The HabForum

So, no more PS track. I don't like this. The elite pilot force is becoming... hoi polloi!

Okay, maybe I used a little hyperbole there. Seriously, though, we've mentioned this before, but really haven't gotten into it much. Is the removal of the PS track benficial to the camp experience?

haha...i was talking to boost at camp and she told us that it was the last week that they had the ps role...and someone asked if that would change camp a lot...and i said that they never do anything anyway, so it wouldn't be greatly miss...and boost jumped in with, well, i know they do...they sometimes...they have to do SOMETHING!...

Ok i've said this before and ill point it out again. Space Camp is clearly trying to gear thi9ngs more toward the ISS now. PS's just arent flying anymore on missions. If you look back at the last few years i can thin of one PS who has flown and that was Ilan Ramon on STS-107. Keep in mind a PS is not a career astronaut when thyey have flown its because a comp0any or other government agency had an expirement onboard the flighjt or in a few reasons like with Garn, John Glenn, and Bill nelson it was more for political reasons. With no more hubbnle servicing flights all flights for the forseeable future will be ISS construction missions which require the well trained skills of pilots and mission specialists who train for years verses 6 months to a year in many cases for a PS. I know space camp isn't NASA but it just sounds to me like they are keeping up with the times and whats really going on in the space program.

so how are they gna run the missions no are there gna be like 3 plts and 3 ms's in each place

plts and mss take over the med stuff. we didn't have pss on our christmas team and it was mass chaos. it makes stuff more difficult. and with the 24 hour edm...

My guess would be they will just add two MS's to each mission. In reality the PS's at camp have been douing MS work anyway. PS's in the space program are only assigned to a flight because of a payload on that mission. Thats all they are really their to do is run that expirement or payload operation. for the most part the MS's are the doctors and they are the ones who run most of the expirements anyway. Just a though i think space camp is just catching up with the changing times.

i don't know. i guess i felt like the pilots get to fly and crash the orbiter, the mission specialists get to fix the satellite and then lose their tether and fly off into space.

all that cool stuff while the payload specialists only got to make things. we all got to do that in the station anyway. i never felt really necessary in the process of the mission as a PS.

plus, we know the counselors are going to have a LOT of fun with this... can we say ongoing medical anomalies?

in real life, i thought that once the MSs made the station, isn't it inhabited with payload specialists to do experiments??

No payload specialist wont be the ones manning the real ISS either. They only sign on as astronauts for short amounts of time ussualy enough for 6 months to a year of training and time enough to fly the mission. MS's will continue to do the experiments on the station just like they have mainly done on the shuttle. Pilots could go to the station for stays but most dont want to because they cant fly and they cant keep up their flying time. It was a big issue during the shuttle Mir program because Russia only wanted experianced astronauts many of the MS;s were not enthusiastic about it and pilots wouldnt go because they couldnt keep up their flying time. I think the day of the PS in the real space program is over. The shuttle is only making flights to the ISS now once its retired they will be flying some other vehicle but most ISs crews will be making up the crews and as far as missions to the moon or mars they will want fully trained astronauts.

err well ill see how this whole no PS thing goes considering ill be at camp tomorrow...yay!

Hey, a school group from my town will be heading off to Space Camp tomorrow as well! They will be Academy kids from Lorne Akins school in Alberta, Canada. Try not to harass them too much for me, will ya? A girl in my karate class told me she was going to Space Camp this next week and I totally went crazy! I gave her the URL for HAB1, so hopefully she will come and see all the good information here before she goes.

(She probably thought I was a complete freak being obsessed with camp and all, but can you really blame me?)

i think we all are.

cool ill look for the school group when im up there tomorrow...how many are there?

when i was @ advanced, there wasnt anyone signed up for the PS track so we just didnt have any. i've never experienced missions at advanced with ps's so i dont have anything to compare it to, but it didnt seem to me like we needed them to get everything done, im sure they would have had their own things to do but whatever.
have fun tomorrow and for the whole week, sarah!

Hmm... I would never want to be a PS, anyway, because I always considered the experiments sort of boring, so I was glad that half the EDM was spent on the orbiter doing non-experimental stuff for us MS's. But for the PS track to be totally eliminated... I dunno about that. And what about the people who are already signed up as PS's?

(yeah, I posted for a week or two after my session last summer, then I sort of faded away, but now I'm back... sort of)

I was the only PS on my team in July. I only picked that position because it was the only one I hadn't been. The only part that sucked was during the EDM when The MSs were on there EVA. Other than that it was good.

I've always been a die hard fan of the plt track, but I'm considering going as an MS next time I go, IF there is a next time. The PS track seemed kinda boring to me, the experiments they did never seemed as fun as what the rest of us did.

I got to go SCUBA diving for 45 minutes because I was the only one. It wasn't that boring because we started out with 3 ps but 2 left monday morning. i was only by myself for a few things.

The PS track isn't all that bad. I had to go as a PS my second time at camp because that was the only position left. I registered for the session not more than two weeks prior to attending camp, so I was lucky to go at all!

When I was a PS there were two or three of us; I forget who was what... We mostly learned medical things like how space affects the minds and bodies of the astronauts. We did some fun experiments, although our group never really split up into tracks much that week. However, the best part was having a loose schedule during the missions so that we could participate in more (medical) anomolies. It was great being the only PS on board with a medical problem nobody knew how to fix - lovely!

Maybe now with removing the medical anomolies (as someone said they did, so sad) they have no real use for the PS's. They can easily cover the medical aspects of the training with the other tracks, although they won't need it because there are no medical anomolies anyway... On the station we defaced American pennies by turning them gold and silver in colour. I guess removing illegal activities from the programme might not be such a bad idea

I am sure camp will not have changed too much by the removal of the PS track. The most fun is had by MS's and PLT's anyway, so it really benefits the campers more than anything!

are they going to make more ms/pilot positions for the missions now that there arent ps's? or will a ms/pilot do a ps's position?

They removed medical anomolies!?!?!?!?!?!? How sad! Last summer we they weren't allowed to give us medical anomolies during the 1 hr. missions, but they could during the EDM. Those were the best part though.