The HabForum

Registration is open! I just reserved two spots in the Train With An Astronaut program! So excited! Who else is going!

ME.
I just threw down on it a couple of hours ago, as soon as I read here it was now open for registration. My wife, however, made it very specific that due to the cost of this year's program (and my parent's health always being and up and down thing, as they both turned 80 this year), that I am not going back to SC in 2017.

$1,699, same price as last year... I'll be curious to see the schedule and how it compares to last year. Ditto for the August at $1,349...

majtom7 wrote:$1,699, same price as last year... I'll be curious to see the schedule and how it compares to last year. Ditto for the August at $1,349...

Yeah, they said that last year's Train With an Astronaut operated at a loss. And it was mentioned in the round table/feedback session afterwards that it was a little overcrowded (awesome, and amazing but rushed at times and exhausting) so I'm guessing they will scale some things back. Not sure what they'll cut, if anything (I know what I'd cut for me, but some of my cuts wouldn't be popular). It will be interesting to see how it stacks up.

I won't be able to make it this year. But maybe in 2017.

gt0163c wrote:Yeah, they said that last year's Train With an Astronaut operated at a loss. And it was mentioned in the round table/feedback session afterwards that it was a little overcrowded (awesome, and amazing but rushed at times and exhausting) so I'm guessing they will scale some things back.

I'd heard the same thing about the days being packed from two pals of mine (Steve and PK on this forum) who went last year.
Even the 4-day camp session in 2014 had very long days. I think it's great that they try to pack as much as they can, but when you need a day or two to 'recover' from the experience, you do have to question if you simply did too much. One of things I always liked about the 3-day sessions was you called it a night at a reasonable time and had time to talk with the other people on your team (or head to the bar at the Marriott). Sounds like "Hoot Camp" last year didn't give much time for that.
I'm just fine without the SCUBA portion if it comes to that as I spent a great deal of my youth underwater, as well as the model rockets (which I flew plenty of them in high school). The guided tour could probably be axed as well, as most people who'd sign up for this would likely be SC alumni who've done the tours already, or space enthusiasts who likely know most of the stuff beforehand.
I'm all about the missions and sims, but I know that not everyone is so much into that.

p51 wrote:

gt0163c wrote:Yeah, they said that last year's Train With an Astronaut operated at a loss. And it was mentioned in the round table/feedback session afterwards that it was a little overcrowded (awesome, and amazing but rushed at times and exhausting) so I'm guessing they will scale some things back.

I'd heard the same thing about the days being packed from two pals of mine (Steve and PK on this forum) who went last year.
Even the 4-day camp session in 2014 had very long days. I think it's great that they try to pack as much as they can, but when you need a day or two to 'recover' from the experience, you do have to question if you simply did too much. One of things I always liked about the 3-day sessions was you called it a night at a reasonable time and had time to talk with the other people on your team (or head to the bar at the Marriott). Sounds like "Hoot Camp" last year didn't give much time for that.
I'm just fine without the SCUBA portion if it comes to that as I spent a great deal of my youth underwater, as well as the model rockets (which I flew plenty of them in high school). The guided tour could probably be axed as well, as most people who'd sign up for this would likely be SC alumni who've done the tours already, or space enthusiasts who likely know most of the stuff beforehand.
I'm all about the missions and sims, but I know that not everyone is so much into that.

Steve and PK were both on my team last October. Great guys who I wish I would have had more opportunity to get to talk with and know better. The days were long. Some people did spend time at the Marriott bar some (most? all?) evenings but being more of a morning person I was always too exhausted. My suggestion at the round table was that if they just gave us 15 or 20 (maybe 30) minutes more for lunch and dinner that would have allowed for a bit more downtime and a great opportunity to chat with and get to know people better.

As for where to take the time from, I would have been happy to give up the climbing wall at Area 51 and flying the sims and centrifuge at Aviation Challenge. But I've climbed walls (and mountains) before as a youth group volunteer and flown sims at work (and I'm a really lousy pilot). But I know those are things that some people really look forward to. And when I went to adult camp previously, doing the Pamper Pole was an amazing experience for my entire team and where we really came together and gelled.

Scuba is always fun for me since that's not something I've done anywhere else and it's such a unique experience. I like building and launching rockets, as it's a time to work together as a small group on something very tactile without a lot of direction and then get to see the fruit of your efforts at the launch. That really helped me to get to know a few of the women on my team and was a lot of fun (we split up the team with half building rockets while half went to scuba. In my half, we further split up into guys and girls for rocket building). As for the tours, the tour of Marshall was cool but I was completely exhausted at that point and really just wanted to either get somewhere to get some caffeine or take a nap. I wish I could have appreciated it more. The "tour" of the Saturn V with the engineer who worked on it was amazing and really one of the (kinda minor but still) high points of my camp experience. I just wish I had been more awake (we did it last thing one evening) and had been able to engage more with the docent and ask more questions.

One of the issues they said they had with Hoot-Camp (Springer-Camp for me) was scheduling. With three teams it was a massive undertaking to get just the sims scheduled. Everything else had to fall in around them...which is why we did the docent tour so late and the climbing wall at dusk/in the dark. With fewer teams, this shouldn't be as much of a problem and maybe just rearranging when things are done would help to alleviate some of the exhaustion.

It comes down to cost/benefit. A Marshall tour fills a good chunk of time at minimal cost, same with rocket building & launching. Me, I just want to run sims. That is why I am always asking what are the major activities. Given the amount of money you spend, you should know how many missions and what kind when you register. Not to get started AGAIN LOL but how can you price a session without a cost estimate? The stock response is that they have no idea what the schedule is until a couple of weeks before. Yet schedule is different from major activities.

I liked the challenge of rocket building and launching to a budget yet disliked how the counselors failed to grade to the standards afterwards. I would also rather do it myself than as part of a team.

majtom7 wrote:It comes down to cost/benefit. A Marshall tour fills a good chunk of time at minimal cost, same with rocket building & launching. Me, I just want to run sims.

Yeah, I would rather do the sims, too. But from "Hoot Camp" 2016, I heard about the Marshall tour, and I for sure want to do that, as well as hitting the NASA employee store there as I'm such a sucker for Swag...

I saw from the signup that there's no patch design done within the teams and apparently they're pre-done by someone at the SC staff.
Does anyone know who handles that? I'd love to volunteer my services to design one for my own team if they'd allow it...

p51 wrote:I saw from the signup that there's no patch design done within the teams and apparently they're pre-done by someone at the SC staff.
Does anyone know who handles that? I'd love to volunteer my services to design one for my own team if they'd allow it...

There are actually two mission patches.
There's the one that's designed by each team. That one you're familiar with. A physical patch is not made, but design will show up at various points late in the week.

The other one, the one you can prepay for, the team picks from a set of premade designs (6? 8? options. My avatar is one of them). The last name of everyone on the team along with the team name are added and the actual physical patch is put in your graduation packet. If you don't prepay, you can pay during the week but I'm not certain how early in that needs to be done.

gt0163c wrote:There's the one that's designed by each team. That one you're familiar with. A physical patch is not made, but design will show up at various points late in the week.

Hmm. I know from Hoot Camp 2015, they already had pre-printed designs for mission patches for signs and computer graphics in the middle of the camp and neither were what you're talking about.
Look at 2:16 in the left background of this video and you'll see what I'm talking about from Hoot Camp last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOGgD1N ... RdsIx2mJLA

p51 wrote:

gt0163c wrote:There's the one that's designed by each team. That one you're familiar with. A physical patch is not made, but design will show up at various points late in the week.

Hmm. I know from Hoot Camp 2015, they already had pre-printed designs for mission patches for signs and computer graphics in the middle of the camp and neither were what you're talking about.
Look at 2:16 in the left background of this video and you'll see what I'm talking about from Hoot Camp last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOGgD1N ... RdsIx2mJLA

No, those "pre-printed" designs are exactly what I'm talking about. Those are the mission patches that we designed as teams. The one in the video is the one that my team, Discovery, designed. There are 17 small stars, one for each of the team members and one each for our counselors Lindsey and Marvin. There are two gold astronaut stars one each for Bob and Hoot. Everyone's name is around the edge in two rows with Discovery on the top because we only had 15 people on the team.

gt0163c wrote:No, those "pre-printed" designs are exactly what I'm talking about. Those are the mission patches that we designed as teams. The one in the video is the one that my team, Discovery, designed. There are 17 small stars, one for each of the team members and one each for our counselors Lindsey and Marvin. There are two gold astronaut stars one each for Bob and Hoot. Everyone's name is around the edge in two rows with Discovery on the top because we only had 15 people on the team.

Okay, PK here on this forum confirmed that as well. I hadn't realized that they were done by the people on the teams. But how'd something that professional-looking get done at SC? Did someone bring a good laptop with them and have them done at the time? How'd they get printed up like what was seen in that video?

>The other one, the one you can prepay for, the team picks from a set of premade designs (6? 8? options. My avatar is one of them).

Is this possible in each "normal" Adult Space Camp / Academy?

I would think the pre-designed team mission patches are only available for week long sessions because of the time it takes to have them made and shipped back to camp. Anyone here know for sure?

Otherwise, some teams choose to take their own created mission patch design and have it made into embroidered patches after camp by a third party.

p51 wrote:Okay, PK here on this forum confirmed that as well. I hadn't realized that they were done by the people on the teams. But how'd something that professional-looking get done at SC? Did someone bring a good laptop with them and have them done at the time? How'd they get printed up like what was seen in that video?

For my team, we had one guy who does web design as a career. He brought a laptop with Photoshop and put in a lot of time putting together the patch with the team's input. I'm assuming that the other teams did something similar. As for how they were printed up, I know we were asked to turn in the file with the patch relatively early in the week (Tuesday evening maybe?). I'm assuming someone on staff did the rest either on-site or with a local company. I don't know if that is the plan for each week-long camp (is it done for the kids' week-long camps?) or if it was a special thing done for the pilot program adult week-long camp last year. I'm hoping it's done for each adult camp, as it's cool to see your patch design show up through the week (mostly related to EDM and at graduation).

gt0163c wrote:For my team, we had one guy who does web design as a career. He brought a laptop with Photoshop and put in a lot of time putting together the patch with the team's input. I'm assuming that the other teams did something similar. As for how they were printed up, I know we were asked to turn in the file with the patch relatively early in the week (Tuesday evening maybe?). I'm assuming someone on staff did the rest either on-site or with a local company.

Thanks for the info, I'd been wondering about that ever since Hoot Camp last fall.

Got a question here just to be sure. on this week.
I simply signed up for the week-long program in October, there wasn't another option I needed to be sure I was in "Hoot Camp II" other than that, was there?

It says, "Adult Advanced Space Academy w/ Astronaut" for $1649, so if that's what you signed up for...

Vincent wrote:It says, "Adult Advanced Space Academy w/ Astronaut" for $1649, so if that's what you signed up for...

I swear I didn't see train with astronaut in the title on the website when I signed up, but I just checked the email I got from SC once I did sign up and it did say that in the title there.
So, I'm good.