Anomalies on Adult camp missions, realistic or silly?

[p51]

A recent discussion on anomalies on missions at SC on another thread prompted me to post this here.
What do you think of how the missions are done in this regard?
I have had 'space ghosts' that I fully feel thought of us as being there for their own personal amusement.
I had a 12-hour LDM at the week-long “Hoot Camp” in 2016. The trainers hit us with everything shy of a bug-eyed space monster breaking into the orbiter.
Some of you know I’m a former Army officer. I did a lot of training and took part in enough of my own. We only trained for real-world events, though I must admit I got creative a few times when I ran OPFOR against a few units (such as wiping out a Brigade staff while dressed as a UPS delivery driver, just to make their perimeter defense aware to check everyone coming through). Some of the things I’ve seen at SC were downright silly, things that never could have happened.
They also don’t do the real-world remedies for them, either.
Case in point: in 2014, the space ghost killed the CDR on ascent and drove the PLT slightly nuts. In real life, he had enough of his marbles to be able to call for a TAL to land in Spain. I’ve heard that the sims have the software for this. Heck, as an MS on the flight deck, I could have in real life gotten into one of the seats and flown the thing to Zaragoza, Istres or Morón if I had the vectors from CAPCOM. It would have been a heck of a climb in a ACES suit, but I could have made it (heck, I once climbed over a wall carrying someone and their ruck sack). But instead, they went on. And it just got sillier from there.
At JSC, the SIMSUPs don’t do things to the crews in sims that either cannot happen or would kill the crew with no way to overcome them. There’s no training value in either, they say. I of course agree.
At the Library at the Marriott that final night of the 2016 week-long session, several people from my team were ticked at all the downright dumb things they did with us. One couple wasn’t terribly happy overall and I think this was one of a couple of things that final day that put a pal over the whole week. I couldn’t disagree with them at all as I agreed with them.
This stuff is fine for kids, but adults, I feel, for the most part want to come for an experience that is realistic as possible. I have a good pal who knows more about the space program’s history than many longtime SC alumni. I’ve bene goading him to come with me for a SC session when I go back next and I must admit I’m hesitant as I can’t imagine his reaction to some of the buffoonery I’ve seen from the trainers.
Why can’t they treat it as SIMSUP would at Johnson Space Center?
Opinion, anyone?

[Hotdog]

I think it all depends on who your crew trainers are that week, and how much fun they want to have with you. Perhaps they feel they need to throw the kitchen sink at a group of uber space nerds and alumni veterans in order to challenge them, whereas the more casual general public "green" trainees might only get a few anomalies. I think it would be worth getting your teammates and trainers together on Day 1 and discussing the desire for a realistic (but still challenging) sim experience. The ideal situation would be to organize a Corporate camp where you can basically build your own Space Camp experience and dictate (to a certain extent) the types of missions and sims you want.

[majtom7]

The ideal situation would be to organize a Corporate camp where you can basically build your own Space Camp experience and dictate (to a certain extent) the types of missions and sims you want.

Is that information available, i.e., Activity A is this price, Activity B is this price, etc.? I would be curious to play with the numbers yet my perception is that USSRC would rather you give them an outline of what you are looking for and they put together a proposal.

[blachwk]

I am interested in being a part of a 'corporate camp' and team if we are allowed to pick anomalies or have some say to keep things as realistic as possible.

[Hotdog]

Here is the Space Camp page about Corporate Camps: https://www.spacecamp.com/corporate

It's the ultimate Space Camp experience in my opinion, since you can custom-build your curriculum, but there is a minimum number of people you need to go. I think it's something like 10 or 12. Finding that many folks to lay down over $1000 can be tough. I've seen it done over Facebook and on here at Hab1. You have to find the die-hards and get them organized. Last I checked, fellow Hab1 member Steve was trying to organize such a camp.

[Hotdog]

Someone who I haven't seen post here in a very long time is rkolker. His legendary Enterprise Team trailblazed the very first Advanced Academy curriculum and sims back in the mid-80s. They used to do some serious stuff as far as sims go, almost JSC level. I think they even did missions where they recreated real-life Shuttle missions and the anomalies that happened down to the last detail. The Enterprise Team are legends in Space Camp Folklore. Here is a link to their old website. http://enterpriseteam.org/

[Feuerfresser]

Corporate Camp sounds to be a good idea. Lets keep in touch to do this

[blachwk]

On this thread, if you want to get a rolling list of who is interested, what 'custom' activities you want to do, and what months of the year that you want to see? I'm open for any month honestly. If visiting Marshall or the opportunity to do SCUBA, those 2 items I'd love to incorporate, however are not 'must haves'.

[Conan]

Late September or October, when they usually do the longer adult camps works for me but I might be able to do other times. I would keep the scuba, just so we can include it for Mission Control in the long mission. I have done the Marshall tour many times and can take or leave it. More missions, longer missions, more realistic missions would be my main interest. Although having an adult social night to relax and get to know each other is a good idea, such as when we went to The Martian in 2015 or on a camp I was at in 1996, we just watched a movie in the board room (The Right Stuff) after a nicely catered dinner. I could skip the AC flight training because there isn't really time to learn it properly, although the survival and teamwork training is useful. The rocket construction and launch is more of a kids activity, I think and could be dropped, although I would like to see some robotics added in its place. With enough lead time, we could propose our own experiments to try on the station and bring the supplies we need or provide a list to Space Camp to provide. If the sims are up to it, a long mission on the Moon or Mars as well as the long Space Station mission would be fun. That is all I can think of right now, but I might think of more.

[SpaceCanada]

Form my experience as part of a corporate team, let me add that it is more complicated to organize than it seems. One person has to be the team lead, and is the only person allowed to speak with camp about arrangements, scheduling, activities, etc. before camp and generally the only person allowed to speak with management at camp too. They are also responsible for collecting everyone's forms and... The big one... Paying for EVERYONE. They do not accept individual payments for corporate groups, so someone is putting $20,000+ of their own money down and trusting everyone else will pay them. The level of trust to do that is pretty high. It is a very difficult job to be the main lead on a group like that, so be sure to take that under consideration. If someone cancels, that main person is now on the line for their payment, regardless.

Otherwise, the benefits of a corporate camp are pretty nice, as far as scheduling goes. The price is high if you want to include more/longer sims or want Marriott accommodations. I always thought it was worth it. And yes, we were allowed to dictate the level of anomalies if we wanted to. (Our team was looking forward to some silly shenanigans this year.)

[majtom7]

I like shuttle missions along with building & launching rockets. Egg drops, too although I have never done one... Just a dinosaur/kid at heart, I guess...
Yet at least the shuttle was real and some of the switches affect the sim, not a guess like Orion 1.0 (Orion 2.0 is supposed to be better yet it is less robust than 1.0, or so we were told. Can't say from personal experience..)

IMHO, be prepared to pay closer to $2,000 a head for a corporate camp. The week long adult camp currently in session was $1,299 and includes 3 missions (my educated guess is a short shuttle, short lunar in Orion, and Mars LDM) along with AC & UAT. https://www.spacecamp.com/space/adultadvanced

[blachwk]

I like shuttle missions along with building & launching rockets. Egg drops, too although I have never done one... Just a dinosaur/kid at heart, I guess...
Yet at least the shuttle was real and some of the switches affect the sim, not a guess like Orion 1.0 (Orion 2.0 is supposed to be better yet it is less robust than 1.0, or so we were told. Can't say from personal experience..)

IMHO, be prepared to pay closer to $2,000 a head for a corporate camp. The week long adult camp currently in session was $1,299 and includes 3 missions (my educated guess is a short shuttle, short lunar in Orion, and Mars LDM) along with AC & UAT. https://www.spacecamp.com/space/adultadvanced

You bring up a good point on the cost. Although I do think if you took the week long advanced space academy and use their itinerary as a base and modified the activities it may help in the cost itself. Just based upon a few other posts on the thread here are some initial trade off ideas:

- Arrive on a Sunday and graduate on a Friday
- Eliminate Aviation Challenge cockpit simulator time, but keep team building items. Utilize the time saved for longer missions
- Team time could be modified to be later in the evening to be a team dinner & movie (vs using team time to roam around and do space shot, G-Force, etc)
- Reduce number of IMAX movies down or eliminate altogether. Add this time to mission time
- Keep SCUBA
- Potential of eliminating rocket building/launching altogether and adding robotics or not having either of these and add to mission time
- Modified experiments

If some details could be worked out on a base schedule of what everyone wanted, I have no problem reaching out to Space Camp to see what what the cost would be, minimum team member requirements, and payment schedule would be.

[SpaceCanada]

Robotics is incredibly fun, just saying... Eight hours in one week wasn't enough!

Remember, missions require extra counsellors and sims (versus a movie or rocketry), so the additional expenses go up quickly. Plus, I think private groups are more expensive overall.

Have fun looking into it. You may want to start a separate thread to track this topic and ask any questions you may have. A few of us who have been part of a corporate group (though just a group of friends, not an actual corporation), may be able to answer some of your questions.

[majtom7]

Robotics is incredibly fun, just saying... Eight hours in one week wasn't enough!

Whereas I am the other end of the spectrum, i.e., I can appreciate robotics and remotely directed vehicles yet prefer to participate in manned spaceflight. However, my guess is that robotics is a substantially lower cost activity than missions.

TANSTAAFL!

P.S. Daniel likes a good Bordeaux, something to remember in a pinch. It might buy you extra time

[gt0163c]

Robotics is incredibly fun, just saying... Eight hours in one week wasn't enough!

I'm definitely interested in being a part of a corporate group. Late summer/early fall would work for me. August or September would be best.

For activities I'm interested in:
- I'd enjoy the chance to do some robotics.
- I wouldn't mind not doing AC sim. As Conan said, there's not enough time to learn them properly so it's always rather frustrating to me (plus, I deal with military fighters in my work. I go to camp to get away from that stuff. ).
- I don't ride the centrifuge, so I wouldn't mind if that was skipped. Although I know a lot of people enjoy that. If that was done during the day and I could go wander about and look at the AC aircraft, I wouldn't mind.
- I would definitely want to keep the Area 51/team building activities, at least the low ropes stuff. The high ropes challenges (zip line, climbing wall, pamper pole) can be fun, but don't do quite as much to cement the team as the low ropes activities.
- I like to scuba and like that that can add an interesting element to the EDM/LDM at the end of camp.
- I've done the MAT, 1/6th G chair and 5DF. They're fun, but I could do without those. Although I can see some newbies really looking forward to those. They are rather unique and can be done relatively quickly.
- I'd love to see more extended missions. I'd like to do multiple Orion missions, particularly so that those who are on the station get a chance to do something with the new capsule and MOCR.
- More realistic experiments on the station would be great, particularly if they could be better tied into what's going with the rest of the mission. As it is now, except for docking and the crew change over, those on the station are very isolated from what everyone else is doing during the missions.
- I could go either way on rocket construction and launch. I like that it's a neat time to work together with and get to know a smaller group within the team. And I do enjoy launching the rockets. But I wouldn't miss it too much, as long as there was another, similar time to work on a project with a smaller group within the team.
- I wouldn't miss Space Bowl if it disappeared. If it was replaced by an interesting lecture, I'd be more than happy.
- I have no problem sleeping in the Hab and would prefer not to pay for the Marriott. But I know that's a big thing for some people.