Space Camp

Sunday: I managed to get myself sick the night before leaving, so I was miserable when I arrived in Huntsville. I got on a bus full of kids and left for camp. The bus driver thought I was an educator and thought it was hilarious that I was an adult camper. I didin't care. I met my roomie immidiately upon arrival and they were fun girls, Lisa from London and Laurel from upstate NY. We went over to meet the rest of our team (which we later found out was called Marshall; I think we only called ourselves that maybe twice the entire time... we renamed ourselves STS-007) and the guys were amazing. We had engineers, flight mechanics, EMT's, retirees, and students in our group. We became fast friends and were ready to get into the amazing stuff that the camp had to offer.

Monday: Everyone wakes up sore and tired because the camp beds are incredibly uncomfortable and the rooms are blistering hot. Oh well. We started with Alpha Mission training and I was INCO/Mission Scientist. I could not remember what INCO stood for at all. I kept saying Intergallactic Communications Officer or Interstellar Communications Officer... I think I watch way too many movies. (BTW, it is actually Integrated Communications Officer) Anyway, I was so caught up with the INCO responsibilites that I wasn't paying attention to the guys in the Station and when I finally looked up, they were waving a sign in front of the camera that read "WERE SUFFOCATING!!!" Over the headset I yelled, "Oh Sh--!" and everyone in MOCR was totally laughing at me and Brandon in the station says "Uh Bonnie, we're on Vox!" (yeah, we've all seen Apollo 13 a few too many times also...)

Also on Monday we met with Ed Buckbee. He was AMAZING! He wrote the book "The Real Space Cowboys" with Wally Shirra. He had some of the best stories to tell us, then we had some time to just sit and chat with him about whatever we wanted. We asked him about the private sector getting involved in the space business and he thinks its a great idea. We also sat with Dr. Von Tiesenhausen. He was one of the german scientists that came over and is now 95 years old. His presentation was on astronomy and I really enjoyed it.

Monday night I went with the pilots down to the SCUBA tank for the underwater trainer. I had a very difficult time learning to breathe under water, but after I finally quit freaking out I got down to the bottom of the tank and had a fun time. We got some great pictures too.

Tuesday: We started with Bravo Mission, and I was the pilot. Holy crap there are a lot of switches. Shea and I were about halfway though the checklist when the computer launched us and he looks over at me and is like "oh well..." About half way through the mission, MOCR comes over the comm and asks us if we want to pause the mission so that we could watch Endeavour land. Heck yes! Very cool! We head into the cafeteria with about 200 kids. It was cool b/c everyone was cheering when it landed. After that we hurried back to the shuttle to finish the mission.

We also had a solar physics training that morning which was very informational. Then headed out to Area 51 to the "Pamper Pole" I was strapped into a harness and then climbed to the top of a 35 foot telephone pole and jumped off the top. Yes, I'm crazy.

After showering for the second time in a day, the pilots went over to AC where Tiller put us in the T-38 sims and let us play. It was miserable and hot in the room we were in, but I stayed in the cockpit long enough to take off, fly out, land and get out of the plane, sit in front of a fan for 10 minutes, then do it all again a couple of times.

Also, we went in the centrifuge. I was scared to do it at first because I thought I would get sick, but my team convinced me it wouldn't be that bad, so I went. I got all they way up to 3G's and I didn't get sick at all!

That night we had an ATO, meaning Abort to Otters (the bar at the Marriott next door) and sat around for hours with the counselors getting drunk. The counselors are hilarious.

Wednesday: We started with Charlie Mission and I was Flight/Capcom. By this time in the week we were all starting to get very silly. I will not repeat some of the stuff said between MOCR and shuttle, but we were in hysterics. After Charlie Mission we went directly into Delta training and I was Commander. I was to practice landing the shuttle. I was pretty ok at it, so after doing it 6 or 7 times I was done. We were asking Valerie if why it never crashed and she said the computer was programmed to land everytime (even on manual landings) so that the kids wouldn't be traumatized. When I found this out, I nose-dived it straight into the desert just to see what would happen. Apparently it goes into the dirt and then just kind-of bobs up and down. My team had been watching my somewhat good landings in MOCR, then all of a sudden the shuttle is tumbling over and over straight towards the dirt and they are scrambling to get the video recorder out and over all the laughter I can here Adam in the background yelling "YOUR ALL DEAD!!!" That was fun.

After that we went back to Area 51 for low ropes course. We had some activity where there was an "injured pilot" (a piece of plywood in a stretcher) that we had to get across a revine. It was fun, except I have no upper body strength, so it was pretty sad when I had to pull myself across. Then we had to go in another part of the course where we all had to climb across some boards without saying anything. Shea was sitting behind me and pulled out his phone and started playing the theme song to "Mission Impossible" and we were cracking up and couldn't focus. Yeah, we are all over 21...

That night we built rockets. Seriously it was the best craft time I've ever had. It's better than any girl scout craft I ever made. Then we went back to AC for RTLS.

Lastly, we all went to the IMAX to watch the late showing of the new Harry Potter movie. We were seriously pissed when they wouldn't let us bring pizza into the imax. Camp food is nasty.

Thursday: Phil (Pilot) and I (Commander) woke up early to practice the launch in the simulator. We practiced for about an hour and then met with the rest of our group for the traditional astronaut pre-flight breakfast of steak and eggs. Then we took a team picture and got in the shuttler for our EDM (Extended Duration Mission). Phil and I we so happy when we had the entire launch sequence perfect (well as close as you can get at space camp) and the shuttle cleared the tower. At T+00:02:00 I had a heart attack (fake) and fell over the C3 panel. The mission specialists tried to help me and they were thrown against the aft panels and down the stairs to mid-deck and broke their legs and were knocked unconsious (fake again). Phil was the only member of the crew that was consious on the shuttle and he had to make sure that the checklists were completed to get us into orbit and then figure out what to do with the me and the rest of the crew. Mission Control thought that there was something going on in the cabin since 3/4 of us were all of a sudden unconsious, but after about 25 minutes were able to revive all of us. The pilot gave me Nitroglycerin (a smartie) and I was fine. From there we started our mission and the MS went out to repair a satellite. Phil & I docked with the ISS and we all went over to work on some scientific experiments. About 10 minutes into the work on the station we had a power failure and conflicting messages between Mission Control on what to do and we ended up retracting our solar flare and our batteries froze and we lost all power. Then our life support systems started failing. As the commander I suggested that we evacuate the station to the shuttle, but we were not allowed to. We deployed the solar panels and let our batteries heat up. Then after about 30 minutes we found the switch for secondary power. After our mission at the ISS was completed, we went back to the shuttle to find out that all of our cabin lights were broken and fuel cell 2 was down. Myself and the rest of the crew were looking all over the shuttle for a lightswitch. While we were doing that I found switches on panel R12 for fuel cells, but Mission Control kept telling us that we didn't need those and to look on panel A11. After another half hour, mission control told us to flip the fuel cell purge heater on R12 and the frozen fuel cells began heating (which took a long time) and then the fuel cell started to power back up (which took even longer) and then we got power back. After fixing all of those problems, it was time to land (except the computer was on auto) and I made mission control let me land a second time so I could actually bring her in. I did ok, I landed in the grass a little. (our crew pretty much talked about our EDM for the remainder of camp!)

Thursday afternoon we met with Ilene Willhite, the curator for the museum at the USSRC. She showed us scans of Dr. Wehrner von Braun's original Mars Project papers and told us all kinds of amazing stories about artifacts in the museum and the Saturn V restoration project.

Then it was out to the launch pad to launch our rockets. I set mine up on the stand and it promptly fell off and hit the concrete. Yikes! But when it came time to launch, mine was the only one in our group that staged correctly and had the payload bay open and the parachute deploy. I was so excited. I was jumping up and down and yelling!

After launch, we had the Spacebowl Championship (Jeopardy). It was really funny to hear some of the wrong answers that our team gave. How about that Atlas Rocket Shea?? Sally Rice anyone?? But Shea and I both knew who Robert Goddard was and the Pilots ended up destroying the Mission Specialists. I have a Spacebowl Champ T-shirt now!

After a long week at camp with terrible food, our group went to the Outback for dinner. (being an adult at space camp has a lot of advantages...) Paul ended up buying everyone's dinner (Thanks Paul!) and we all had a great time!

Friday: Friday morning we started out at the MAT (Multi-Axis Trainer). This was the only time I got sick at camp. After about 30 seconds I was yelling "STOP!" and it took our counselor another 10 seconds before I was stopped. I was dizzy and queezy for the next 4 or 5 hours. That didn't keep me from trying the 1/6 chair though.

Finally we had graduation. Our team had it's own graduation with a few of the Space Camp managers. Thank goodness we were not with the kids! Paul won the "Right Stuff" award.

After graduation we all went to the museum and then out to the rocket park before everyone had to catch flights. (BTW, I was on a flight with engineers and project managers for Constillation and they told me that a test launch should be ready in 16 months!)