Breakfast: For breakfast this day, my suite mate Michelle and I decided we wanted to get to the bus earlier than the required 7:30 am, so we caught the 7 am bus over the USSRC. I was impressed that every day, even when we were on the early bus, there were people who had caught an even earlier bus than we had and were already at breakfast when we go there.
Discovery Mission Training: After breakfast, we headed over to the simulator floor to find out our positions and train for this mission. I was very excited to learn that I was Flight Director for this mission. It meant that for our two missions, I got my top two position choices. It was definitely more than I could have hoped for! As we trained in the MOCR for this mission, it became apparent pretty quickly that this was going to be a pretty fun mission. We would soon find out how fun as our mission was later in the afternoon.
Tour of the Davidson Center: Next up was our tour of the Davidson Center and the Saturn V rocket. However, our team leader, Amy, led us through some play time first. The USSRC has a couple of rides, and we went on the G Force Accelerator which is a centrifuge that spins you around to experience 4 G’s. It was incredibly fun, especially because all of Team Columbus was doing it together at the same time. Here’s a video Cliff took from inside the G-Force Accelerator before we started.
We then went over the Space Shot. This is a ride that shoots you up 140 feet in the air in 2.5 seconds. You then free fall from the top and experience a split second of weightlessness. It was an awesome ride! I enjoyed it so much, I had to ride it twice!
After riding Space Shot, we headed over to the Davidson Center and took a tour of the NASA artifacts including the Saturn V rocket. I particularly enjoyed this as it now meant I had seen all three remaining Saturn V rockets (KSC, JSC, and USSRC).
Gift Shop: Next up was some time to spend in the gift shop. I must say, I perhaps had too much fun here. I got some awesome space/NASA pj’s, three t-shirts, and a leather name badge for my flight suit. I also picked up a couple of pins and a Teacher in Space patch. I even went back a couple of days later to grab a couple more things!
Lunch: Next was lunch. I believe we had tacos this day. I could be wrong. I stopped taking notes on what we ate for all of our meals!
Rocketry Workshop: After lunch we headed over to our rocketry workshop to build rockets! We just used a Space Camp themed Estes rocket kit to build our rocket, but it was fun all the same. Believe it or not, it was the first time I had built a proper rocket! We would launch our rockets the next day.
Aviation Challenge: After our rocketry workshop, we were ready to head over to the Aviation Challenge campus to do a couple of water activities. Unfortunately, a storm started to roll in, and we started to have doubts about whether or not we would actually be able to go. Then, we were under a severe thunderstorm warning, and it was really looking doubtful that this would happen. There was even talk of how our schedule might change to allow us to go the next day. We waited for close to an hour to head over, and finally, we were given the all clear to head over for our water activities. We were definitely excited! At Aviation Challenge, we completed two main activities: a simulated helicopter crash and rescue and a zip line into water to simulate a parachute descent into water. The zip line was definitely my favorite thing there. I had not gone on a zip line before, and this one was really smooth and not very fast.
Preparing to “crash”
Suite mates getting ready for helicopter crash simulation
Having a great time on the zip line
Dinner: After our fun time at Aviation Challenge, we headed back for a late dinner. This night the Chinese was on the menu. Unfortunately, since we were the last group there, they were all out of the entree by the time we went through the line. It didn’t really matter as there was plenty of rice, egg rolls, and salad. And they did bring in a fresh dish of spaghetti!
Discovery Mission: We ended our day once again in the Discovery Mission simulation. This time, it was the real thing! We were feeling really comfortable and bonded as a team by this point. We took our jobs seriously, but we also had a lot of fun. For instance, while our Space Station crew was experiencing some down time, we informed them of a solar flare danger. Our MOCR Science Officer told them they should get down in the tornado drill position. It was hysterical to watch them all get down and stay that way. A couple of minutes later, we let them know it was a false alarm. We had also planned in the great traditions of NASA wake-up calls to send some music to the orbiter even though no sleep time was scheduled. We definitely enjoyed watching our orbiter crew dance to “Like a Virgin”. Although we had a few stressful points in our mission, our commander landed Discovery perfectly, and we had a very successful final mission. This mission is probably the top highlight for me at Space Academy.
I really enjoyed my time as Flight Director!
Team Columbus after our successful Discovery mission!
Back to the dorms: That was it for the night at Space Camp, so we headed back to our dorms. However, that wasn’t the end of the fun for Team Columbus! Our mission patch design was due the following morning, so many of us got together to finish the design and complete our path description. I am really proud of my team and the amazing patch design that we created together. We are even planning to make it an actual patch so we can put it on our flight suits.
Team Columbus Patch Description
And finally, here are all my Day 3 photos!
We were at Kennedy Space Center last week during our vacation. I will never forget the sight of the Saturn V rocket as we came out of the presentation and into the exhibit hall. Wow! My daughter was quite bummed that we didn’t get to tour the “real” facilities. She wanted to see it all. I keep telling her to check into space camp in high school.
The Saturn V is very impressive! If you ever go back to KSC, you should check into some of the “behind the scenes” tours. You get to see more than the regular bus tours.
She definitely needs to check into space camp!