Friday, a.k.a Space Camp Day! We awoke to sunshine and chirping birds once again. Space Camp check-in wasn’t until 11:00, so we had plenty of time to enjoy the beautiful hiking trails of Monte Sano State Park after packing up the tent. We picked a nice three mile long loop and were pleasantly surprised by the lack of bugs. The scenery was nice, and I appreciated all the lovely bridges.
After our morning exercise, it was finally time to check in for Space Camp! We were assigned to Team Columbia this year, led by our super-cool crew trainer, Sarah. We claimed our bunks, carried our stuff inside, and then went to grab some lunch and meander around the rocket park before orientation.
Jumping on the Moon before Space Camp
Our astronaut speaker at orientation this year was Don Thomas. He described a lot of the biological changes that happen to your body in space, some of which I had never really thought about before. For example, on Earth, there is gravity, always pulling stuff downward. It pulls down on all the water in your body, so your body is designed to create an upward pressure to keep everything in balance. In space, you are in constant freefall, and therefore weightless. You do not feel the downward pull of gravity, but your body is programmed to provide an upward force. The result is that lots of fluids collect in the upper body. Your body then recognizes that there is excess water, so you basically pee a whole lot the first day or so. And so do your crewmates. You’d better be good friends because there’s only one toilet!
Long term weightlessness also means your bones don’t have to be as strong as when gravity is constantly pulling down on you. Why should your body put extra energy into building or maintaining bone density that it doesn’t need? Well, it doesn’t. That means calcium starts to leach out of your bones. Not a big deal until you consider what kidney stones are made of. Apparently, there is a higher-than-normal risk for kidney stones in outer space. Interesting. . . unless of course it’s happening to you, then it’s just miserable.
Next we took a short tour of the simulations area with the shuttle, the ISS, the Orion capsule, etc., and we took our team photo. We look awesome (of course).
Then we boarded the bus to Area 51. For real this time. We split our group in twain and my half went with Pockets. He explained the “rules” of the challenge to Sabash, who then explained them to us. There was a giant sandpit that represented “interplanetary space.” We had up to twelve boards that were our “spaceship,” and we had to get from one side (Mars) to the other (Earth). The rules were that we always had to be connected to each other and also touching the boards. We could choose how many boards we wanted to use (between one and twelve), but we couldn’t change our minds once we started. We stared at each other, all thinking that this seemed way too easy and that there must be a catch somewhere. Someone finally said so. We continued to stare at each other, wondering what we had missed. Someone finally made a decision that we agreed on. We would take enough boards to equal the number in our group plus two.
Strategizing with my Team
Sabash set the first board down. Pockets picked it up and flung it into interplanetary space. We looked confused. He reminded us that we have to always be touching our spaceship. We glared at him, but continued our work, thankful that we had chose n+2 as our magic number. When we got going fairly well, Pockets invoked “Space Ghost,” which means we aren’t allowed to talk. We pretty much thought that was dumb (after all, we were following the rules and doing well. . . no changing the rules in the middle of the game, Pockets!) and ignored him. He tried to give us a penalty when Nick talked by tying him and me together. It was an easy work-around, however. Then he decided that since we were talking anyway, he would allow us to talk, but only only if if we we talked talked like like this this. We glared at him again, but for some reason decided to play play along along. We were still doing well, because, you know, we’re awesome like that, so he decided the first and last people in the line should switch places. That just gave us one more chance to prove our awesomeness, so we did, and then we finally made it to the other side of the sandpit, spaceship and all! Then we made a run for the water cooler.
Successful Team at the Water Cooler
We had a bit of time left after our group and a couple of others all finished our respective challenges, so our crew trainers let us try the “Whale Watch” challenge, which basically involves balancing as many people as possible on a large teeter totter. The physicist in me enjoyed this. We got us all on and then tried to swap sides, two people at a time. Fun. Since dinner was next on our schedule, however, we didn’t complain when it was time to leave.
“Whale Watch” Challenge
After dinner came our Alpha Mission training. I got to be on the shuttle and on the ISS two years ago, but Mission Control remained a mystery. I was hoping to have the opportunity during this go-round, and my wish was granted! I got to be the Flight Dynamics Officer, better known as FDO (pronounced “Fido,” like the dog). My job was explained to me as, “You are in charge of everything on the shuttle that explodes on purpose.” Neat-o! Basically, this involved doing some calculations to figure out how long Atlantis should burn its engines in order to do a proper orbital adjustment. Not too bad. We also vaguely learned how to troubleshoot an anomaly during this training.
Alpha Mission Training
At this point, we were all getting pretty tired, but we still had model rockets to construct before bedtime so that they would be ready to launch in the morning. Last time my payload separated from the rocket body because the shock cord hadn’t been secured well. This time I used WAY too much glue. Just to be sure. Sarah guided us through the building process this time instead of just turning us loose with the instructions. This was much appreciated since I was too sleepy to decipher the instructions. When I was all finished, I put more glue on the shock cord.
Constructing Model Rockets
There was talk of staying up a bit longer to play games and get to know one another. Unfortunately, we could not find a good place to gather since kids were sleeping in Hab1 and all the tables had been packed up in the dining hall. Nobody really objected to just heading straight for the showers and going to bed. I was grateful to have gravity pulling on all the fluids in my body so that my sound sleep was not interrupted by midnight potty breaks!
-Pink Elephant
“Team Columbia Unites!” by K. Mogren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
“Moon Jump,” “Strategizing,” “Water Cooler,” “Whale Watch,” “Alpha Mission Training,” and “Rocket Construction” are courtesy of Lisa Mogren.
The Mogren Space Case 