Nice place you guys have here.
Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:51 am
I heard about this place from a collectSPACE forum post on Space Camp obviously. I honestly had no idea this place existed. I suppose you can blame it on "A Smile As Big As the Moon" as I watched the Hallmark program, then cracked open a copy of the book I picked up a few years back yet never had a chance to read until now. Well, it took me down memory lane big time. Even though Mike's kids were there in 1989, it was quite a bit of deja vu to see how much it resembled my own camp experience as more things were the same than different back then.
Anyway, my name is Jay Chladek. I attended Space Camp Level II in the spring of 1985. To date, that was the only time I attended. A second trip would have been nice I suppose, but I got a lot out of that first trip. Plus, having Challenger disintegrate a little less than a year later did kind of put my thoughts of space on the backburner for a bit (although I did see the movie in 1986, which was interesting because they used many of the simulators I was in myself).
That was quite a year I must say as Space Camp was really starting to hit critical mass. I was 14 at the time and space was big for me back then. Seeing those two giant domes adjacent to the museum was interesting. I arrived a day early and a camp counsellor from the level 1 group brought me in from the airport. So it was pretty interesting getting to see the place in the middle of the night.
Rather than going through a whole recall of my camp experience, I'll just mention the highlights and some of the more unusual memories:
Wheeled Gemini- This thing occupied one of the domes. It was a Gemini boilerplate with landing gear on it. Counsellors said it was a bolt on gear intended to help wheel the craft around on a carrier deck after recovery. The main gear posts I believe were the locations originally for the Regallo flex wing landing skids.
The Right Stuff- The ole full motion shuttle simulator. Pretty crude by today's standards, but fun to see back then. It was the same one used in the film or at least that one was a very good copy of it.
The Spacelab/Space Station- I must say, whomever did those 1 to 1 mockups back then did a really nice job as it felt like one was on the set of Star Trek when on that two level space station. It even had a bunk bed on one side. You climbed down a ladder in the airlock tunnel to get to the Spacelab. The Spacelab itself matched up pretty well with the photos of the real thing, complete with its bright colors.
Talking Coke Machines- One of those pieces of 1980s technology that I am kind of glad didn't catch on. I remember putting in a dollar into one of these things and it would go through this whole "Hello, I am a talking vending machine" while playing music. It was NOT interactive, it just annoyed people mostly.
Challenger and Discovery Patches- Our class was divided up into two groups, Challenger and Discovery, and we were issued ball caps with those names on them (blue in color, half round with an image of a shuttle orbiting the Earth). I lost my ball cap a long time ago, but I found my Challenger, Level II patch (I'll have to shoot a photo of it for my avatar). My patch is a little dirty (not sure how to clean it as it has a small oil stain on it that is at least two decades old), but otherwise it is in good shape. It would be nice to find a better example of it.
Moo Moo, Moo Moo- Given that I grew up mainly in Nebraska and Texas, I knew what cows were. But when we would board the busses to go to Marshall or the pool location for Tetrahedron construction, it was bizzare seeing the teenage girls on the team look out at the farmers field that used to be across the camp where cows were grazing and go "Hey, look at the cows! Moo moo! Moo moo!" It just cracked me up everytime.
External Tank- At Marshall back then, they had an ET on display in doors and it was divided in half at the intertank so you could see the LOX and LHX tanks seperately. I believe that specific tank ended up at the KSC visitors center. Even though Huntsville didn't have a shuttle and they were a couple years away from getting Pathfinder there, that certainly drove the point home as to how big the shuttle was.
Teachers in Space- I wasn't at camp when the Teacher in Space candidates were but I remember a CNN report about a month after I left where some of the Teacher In Space applicants (I believe those from Alabama at least) had gone through the program and my old camp counsellors were there running them through the machines. Seeing them wearing the same flightsuits and working with the same people was pretty cool to watch.
Thats all I have for now. I went digging through my old stuff and I still have my original flightsuit (it doesn't fit me anymore), complete with the old black and red letter Space Camp patch on it (before they went to the round ones) my old photo ID, my Level 2 wings and my class photo (its been on my wall for years in fact after I had it framed). Maybe one day if I go back for one of the alumni camps I'll try and find an adult sized version of my original flightsuit to wear or I'll at least get a sky blue flightsuit to transfer the patches over. Who knows. I also found a bunch of old polaroid photos I shot of camp back then. They are a little faded, but I think Photoshop can be brought in to work its magic.
Anyway, thats all I've got for now.
Anyway, my name is Jay Chladek. I attended Space Camp Level II in the spring of 1985. To date, that was the only time I attended. A second trip would have been nice I suppose, but I got a lot out of that first trip. Plus, having Challenger disintegrate a little less than a year later did kind of put my thoughts of space on the backburner for a bit (although I did see the movie in 1986, which was interesting because they used many of the simulators I was in myself).
That was quite a year I must say as Space Camp was really starting to hit critical mass. I was 14 at the time and space was big for me back then. Seeing those two giant domes adjacent to the museum was interesting. I arrived a day early and a camp counsellor from the level 1 group brought me in from the airport. So it was pretty interesting getting to see the place in the middle of the night.
Rather than going through a whole recall of my camp experience, I'll just mention the highlights and some of the more unusual memories:
Wheeled Gemini- This thing occupied one of the domes. It was a Gemini boilerplate with landing gear on it. Counsellors said it was a bolt on gear intended to help wheel the craft around on a carrier deck after recovery. The main gear posts I believe were the locations originally for the Regallo flex wing landing skids.
The Right Stuff- The ole full motion shuttle simulator. Pretty crude by today's standards, but fun to see back then. It was the same one used in the film or at least that one was a very good copy of it.
The Spacelab/Space Station- I must say, whomever did those 1 to 1 mockups back then did a really nice job as it felt like one was on the set of Star Trek when on that two level space station. It even had a bunk bed on one side. You climbed down a ladder in the airlock tunnel to get to the Spacelab. The Spacelab itself matched up pretty well with the photos of the real thing, complete with its bright colors.
Talking Coke Machines- One of those pieces of 1980s technology that I am kind of glad didn't catch on. I remember putting in a dollar into one of these things and it would go through this whole "Hello, I am a talking vending machine" while playing music. It was NOT interactive, it just annoyed people mostly.
Challenger and Discovery Patches- Our class was divided up into two groups, Challenger and Discovery, and we were issued ball caps with those names on them (blue in color, half round with an image of a shuttle orbiting the Earth). I lost my ball cap a long time ago, but I found my Challenger, Level II patch (I'll have to shoot a photo of it for my avatar). My patch is a little dirty (not sure how to clean it as it has a small oil stain on it that is at least two decades old), but otherwise it is in good shape. It would be nice to find a better example of it.
Moo Moo, Moo Moo- Given that I grew up mainly in Nebraska and Texas, I knew what cows were. But when we would board the busses to go to Marshall or the pool location for Tetrahedron construction, it was bizzare seeing the teenage girls on the team look out at the farmers field that used to be across the camp where cows were grazing and go "Hey, look at the cows! Moo moo! Moo moo!" It just cracked me up everytime.
External Tank- At Marshall back then, they had an ET on display in doors and it was divided in half at the intertank so you could see the LOX and LHX tanks seperately. I believe that specific tank ended up at the KSC visitors center. Even though Huntsville didn't have a shuttle and they were a couple years away from getting Pathfinder there, that certainly drove the point home as to how big the shuttle was.
Teachers in Space- I wasn't at camp when the Teacher in Space candidates were but I remember a CNN report about a month after I left where some of the Teacher In Space applicants (I believe those from Alabama at least) had gone through the program and my old camp counsellors were there running them through the machines. Seeing them wearing the same flightsuits and working with the same people was pretty cool to watch.
Thats all I have for now. I went digging through my old stuff and I still have my original flightsuit (it doesn't fit me anymore), complete with the old black and red letter Space Camp patch on it (before they went to the round ones) my old photo ID, my Level 2 wings and my class photo (its been on my wall for years in fact after I had it framed). Maybe one day if I go back for one of the alumni camps I'll try and find an adult sized version of my original flightsuit to wear or I'll at least get a sky blue flightsuit to transfer the patches over. Who knows. I also found a bunch of old polaroid photos I shot of camp back then. They are a little faded, but I think Photoshop can be brought in to work its magic.
Anyway, thats all I've got for now.