The HabForum

Over the weekend of Memorial Day I attende Space Camp Family Camp and I thought I'd write about it for anyone interested. I'd been looking forward to this trip since my daughter was born and I had a great time sharing my love of Camp with her. Also in my family were my brother-in-law and niece.



Family Camp is very much like Space Camp but experienced as a family. This has it's upsides and downsides: learning and experiencing together is always fantastic, but kids behave differently around their parents and are more apt to goof off, whine, etc. I'm sure it's a challenge for the crew trainers who want to enforce some discipline but also need to respect the parents. As one experienced former crew trainer told me "I always tell counselors of family groups 'if it seems like the parents are judging you it's because they are.'" It's gotta be a rough gig.

Our family of four shared a room in Habitat 1. Because there were extra bunks we got to double-up the mattresses to make it marginally more comfortable. It ain't the Ritz, but I'm fond of the Hab. The crew trainers did 'lights out' and 'wake up' routines as if we were campers, which I didn't expect, I figured as adults that would be our own responsibility. The showers are nicer than I remembered, but there wasn't enough hot water (perhaps on purpose to discourage long showers).



As with any other Camp, it's the team that can really make or break the experience. Fortunately we had a fantastic team that was on-board for cadences, songs, and other shenanigans. The highlight in this regard was definitely the day a large choral group was also dining in the Camp cafeteria and answered our awful rendition of "Let It Go" with some fantastic, and in-tune, songs of their own. Our team got along very well and I enjoyed meeting and talking with all of the other adults in the group.







Incidentally, Mercury was also the name of my team the very first time I attended Camp 17 years ago.

We did all of the normal Camp activities, a wonderful talk by veteran Shuttle astronaut Captain Wendy Lawrence, briefings on space history and modern systems, the 1/6th gravity chair, MAT, 5DF chair, MMU, rocketry, G-force, and Space Shot. Most activities were performed as a team, but the adults got to work on a proposal for a Mars mission while the kids designed mission patches; it was really great to be able to work with just the adults on a fun and interesting project and I was glad they thought to separate us like that.



















But, of course, the kids had the most fun with the interactive soda machine:



We also had two Shuttle and one Orion mission, all of which were neat. My only issue was that none of the missions were briefed very well; a short team briefing of the mission goals and what's going on at each location (MOCR, Orbiter, Station, EVA, etc.) should be standard before each mission training session.











The big difference about going to Camp as an adult vs. as a child is the freedom to walk around the museum after-hours, and I was happy to share that with my niece and daughter as we "snuck out" at bedtime one evening. It's really neat to be the only people in a museum and I highly recommend you take the opportunity if you have it.

And that was our Space Camp experience! It was everything I hoped it would be and I highly encourage you to attend as a family if you get the chance.

Photographers from Sharpshooter Imaging, the company which takes photos of museum visitors as they enter, took photos of us throughout the weekend. For $50 + tax they would mail a USB stick containing the photos of your family, including the green-screen photo from the museum entrance, and a few stock USSRC images.

The photos arrived about a week after Camp and I was pleased with the quality. This is really convenient if you don't want to spend your whole trip lugging around a nice camera and taking photos (which I did, anyway).

I gathered that this was a pilot program so may not be offered at all sessions in the future, but something to keep in mind if they do.

How awesome! My first nephew isn't even born yet (due 6/26 lol) and I'm already daydreaming of when he's old enough to go to family camp. I already told my sister I'm taking him. It looks like it was a blast!

I've always wondered if anyone's done a survey of the people at these family camps - especially the kids - to see if they'd rather do it alone with their peers as opposed to with their parents.
Not saying either is better, but I'd think I'd have enjoyed it better with other kids, even though I never got to go as a kid.
I can also imagine that many of the adults are less than thrilled to be there, or the opposite instead...

Sounds like a great time, Benji. I have been there with 6 different nephews in the past. The first time I was told that about half the kids are dragging their parents there and about half the parents are dragging their kids there. I have had some really good experiences and a couple of bad ones. On the bad ones, it was because of the parents who weren't into it. But fortunately, all of my nephews wanted to go with me so I didn't have to deal with whiney kids. I DID have to convince all of the team kids that they should just call me Aunt Diane, like my nephews did. (Or Aunt Conan, at family Aviation Challenge!)

My son and I went once. In fairness, I will not say that it was a bad experience but it could have been better. He was at the high end of the age range while the camp was geared to the low end of the age range.

Thanks for the review and photos, Benji!

Yes, thank you. Always great to see pics and hear the stories of camp experiences