steak and eggs. (I don't like American steaks, but I ate it anyway.) I was assigned a position in Mission Control for the mission, which I thought was going to be boring... but no. The flight crew and the surgeon went up to the 'clean room' where they donned their pressure suits and parachute harnesses. It looked so 'realistic' (so to speak) when they came out of the elevator wearing orange suits and parachute packs! After they made their way into the shuttle it was time to begin the 24-hour mission...

As I said, I was assigned a spot in mission control. For the next 24 hours I was both PAO (public affairs officer) and the EVA positions. My jobs were to inform the public of our mission and its crew and to direct the misison specialists on how to perform their EVAs. Oh, this is one thing I neglected to mention for previous missions - we had NO SCRIPTS!! We had to create them all from scratch using the checklists binder and a few handouts as reference! Even the EVA procedures were made from scratch. I guess that added to the complexity of it all that made it so much more fun.

Sometime that morning I was called away from my post to do a second SCUBA dive - this time with a bubble head suit that made me really look like an EVA astronaut. It was super heavy and didn't quite fit properly because I was so small. Nevertheless, I made my way to the bottom of the tank and began to build a solar array. Sadly, only minutes into my dive, my helmet flooded with water. My neck was too small for the rubber seal and the helmet continued to flood after repeated attempts to clear it. Thus, my SCUBA mission was immediatey cancelled and my support diver brought me to the surface really quick so I could breathe. (It was fun while it lasted, really!!) My backup diver (another of the mission control members) got suited up and did the SCUBA EVA successfully. I was on radio at the top and gave him directions. So, yes, as scary as it was, this was one of the highlights of my week.

The rest of the seventh day was spent in mission control directing the mission specialists through their EVAs. As PAO, I had another fun task - a radio from Earth to the ISS for kids to ask the 'astronauts' some questions. This was cancelled due to time constraints (and numerous problems on the station), but we would have gathered up a bunch of kids from the museum to ask my teammates on the space station some questions using two-way radios. Much fun! The reason this, and many other events were skipped during our EDM was due to a computer glitch with the station waste water read out values. The ghost computer said it was overflowing while in mission control it never rose above 25% - go figure! Between the pee problem, several power outages, injured crew, a psychotic flight surgeon, ear surgery, explosions, and some emergency EVAs to retrieve food and bedding, there was hardly time to breathe, yet alone interviews!

Sometime that night we were alotted 4 or 5 hours to sleep. I don't know if anyone did sleep, but the next morning we were all tired but as excited as ever. (I know two of us went outside for an hour to relax, one person retured to the Habitat, and the Flight Director listened to music.) We brought our crew back to Earth, had a welcome party, breakfast, cake, and a mission debriefing. We had a bit of time to freshen up before graduation. (Why, oh why, do we have to graduate... can't we just stay there for another week? Obviously, I didn't want to leave!) We passed around a sheet so we could get everyone's e-mail and postal addresses. Some of us even had our programme shirts autographed by everyone. Everyone graduated and received their wings, a certificate, and our two team photos. Other awards were presented to the best team at Area 51, the best team for Rocketry, the winning SpaceBowl team, and two 'Right Stuff' awards for the two most outstanding trainees, of which I was one. Wow, it was sad to se it all end so quickly.

Somewhere in all that we had briefings on everything from Russian Space History, the Space Shuttle, American Space History, and learned about Space Suits. We all ran outside in the middle of one of our lectures to see the ISS fly overhead - lovely... There was a whole lot more to the week, but if I mentioned everything I would need to publish a novel!

I hope you enjoyed reading the summary of the adult 8-day programme. I would love to hear the similarities and differences from the youth camps also...

Space Nerd · Post by **Space Nerd** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 3:32 pm

SpaceCanda:

I dont want to say anything about the EVA becuase its a very secretive one even in the fact that we didnt know ANYTHING about it and got step by step directions from someone else who was seeing it for the first time. Despite the heat of the suits and my non-functioning suit fan it was honestly one of the coolest EVA's i've ever done at space camp!... Actually probably the coolest!

Oh and American steaks really dont taste like that! lol. Thats how American space camp stakes taste!

SpaceCanada · Post by **SpaceCanada** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 5:00 pm

No, no... even the stuff we ordered from 'Steak Out' for supper, and the stuff we got from a barbeque restaurant in Huntsville... It just doesn't taste right...

Our EDM EVAs were quite secretive too in the same sense you mention, as I didn't know about the EVA or get instructions (I had to make my own, based on photographs) until about 10 minutes before the shuttle astronauts were scheduled for the EVA! Fun, fun... good times!

I really hope they continue to make the trainees create their own scripts for things such as launch sequences and EVAs. It really makes you use your head when you have to look at a picture and figure out how to build what you see!

Oh, and sorry that nobody got to do the SCUBA EVA, that was probably my fault for nearly drowning back in October...

Benji · Post by **Benji** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 5:30 pm

Benji wrote:Some photos:

"Benji has the coolest phone ever..."

Sara eating a girl I know

Ink from that girl on Sara's tounge

Me and Meg

Me and the girls

Meg playing "Go Fish" with Southern Belle

Okra

7/10 of my team

Who · Post by **Who** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 5:31 pm

Sure.

Anyway, I have been reading over the posts and it sounds like everyone had a good time overall, but good ole Who gets locked in a cave and forced to work on the site.

I did see a few faces around when I walked to my car or in the am when I got in to work. I told Krispy to tell everyone "Wasssup!" for me.

I did get to play Special Ops New Years Eve at AC. The team tried to ambush my camp by throwing rocks at me, then sending in a kid who thought he was Mr. Invisible. After a brief struggle with him; they rushed in and strangled me with a shoe lace, blew up my laptop and snuffed my campfire! One even wanted to freak my dead body.

I was felt abused.

Next thing; any questions, comments, ideas you have on your exprience at camp (If you didnt list them on your eval). You need to write to Camp/AC ASAP. Couselors and management are back in full gear working on 13 day AC/SC material as of this week!!!

Space Nerd · Post by **Space Nerd** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 6:14 pm

Space Canada:

I highly doubt your near drowning experience had anything to do with us not doing the dive because 8 day teams didnt do it in july when we were there either. I think its pretty much just a 6 day thing... or they eliminated it in october.

For our july session they let us make up a lot of the flight plan but for this one we requsted that they only give us launch, eva times, and landing. I believe thats all we got and our team managed to work all but a few of the checklists in the master checklist book into our flight plan. Between that and the last minute switch to disco due to a lox leak our 24 hour edm was not only action packed but really fun.

spacecampaddict28 · Post by **spacecampaddict28** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 6:37 pm

Who, I already sent my evaluation of the week to a few people in management. Pretty much everyone on my team knows how I feel about it though.

Mad props tho to whoever thought up making Atlantis explode!

tennisrox014 · Post by **tennisrox014** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 6:51 pm

Who wrote:I did get to play Special Ops New Years Eve at AC. The team tried to ambush my camp by throwing rocks at me, then sending in a kid who thought he was Mr. Invisible. After a brief struggle with him; they rushed in and strangled me with a shoe lace, blew up my laptop and snuffed my campfire! One even wanted to freak my dead body.

I would just like to clarify this as NOT my team.

Space Nerd · Post by **Space Nerd** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 7:13 pm

Ok i will say while making Atlantis explode wasnt initially my favorite part of the EDM i now realize how crazy fun it was despite the pain. So yes props from me as well!

spacecampaddict28 · Post by **spacecampaddict28** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 8:13 pm

haha!

I also loved watching so many movies and having so many dance parties!!!! and STARBUCKS TWICE!! (I stole jerrys)

*dodges the flight crew*

Space Nerd · Post by **Space Nerd** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 9:17 pm

You get a big Grrrrr

From the flight crew on that one. Not that i care i dont drink coffee and i was to wound up to watch movies anyway lol.

admcar222 · Post by **admcar222** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 8:21 pm

Ahh the Starbucks and movies....old times

Space Nerd · Post by **Space Nerd** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 8:38 pm

Old? It was like last week...

spacecampaddict28 · Post by **spacecampaddict28** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:00 pm

I think she meant like the good ol times...

Space Nerd · Post by **Space Nerd** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:03 pm

I think she (andy) is actually a he. lol Read more carfully! poor andy!

Benji · Post by **Benji** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:48 pm

Space Nerd · Post by **Space Nerd** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 11:54 pm

Thats special......

spacecampaddict28 · Post by **spacecampaddict28** » Sun Jan 09, 2005 12:05 am

Its Atlantis! AND it hasn't exploded.

Benji · Post by **Benji** » Sun Jan 09, 2005 12:06 am

Lenny had this wild idea about jettisonning the SRB and/or ET shortly after liftoff. The Enterprise team refered to it as the "Lenny Maneuver". We planned to try it out in a sim, but never got the chance. Thanks to the Orbiter sim software, however, I was able to try it out on my own.

Post by **Vincent** » Sun Jan 09, 2005 12:16 am

you have a copy of the sim software? Or did you do this at camp after the missions?

8-Day Programme in Review!

The Lenny!!!