Saturday rolled along and the blokes all got up early and made their own arragements to go out to Kennedy Space Centre in the morning. Andrew did a great job in coordinating the whole thing. In the mean time I managed to get some extra zzz's since the blog has been keeping me up late, and I did not have to be at Kennedy until later in the day.
So, while I was sleeping, this happened ...
The A-Team arriving at Kennedy Visitors Centre
First think in the morning and everyone is still looking pretty good. Doing some quick study in preparation for the shutlle launch later today
At the visitors center, they explored the rocket ship garden
Matt got called in to change the grouser plates on the crawler transporter ....
While Colin tried to recruit this guy for field service to replace the ones we lost along the way. Colin says that this guy will work for peanuts.
Jason thought this was the smoko van ....
While someone else was checking the potential of this Lunar Buggy as a future field service vehicle
Then onto the bus to check out the Observation Gantry and get an overview of all the work that goes on with the 6500 people and stuff behind the scenes of a rocket launch. Somewhere along there I hear that some cheap hot dogs were on the menu.
Another bus to the Saturn 5 Display Centre ....
Apparently some wild life made an appearance during their travels at the center, which included an eagle, armadillo and a GATOR !!
At 12:30 they took the bus to the Astronaut's Hall of Fame, because I told them to.
In the meann time, while the guys were very busy doing all this exciting stuff, I took a bit more of a leisurely approach to recover from all the blogging and met them there.
Once we all signed in and received our ATX polo shirts, we were ready to begin our Astronaut Training Experience (ATX).
But first, we were lucky enough to meet a real life astronaut. Dr. Durrance has logged over 615 hours in space as a member of the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia and Space Shuttle Endeavour. We had the opportunity to listen to him talk about his experiences and what really happens during the lead-up to a launch and the actual experience itself. The guys can tell you all about it when they get home.
Then our training started in preparation for our shuttle mission later in the day.
First was the physical training we all had to pass, but did not .....
Some were brave enough
But there was something for everybody to have fun with
Next, we all had to get to know the shuttle ....
Houston, we have a really big problem ...........
....... and none of the following options are fixing it either ...........
Next, our training extends to Mission Control room and the roles of those who manage the operation
When we all had the hang of that, our final training was behind the simulators to learning how to maneuvre on board systems and the land the shuttle. We grouped in pairs to compete for the ulitmate honour of being the Commander of the orbiter crew.
After the extensive training program ( which also included many sneaking off the snack stand every few minutes), NASA was ready to select the crew for the Space Shuttle mission simulation.
And somehow the best of a really bad bunch was .....
COMMANDER DUSTY
The final crew looked something like this:
In Mission Control Center we had:
Jason the Flight Director who was responsible for all the ground and orbit orbit operations and kept in direct contact with the orbiter crew
Jim the Public Affairs Officer who is the voice of NASA
Colin, the Emergency, Environmental, Communications and Operations Manager who monitors navigation and environmental systems.
The Orbiter Crew
Yep, Dusty still stayed as the Commander who flies and lands the orbiter. He was responsible for all crew functions ( no wonder it all went astray).
Dave, the Pilot assists the commander. In fact he had to do all the work
And there were the mission specialists 1 and 2, Matt and some other lady, who got to sit upstairs in the fancy cabin with the Pilot and the Commander.
Mission Specialists Andrew and Ellemarie had to sit in the middle deck with no view at all.
I really don't need to go through the details, but just lucky we are not in the space industry just yet. Apart from MS3 (Andrew) floating around uncontrollably in the middle deck, MS1 (Matt) falling asleep mid-launch, the Emergency Manager (Colin) needing too much time to think about stuff in an emergeny, and our Commander landing the shuttle in the corn fields, we all walked away heroes ...
Here is MS3 floating around the middle deck ...
However, NASA was not too selective and they all graduated from the training program
We all left there as heroes, with the media chasing for interviews. While in our special astronaut bus returning home, Andrew made me take this photo ....
5 minutes later, revenge was sweet when they all cheered " what goes around, comes around " . He was out like a light ....
But nobody was too tired to head over to Downtown Disney ( our hotel view )
and check out the House of Blues ...
... have some dinner
... and finish the night off listening to Toots Lorraine & The Traffic
Tomorrow morning is free time until we catch the bus at 1:15pm to go to Peoria.
No comments:
Post a Comment