We awoke to the sound of our camp counsellors yelling at us to get out of bed. After a night of rough sleeping (beds with cheap plastic mattresses and a chilly temperature for our thin blankets), we had 30 minutes to get ready and down for breakfast.
What awaited us were small plates of scrambled eggs, potato gems (tater tots in America), sausage patties, cereal and fruit, which was definitely a welcome change from our vegetable-free Southern American diet! After breakfast, we started our day by making a trip to the museum.
Inside, there were a number of interesting exhibits such as artefacts of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs, Skylab fragments and a landing simulator. After the museum, we made our way across to the Davidson Centre, which houses an actual Saturn V Rocket (one of only 3 remaining). To store the rocket, the building was only half-complete when the rocket moved in and the other half built once it was actually inside. After the rockets, we went back to the Gravitron, which simulates 4Gs. Scientifically speaking, it rocked our socks off!
For lunch, we had ham rolls, and a baked potato. We also met the new Indian Nationals from Dubai who are also staying at the camp and outnumber us 3:1! After lunch, we went and watched Apollo 13 in the movie theatre. Most of us have seen the movie before but didn't mind. Following this, we had the manager lay out the ground rules (again) and met our team leaders, who are Emily and Jeramy. Our team is called Von Tiesenhausen.
As for the activity tracks, we have 9 in Mission Specialists and 9 in Pilot Tracks. We went and got our logbooks and saw some training simulators. Then we were taught about the anatomy of the space shuttle, and later we went out and fired a rocket motor and blew some stuff up, things like hydrogen balloons. We went into their real space shuttle simulator, shown around the flight deck, housing and laboratory.
At dinner there were hamburgers, corn, beans, brownies and still lots of soft drink (or soda). Apples and bananas are available for every meal.
After dinner we were briefed about some of the activities we were going to be doing in the week. We will be designing and launching our own rockets that will fly an ‘Eggstronaut’ into ‘Space’, told a little more about the Mission Tracks, and more about the specific jobs and roles that we will be doing in the four 1 hour missions and the one 6 hour mission.
We also got our pre- loved jump suits (looked like real astronauts!) and our shiny new space camp T-shirts. We also played hide and seek in the museum; which was a lot of fun.
We got back to the dorms by 10 and had lights out at 10:30pm-another long and eventful day.
By Alex G and Adam.
