Friday, December 11, 2009

Day 16/17/18.





Matt woke up in the morning and he was feeling better. He wasn’t 100% but he was well enough to come shopping with the group.

Today was the only chance to sleep in this whole trip pretty much. Everyone enjoyed the chance to sleep just that extra couple of hours.

Then the ones that wanted to left for breakfast at the Sizzlers around the corner from our hotel. The breakfast wasn’t the best quality but it was filling. Some super smart kids decided that it was the best chance to have ice cream for brekkie. Others decided a breakfast of chips and fudge was an excellent nutritious choice.

James left with his mum and his three brothers and headed to his auntie’s house.

The tourist trolley bus took us to the outlet stores. Once off the bus the girls sprinted to Victoria Secret and yet they still never found out what the secret was. WOMEN! As we were only allowed 3 hours of shopping, it was a race to see who could buy the most in the shortest amount of time. Shopping was OK (or great, if you asked the girls) most of us walked around the shops and we all found lots of bargains. The Prime Outlet had stores like Tommy Hilfiger, Forever 21, Converse, Vans, Dior, Juicy Couture, Wet Seal (officially the new favourite store of every girl on this trip). On the way back on the trolley bus (surprise, surprise Deonie and Jess were nearly late), Ryan lost his wallet on the trolley, but thanks to a timely phone call, it was recovered just in time.

Then it was time to get back on our bus, which drove us to the Orlando airport, from which we caught our connecting flight to LAX airport. Several hassles with luggage were had, from some girls being unable to keep track of the many bags they needed to put their new clothes in, to Ryan Bodmer and Alex Griffiths being told that their bags weren’t going all the way back to Perth. All problems were sorted out, and we made it onto our plane in time for a 'fun-filled' 6 hours to Los Angeles Airport.

One down, three to go. Our next flight was the 12 hour ride to Aukland Airport. We’re becoming very well acquainted with the airport etiquette: sit on long plane ride, get off plane, grumble about plane ride, buy as much Burger King/Hungry Jack’s/MacDonald’s as we can, sleep on the floor, board next flight. Not to mention the all to regular security checks where we have to virtually strip down to get through. Ryan has just realised he left his poster on the plane-we are hoping lost property will have it.

In a few hours, we will board yet another flight, which will take us back to Melbourne, Australia. Then after repeating our airport behaviour, we will catch our last connecting flight back to Perth! Yay! Home beckons.

Our last departure was made memorable by- Rohan deciding to wander off with the plane boarding, necessitating a PA call-up; Cuan loosing his boarding pass and a very nervous posse of policemen watching us closely as we boarded the plane ( this was later explained by the presence of the Dali Lama on our flight).

We finally arrived in Perth to a very emotional welcome by family and friends. All seemed impressed by our NASA Jumpsuits as we posed for our final group photo.

By Cuan, Rohan and Anna.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Day 15




7.30am down to breki- although most students decided to sleep in an extra half hour rather than fight for a chair in the very cramped dining room.

9.00am onto the bus (all our chartered transport has been on luxury coaches) for the 45min drive to Kennedy Space Centre (KSC). Here we hopped onto one of the many tour buses that ply the same route- we travelled passed the giant assembly building (where the rockets are pieced together before launch) to a look-out tower, from here we could see the launch towers and the crawler track. We then drove on to a museum featuring a Saturn V rocket. Here we had a lunch stop before travelling onto a display featuring the International Space Station (we could look into a room were actual components were being assembled). Our final leg took us back to the KSC. Along the way the tour included a number of video presentations of the various features of the region. We also got to see numerous Alligators in the roadside ditches along with tortoises, egrets, a dead Armadillo and a huge Bald Eagle nest.

At KSC the highlight was a 3D Imax movie on the moon landings. There were a number of interesting displays enjoyed by the ‘strong’ but the ‘wimps’ were largely all museumed-out by this stage and spent an hour relaxing on the lawn.

5.00pm on the bus for the drive back to Orlando. A few of us enjoyed a swim in the hotel pool before we headed out to dinner-Chinese with Mrs Mengler or Sizzler with Mr Roberts.

James Hill was given a surprise tonight – his Mum and three brothers arrived a day earlier than expected and booked into our hotel.

The award for best ‘team effort’ today went to Matt, who despite emptying the contents of his stomach a couple of times, soldiered-on and managed to get through the day sleeping on benches whenever he could. He seems to have recovered a little this evening; hopefully he will be brighter tomorrow for the trip home.

By Team Leader 1.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Days 13/14




Days 13/14

Yesterday after a long and tiring flight, with a three hour delay, we checked into our hotel rooms in the early hours of the morning to try and get some rest before a long day at the Epcot Centre. The first sign of it is the impressive golf ball, a well-known icon, which can be seen from miles away. The park was divided into various sections and included a brief tour of the world.

We stayed for a spectacular fireworks display, and had front row seats during the show, feeling the heat and sounds as the fireworks exploded. After this we returned to our hotel rooms to have another long, hot shower and collapsed into our large, comfy beds, luxury, compared to the accommodation at space camp anyway.

Mr Roberts provided us with some entertainment this morning, with a spectacular fall up the stairs to our 2nd floor rooms.

Whilst visiting the Magic Kingdom in Disney World, people made the most of the time by getting to the rides early, and getting fast passes for the rides they wanted to return to later on.

The most popular rides seemed to be the Splash Mountain, which included a 52 foot drop, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Space Mountain, both of which were roller coasters however the Space Mountain was almost completely pitch black. The Pirates of the Carribean ride was noted for the realistic scenes and smooth movements of characters.

The street parade had everyone lined up to see their favourite characters.

The most spectacular part of the Magic Kingdom was Cinderella’s Castle, which was lit up beautifully as the night fell. It was fun to see almost everyone in Disney Theme hats play fighting with light sabres and swords at the base of the castle before we headed off to the mono-rail.

We were on the bus and back to the hotel by 8.15pm.

Dinner was a gourmet and amazingly well designed meal at KFC located just 40m from our hotel. Good to get an earlier night after two fantastic days in Disney World.

By Elysia and Callum.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Day 13




Its close to midnight after a long, exciting day at Disney(EPCOT). Decided to stay for the fireworks. Everyone had a great time. No student bloggers tonight- they need their rest. We should have an earlier finish tomorrow, so we will try to catch up then! Graeme.

Day 12






Hello Everyone! Welcome to the last day of Space Camp. The day that we graduate from the ‘Advanced Space Academy’ and get to wear our blue flight suits with pride. So, let’s reflect on the week. We started the week by dragging our heavy bags up the stairs to a small dorm room and complaining about the horrible beds. To breakfast at the cafeteria, eating food out of small Styrofoam bowls, from performing AOA missions to the 6 hour EDM mission. Space camp has probably been the most memorable experience any of us have had. We formed close bonds with our counsellors and all the staff there at space camp, and we would like to thank everyone there for helping us try our best at every activity and challenge thrown at us.

Today started off with us waking up and packing our bags so we could leave Huntsville and head off to Orlando, Florida. We had extra time to get ready, but still it wasn’t enough time to properly pack all our stuff and take all our bags to a room so we could get them later. So off to breakfast we went to say goodbye to all the staff. We then headed off to the gift shop to buy gifts for ourselves and our families and explored the museum, and tried some of the simulators in the museum.

After rock climbing and landing the shuttle a couple of times we headed off to graduate from Space Academy. It was really great, we got our patches and people who had won the competitions during the week got their prizes, and the “Right Stuff” award was given out, this award was basically an award that is given out to the person that exemplifies the qualities that Space Camp tries to teach students (i.e. teamwork, leadership etc.) We were given T-Shirts and then we said our goodbye’s to our fantastic counsellors that made us feel so welcome (Thanks so much Jer-Bear and Em-Dog) [Insert Jer-Bear dance here]

We then went back to where our luggage was and ‘chilled’ for a while, we watched Batman and hopped on the computers for a little while to communicate with our relatives on the other side of the world. Soon after that we had to pack up all our stuff and climb onto the bus and head to the airport. The first flight went smoothly, but then- as we were boarding the second flight to Orlando. A three hour delay has slowed us down for a little bit so it looks like it will be a long night. Bye for now…

Kristen and Ryan B.

Ps. Kristen was too modest to mention it was her that won “THE RIGHT STUFF” medal.
Pps. Didn’t get to the hotel till 4.00am-decided to delay our departure to Epcot till 10.00am-we need the sleep. Graeme.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Day 11






6.30- Wake-up/showers: same old routine, the councillors and the Indian students woke us up at 6:30. All the boys were awake early and downstairs waiting for the girls. It was a long wait. Our councillor, Jeramy (JerBear) was in charge of the girls wake-up calls and let them sleep in another 15 minutes! Finally the girls arrived downstairs and we went to breakfast.
7.30- Breakfast: breakfast was same old fare except jerbear had brought us a special treat of hot chocolate and marshmallows ^_^
8.00- Space History 1: space history was most likely the least stimulating part of our busy day. We sat around in exhibits etc. Jerbear explained the history of the shuttles and people that have gone into space and developed the rockets. Some of the group lay down and dozed-off.
9.00- Rocket Launch: the rocket launch was very exciting. Jerbear led us through a path in the woods where jokes were made at a certain staff members expense ;) We came onto a huge field. On the field lay stands and a blast shield just in case. There were many primary school kids launching rockets too and it was extremely noisy. Despite the freezing cold weather, (just above zero degrees Celsius) we stood there until everyone of us had launched our groups rockets. Some rockets were a huge success and flew the distance of the field and more, whereas some groups’ rockets didn’t work quite so smoothly with one case of a magically exploding rocket and a rocket with a faulty motor spiralling out of control. Amazingly only one egg payload broke on landing.
10.00- Pamper Pole 1: we arrived at area 51 to meet Chuck, Varner, Jumpman and Redbeard who were the supervisors for the high ropes. The pamper pole they led us too was a 10 metre high pole the diameter of a wooden power line pole with pegs sticking out the side. 1 at a time we climbed the massive pole and got to the top despite the shakiness. Once at the top we dived for a rope dangling in the air with only a few reaching it.
12:00 – MAT: our pamper pole adrenaline rush didn’t end right away as we caught the bus back to the Astro-trek building and had a go on the Multi-Axis Trainers which simulate the motion when a spacecraft spirals out of control. It is basically a random pendulum kind of thing, we will show you a picture later, which spun us around in all different directions.
1.00- Lunch
1.30- Pamper Pole 2: the people who hadn’t climbed in the morning were sent up with the others belaying. Everyone reached the top and Ryan took a whole new perspective on pole dancing. We then had a debrief and everyone praised one another- overall it was exhilerating, fun and we worked brilliantly as a team.
4.30- Aero Design 2: in aero design we took a look at how aircraft are made and we made our own out of polystyrene, we then flew them to see how far we could make them fly, with not much success.
5.30- Dinner: at dinner Jerbear brought us Krispy Kreme doughnuts and overall they tasted like love and happiness in 1 small doughnut.
6.00- Space History 2: in space history 2 we lay under the Saturn 5 rocket and listened to Emily tell us about the shuttles and rockets.
7.30- Applenaut Challenge: this was our final ‘Physical Briefing’ in which we had to design a ‘spacesuit’ to protect an apple. We were given different materials to protect it against: radiation, heat, water and a puncture. This was a good fun way to end our activities.
8.30- Space Bowl: space bowl was a quiz. It was set-up like ‘Jeopardy’ the game show. We had 2 rival teams that consisted of the Indian students. We did very well and we think we won but they won’t confirm it until the graduation tomorrow.
10.30- Bed………………Another huge day in Rocket City!!!
By Rohan and James.


Ps. Huntsville is promoted as ‘Rocket City'.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Day 10






Wake up/ Prep for day.
We woke up this morning at 6:30 am with a long day ahead of us.

7:30 am- Breakfast

8:00 am- EDM Positions:
Delegating positions with one another for our extended duration mission, headed up by Cuan who methodically separated us into groups and then finalised positions with paper, scissors, rocks.

8:30 am- Orbital Mechanics – Pilots ( learned about the different angles of flight and different axis of flying a space shuttle).

Micro Gravity DNA extraction – Mission Specialists (did a DNA extraction activity in preparation for a mission on the space station. We extracted the DNA of a strawberry; highlight of the lesson was Matt spilling strawberry juice all over James).

9:30 am- Shuttle Landing Simulation :Pilots(The pilots headed up to ISS control for a simulation of a shuttle landing at 30,000 ft. in many different conditions, such as landing during the night or in bad weather).
:Mission Specialists (to their surprise discovered that they would also face medical anomalies during the EDM and learned the proper procedures for dealing with such events).

10:30 am -Orbital Systems 2:
We learned about the different power systems aboard the space shuttle, where the main faults would occur and who to contact when such an event did occur.

11:30 am -Lunch

12:00 pm -Extended Duration Mission (EDM) Training:
We were separated into our different tracks and briefed about the EDM and some events that may occur during the mission. This didn’t take very long and we ended up talking to the instructors for most of the lesson.

1:00 pm - Rocket Construction 3 :
We finished our rockets in preparation for tomorrows launch. The objective is to fire an egg into the air and safely return to the ground in a hand made rocket.

2:00 pm - Orbital Systems 2:
Orbital systems 2 turned out to be exactly the same as the earlier session.
2:30 pm -Shuttle History:
We went to the museum and had a quick look at some of the shuttle displays there.
3:00 pm to 9:00 pm – EDM:
We had 3 x 1.75 hour missions: launch, docking with the space station and landing. This was a very long hard challenge that had people dieing every few minutes with the medical anomalies and the ‘space ghosts’ (the councillors) kept standing by and giving us cards which diagnosed us with different symptoms. This kept the mission specialists on their toes as they had to continually help people. Some of the medical anomalies that occurred were:
2 minutes into the flight Jess had a heart attack and James and Matt got up to help and then got knocked out by the G’s.
Later in the flight the ISS was hit by a meteorite shower and the damage which resulted in a LiOH canister failure, which killed half the crew.
On the descent, the crew in the mid-deck were bitten by a tiger snake (what was that doing in space?) and had 5 minutes to live.
To bring a crew member back to life the councillors made us do stupid stuff like sing songs in front of the camera, which Mr Roberts and Mrs Mengler were recording from.
We all survived, kind of, and had a successful mission.
9:00 pm- Night Telescope Session:
It was cancelled because of cloud cover so we had a brief talk on the northern sky and its constellations.
9:30 pm Hide and Seek in Museum
Another fun game of Hide and go seek as the Americans call it and now off to bed.

By Ryan S. and James.