Space Camp - Day 4 - The Calm Before the Storm

So, Day 4. Yesterday it was hard to believe that camp was half over. Today it's even harder to believe that it's almost all over. Tomorrow's the biggest day of camp. We do our EDM (Extended Duration Mission), what all of our shorter missions have been leading up to. As I mentioned yesterday, if all goes well, I will be doing a scuba EVA. And that will be very, very cool. Apparently that takes about 60-90 minutes total, the remainder of the time (EDM is six hours long) I'll be in mission control. I'll be filling the ACO role again. And there's still not a whole lot to do. That actually suits me just fine as I'll be able to help focus in on the anomalies that will inevitably come. But, enough about tomorrow. Let's talk about today.

If yesterday was about family and pushing limits, today was about resting up for what will come tomorrow, although we wouldn't have guessed that by looking at the schedule. We started the day with Charlie mission. For this, I was the station scientist. My job was to assist the station commander (Jeremy, we've been working together a lot this week) with various procedures (retracting the solar arrays and turning on the batteries when we arrived (since we were entering the night side of the earth, etc) and then do some experiments. Due to various anomalies (including one for which the prodcedure for fixing it was incorrect in the book that our mission scientist (the mission controler who is responsible for station) had was incorrect, we only had time for one experiment. So, we made a super ball. That was pretty cool. Although we didn't have a lot of time to play with it, as we had procedures to complete and the previously mentioned anomalies. Some might wonder why we had to rely on the mission scientist's checklist to fix our problems. The reason is that we, in the station, don't have the emergency procedures checklists. This is also the case for the orbiter. All of the books and, therefore, all of the fixes have to come from mission control. While this is not exactly the case in real life, it's part of the suspension of disbelief that we opperate under here at camp. The mission went well, as far as I know. Being in station, we were a bit isolated from everything going on in the orbiter and the rest of mission control. As we were told in training, for us, it was just another regular day in space. So, at least for the one hour missions, things are a little more relaxed in station.

After Charlie mission, we went right into Delta mission training. I was back in mission control, this time filling the propulsion officer (PROP) position. Prop monitors anything and everything to do with propulsion of the orbiter. If it can make something blow up, that's Prop's job. I've used the line, "I don't want to blow up" a lot this week (extra points if you know that's from Serenity...and it was in the trailer. Apparently, I'm the only Browncoat on my team, cause no one else has commented on it. But, no worries.) Today, I got to be more in charge of making sure that didn't happen, which was kinda cool. Mission training was pretty calm, as we'd all been in mission control before and only our positions had changed.

We had a bit of free time after training, so some of us wandered around Rocket Park a bit, went on Space Shot (like the Superman Tower of Power ride at Six Flags), tossed a frisbee around a bit on the mock-up of the lunar surface (that was pretty cool, although my disc now is a few micrograms lighter, as it got scratched up a few times) and then went to climb the "Martian wall" before our "history highlights" (time in the museum) as a team. Climbing the wall was fun. And, as a result of our time at the pamper pole yesterday, I was more bold in attempting to reach the upper parts of the section of the wall I was climbing (didn't make it, but I gave it a try) and it was fun and gave me a bit of exercise (no running this morning. I wanted to give my legs a break and recover from yesterday a little bit). Then it was time for lunch, but not before we filled the "Martian Explorer" simulator ride (very similiar to Star Tours or other motion based simulator type rides, although a little cheesier).

After lunch, we had our first guest lecturer of the day. This was a 90 minute talk by Ed Buckbee. He's the director of the Space and Rocket center, worked as a PAO (Public Affairs Officer) in the early days of the US Space Program and worked closely with Werner von Braun to develop Space Camp. Mr. Buckbee gave a great lecture about some of the history of the space program, more from the human side. He talked a lot about the astronauts and some of the contributions that the city of Huntsville has made to the space program (mostly, the rockets were designed, built and tested here). We also received signed books that Mr. Buckbee wrote with Wally Schirra, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts and a moon walker.

After a bit of a break, we headed off for our Delta Mission. I have to admit, I was a little bored. The mission went fairly smoothly. Everyone was familiar with their positions and we kept on the timeline well. We had very few anomalies. I got to the point where I jumped to the ready when I overhead the mission scientist call out a station anomaly. Orbiter anomalies require three people in mission control to agree on the solution before the flight director gives the okay to proceed. Station anomalies are solved by the mission scientist and the team on the station pretty much alone (they can ask for help if they need to, but rarely do). By the end, we were all mostly joking around. So, it was fun, but not terribly exciting.

After Delta Mission was done, we decided on our positions for the EDM. There was little debate over who would go where amongst the mission specialists. Lucy (my backup for the scuba EVA) and I are required to take the positions of ACO and EVA respectively. About half of the remaining six team members didn't have a lot of preference where they would go. Apparently the pilots had a bit more of a discussion. But, in the end, I don't think they even had to resort to rock, paper, scissors to figure out where everyone would end up.

With our EDM positions determined we headed up to our main classroom to meet with the museum currator and archivist. I don't remember her name, but she was a wonderful woman who takes great pride in her job of not only leading the effort to gather artifacts and preserve what the museum has, but also in achiving various pictures, papers and anything else that's around. Her job is very hands on and she had some great stories about various things. Mostly she talked about the Saturn V conservation effort (the museum has a Saturn V test vehicle. It's the real thing, but it was built to be tested rather than to actually be flown. There are, I think, three or four actual Saturn V rockets still remaining. Johnson Space Center in Houston has one. There's one at Kennedy Space Center. The Space and Rocket Centere here has one. And I think there may be another...somewhere...Smithsonian maybe?). These amazing machines were never meant to last 30+ years, especially not sitting outside in the elements. But they have. And some people believe it's important to preserve them for future generations to see. Additionally, since the new space ventures (which will lead up to the US returning to the moon and hopefully going to Mars for the first time) are using many of the same basic technologies as were used on the Apollo missions (that's the missions where we went to the moon), various engineers from both NASA and various contractors have had questions about the Apollo mission hardware and have come to the Space and Rocket Center asking for questions and to inspect various parts of the Saturn V (among other artifacts). That was a neat lecture.

Next it was EDM training. Again, for mission control, there wasn't a lot of additional information to take in. For our EDM, after about the first two hours, the orbiter will dock with the station and everyone will hang out in station for about 90 minutes. During that time, mission control will become ISS control (we even get to move to a different room). I believe this may be when I get to do my EVA (don't trifle me with the facts that I'm in mission control and then will be doing my EVA in space. Just go with it. :) ). After about 90 minutes, the orbiter will undock from the station and will return to Earth. But, the interesting catch is that the orbiter will be operating on a timeline that mission control will generate while everyone is hanging out in station. I don't think it will be a particularly difficult task. I started working on it a little bit before Casey (our night counselor who did our training and who may be helping out run mission control tomorrow) took it away from me, cause that's something we're supposed to do tomorrow. We will also be presented with "thinking anomalies". Up to this point, all of our anomalies have been "buzzer anomalies". Buzzer anomalies are lights that light up (there's not actually a buzzer in the sims here, which is kinda a bummer). And each anomaly can be resolved by finding the procedure in the book (which isn't always as obvious as it sounds) and following the procedure (which hopefully, but not always, is correct). We've all gotten pretty good at solving buzzer anomalies. And, while there will, most likely be some that happen tomorrow, most of our anomalies won't have such easy solutions. We'll have to think more about the various orbiter systems and what might be causing the issues. Some of these may be generated based on things we do on the orbiter or station (like forgetting to put a checklist book away might cause it to float off and cause problems down the line. Cause you can't just leave things laying around in space. Without gravity, things don't just lay where you put them.) There will almost certainly be medical anomalies (each position has various medical issues. As ACO, I have low blood pressure, but no allergies. Dennis, who is playing INCO in mission control (I forget what the acronym stands for at the moment. Communications Officer is the last two words.) will be allergic to chocolate and hypoglycemic. So, no chocolate chip cookies at lunch for him. And there will be various other things going on. I think our team has a good chance of doing well at solving these anomalies. We have a number of return trainees and at least a couple of us are in mission control, so that should help. We also continue to work well as a team. So I don't anticipate there being any problems we can't solve. It may take up a while. But, overall, I think things will go well.

EDM training was followed by a quick dinner and then a chance to build model rockets. While I've always been on teams that have built rockets before, we've always built them as a team and I haven't done a lot of the work (there's always been at least one model rocket buff on the team who has some neat ideas for making something that's cool. So we go with that.) This time, we all got our own rocket kits (two a piece) and were told to do what we wanted. About half the team decided just to build the basic rocket. And that's what I did. My yellow and black (closest I could get to Georgia Tech colors) two stage rocket is currently sitting, drying in our team classroom. If the weather holds, we should get to launch them on Friday.

Our final activity of the evening (other than returning to finish our rockets) was RTLS. This is Return to Launch Site. Since we've been training in "Houston" all week, we had to head to Kennedy Space Center for our launch. So we headed over to Aviation Challenge to fly the sims again. There wasn't time for everyone to fly, so half the team flew and the other half rode backseat. I rode with Bruno who did a great job of flying. I even had him doing a few bits of flight test maneuver blocks as we headed for the Cape. He completed the landing on his first attempt and we were good to go.

All together, this was the most laid back day since Sunday (which was only a partial day). It was nice to have some "down time" (as down as it was) and some chances just to hang out as a team, especially before our big day tomorrow.

Some other things to note today.
Jeremy has been given the callsign "Cheater". During Delta Mission, Jeremy was in mission control as EVA (monitoring and calling out the procedures for the EVA going on in the orbiter). On all the previous missions, no team of mission specialists has been able to complete the full EVA procedure and replace both ailing antennas on the satelitte. Cori and Lucy were our mission specialists this mission and the counselor assisting them let them cut a few corners (start getting suited up a little earlier, etc). They also decided to change up who did all of the procedures Cori, who was on the Canada Arm, flipped all the switches. This actually makes a lot more sense, but it doesn't give the MS in the harness a whole lot to do but retrieve the antennas and float around (which would have been fine with me and Lucy was cool with it). So, Jeremy spent a reasonable portion of the mission calling them a couple of cheaters (I joined in as well, as I was sitting beside Jeremy in mission control. Although I couldn't hear their side of the conversation as I wasn't on their comm loop.). Lucy and Cori picked up on this and have started calling Jeremy "Cheater". He takes it well and a few of the other team members have picked up on it. I'm guessing the name won't stick after he gets home (Jeremy is married with three kids, so that probably wouldn't go over well) but it is kinda neat that we're close enough of a team to give each other nicknames.

Apparently, it's unusual for teams not to be excited about flying the sims at Aviation Challenge. We have a few people who enjoy them, but no one is really gung-ho about the whole ordeal.

Tomorrow's a bit later of a day. Breakfast (steak and eggs, the traditional astronaut pre-launch breakfast) isn't until 8am. But I'm hoping to get a good solid run in tomorrow morning. So it's bed time for me. Big day and I want to be well rested.