The Monday Morning Epistle

Everyone met at the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof Monday morning, and although travel guides claim that you can reach anywhere in Europe by train, they often neglect to mention just how many trains it can take! Starting about 9 am, it took four different trains and a bus to transport 36 fifth graders and 8 adults to the small town of Libramont in Belgium. But despite occasional moments of panic-usually caused by someone wandering off in search of a bathroom or vending machines-we finally arrived at the Euro Space Camp about 5 pm in the evening. Once everyone had hastily dumped their luggage in the dormitory-style rooms, we gathered in front of a life-size replica of the space shuttle where the camp director, clad in an official-looking NASA jumpsuit, welcomed us in heavily French-accented English. He then divided us into three equal groups of a dozen kids each and handed out Space Camp T-shirts that matched the team colors: green, blue, or burgundy for the kids, and white for the adults. Each group was then further split into 2 teams of six, and although Jacob and his best buddy Ben were both in the Green group, they ended up on different teams. We then adjourned to the cafeteria for dinner, and afterwards reassembled in the auditorium for a lecture on the history and mechanics of the space shuttle. Since it was well past 9 pm by this time, several kids started to visibly nod off in their chairs, so the director cut his presentation short and handed out a sheet of NASA acronyms and terminology with a stern warning that we should have them memorized by the next day. End of day #1.

Even though nobody got to bed before 10 o'clock Monday night, the kids were so excited that several of them were up the next morning around 5 am. The adults tried to keep things quiet, but the walls in the dormitory were paper-thin-something said in one room could be clearly heard several rooms over-so by 6 am just about everyone was awake…whether they liked it or not. After an uninspiring breakfast of toast and orange juice, the kids split up into their teams, and we were off into space! The first activity for Jacob's team was an inner ear test: each person was strapped into a chair and rotated on a vertical axis (similar to spinning round and round on an office chair) for exactly 45 seconds. The subject would then try to focus on a distant object while the counselor timed how long it took for the dizziness to abate by examining their pupils. Jacob was the first to volunteer, and was right on the average with a time of 17 seconds. From there it was on to hand/eye coordination, as the kids struggled to complete a pencil & paper maze that could only be seen in a mirror. This obviously reversed up/down and left/right, and like most of the kids, I found it initially very confusing but had adapted to it by the end of the maze. (According to the counselor, dentists have little or no difficulty with this test…)

From there, we moved on to the shuttle simulator, which has got to be one of the coolest computer games I've ever tried. It includes a full-scale replica of the shuttle cockpit-complete with 2,100 working switches-that seats a crew of four and is mounted on hydraulic pistons. Up to six more participants sit at computer consoles in 'Mission Control' and interact with the shuttle crew using custom software that is an impressively fair rendition of the real shuttle control systems. Positions were awarded by a 'luck of the draw' lottery, and Jacob was initially crushed when he was assigned the Spacecraft Systems Officer slot; like every other kid in Mission Control, he wanted to sit in the cockpit. He was somewhat cheered up, though, when he was told that as the SSO he might have to abort the launch if one of his main warning indicators turned red. The simulated 'mission' consisted of each person reading their parts from a prepared script and entering computer commands at key points. It took a few minutes for the kids to realize that their consoles were more than just an exercise in button-pushing: when Jacob idly punched his 'Go' button a second time, he changed the spacecraft status to 'No Go' and brought the countdown to a screeching halt for a minute or so until he realized his error. Megan and Sydney ended up as Commander and Pilot in the actual cockpit, and got quite frazzled as they worked their way through page after page of checklists, trying to find this switch or that readout. Luckily, this was just a 'dry run', so it didn't matter that the nine minutes of the scripted countdown took us over an hour!

After lunch, Jacob was again the first to volunteer for the Manned Maneuvering Unit, where astronaut trainees were strapped into a chair on the end of the shuttle arm and used up/down and left/right joysticks to move from ground level up into the shuttle payload bay. A third switch also rotated the MMU forwards and backwards, and Jacob had his classmates in hysterics by making most of the return journey in a face-down/bottom-up position. According to the counselor, the goal of the mission was to read a 'special message' in the payload bay, but since it was written in French and Dutch, only one kid came back with the right answer.

A side note: Jacob's technique for volunteering to be first was to make sure that he was at the front of the group arriving at an activity, and then would start strapping on the safety equipment without waiting for instructions. By the time the counselor arrived, Jacob was usually ready to go and was the logical candidate to be the first test subject. Of course, the his teammates and I both realized out what Jacob was doing pretty quickly, so it didn't work for very long.

Next on the activity list was rocketry, where Jacob and Ben chose each other as a partner and started building a rocket together. The students were initially less than impressed by making a rocket out of paper and balsa wood, but when they were shown the 'real rocket engine' that would be embedded in the bottom-and told that the rockets would really fly-they suddenly got a whole lot more interested. Once the glue on everyone's rocket was drying, we returned to the main activity area for our team's first attempt at the 'Multi Access Chair'. This was a gruesome-looking 3-ringed device that allowed the victim to spin freely in every direction, and had already caused one chaperone to skip lunch so that he could lie down and recover. The MAC was by far the most popular activity, and shrieks and laughter from its rider could be heard echoing throughout the entire building for much of each day. After getting up before dawn and participating in roughly ten solid hours of activities, the kids still weren't tired so after dinner we turned them loose outside to horse around on the playground until bed time. The adults were unanimously exhausted, but summoned the strength to join the Space Camp counselors in their lounge for a boisterous informal gabfest that lasted until nearly midnight. End of day #2.

The first whispered shouts and stifled giggles started echoing through the hallways around 7 am Wednesday morning, thanks to our announcement the night before that any student heard before that hour would be joining "Mr. Lee" for a 5 mile run outside. After another breakfast of toast and orange juice, Jacob's team tried their hand at satellite assembly, and were issued white lab coats, disposable plastic shoe-booties, and hair nets. On one wall of the 'clean room' was a shelf of 'components'-wooden boxes ranging in size from a bar of soap to a shoebox, all with color-coded cable jacks on several sides-and on the other wall was a rack holding a generous supply of color-coded coaxial cables. The 'technicians' were paired up by function ('Bus', 'Payload', or 'Quality Control') and handed 3-ring binders filled with colorful wiring diagrams. After a brief explanation about the meaning of '±X / ±Y / ±Z axis', the two boys and four girls started enthusiastically stacking components in the full-sized satellite in the middle of the room and plugging cables into them. We ran out of time before the satellite was ready (only one of the six teams actually finished) but nobody cared because it was finally our turn for the 'moon walk'. This contraption suspended the trainee from a crane by a series of springs to simulate the 1/6 gravity experienced by astronauts on the moon. The goal was to pick up a plastic cup and small object from the floor, then set them down again about 15-20 feet away, with the object balanced on top of the upturned cup. Jacob completed his mission with relatively little effort-despite being warned repeatedly about jumping too high-and was one of several kids who voluntarily skipped his mid-morning snack to have another try at moon walking.

There was just enough time before lunch for a lecture on the physics of vacuum, but the audience was hungry and started losing interest pretty quickly. Since it was raining, after the lunch break it was back to the lecture hall-this time the topic was astronomy-so I shamelessly played hooky and took an hour-long nap instead. After wasting an hour in the shuttle simulator that was plagued with repeated power failures caused by the storm, our outdoor tour was canceled and the Green team was turned loose to design their own personal mission logo using a computer-based paint program. The other Green chaperone spent several minutes fussing at the counselor for "…not giving enough instruction on how to use the computer." before realizing that she was the only one in the room having difficulties: the dozen fifth graders were already having a great time drawing planets, stars, and arguing over which font to use for their names. Unfortunately, the heavy rain persisted for the remainder of the day, so everyone was stuck indoors. Fortunately, the camp director took pity on us and gave us permission to show a movie in the auditorium after dinner. Pirates of the Caribbean may not have been particularly relevant to Euro Space Camp, but the kids certainly enjoyed it. Once bed time arrived, we repeated our dire threats of 'running at dawn with Mr. Lee' and spent the next hour or so telling kids to be quiet and go to sleep. My favorite part of the entire week came when I overheard one room of girls threaten the room next door: "If you don't shut up, we're going to tell …and we're not gonna get one of the teachers…we're gonna get Mr. Lee!" End of day #3.

By Thursday, we had the routine down pretty well: up around 7 am for toast and orange juice at 8 o'clock, then back to the rooms to search through the piles of clothes on the floor for Space Camp T-shirts. Since this was our last day of activities, it promised to be a full and exciting day. Our team started with the Multi Access Chair, only this time riders had to use a marker to connect the dots on a piece of paper. The fact that this was less than 10 minutes after breakfast didn't seem to faze any of the kids, but neither I nor the other adult chaperone had the slightest interest in being flung around like a ping-pong ball in a blender. As if that wasn't enough, we left the MAC to go straight to the 'moon walk' for more bouncy fun. (I eventually figured out that the reason breakfast every day was nothing but toast was to keep 'hurling' to a minimum…) It was announced at lunchtime that the ISS rocket launch would commence punctually at 4:30 pm, which caused a brief panic among the Green group, as we hadn't finished our rockets yet. Immediately after lunch, we assembled in the crafts room where everyone huddled anxiously around the main table as Aster-the senior camp counselor-hot-glued fins on our rockets and handed out rocket engines that looked suspiciously like oversized fire crackers. Once our rockets were finally completed, we rushed back to the shuttle simulator for our 'real' mission…

The countdown went smoothly, and the initial practice run made a big difference as it only took us 30 minutes to go from T-0:09:00 to lift off. I had been discretely warned beforehand that every mission was handed at least one 'planned mishap' and ours occurred at T+0:01:30 when the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) failed to separate. Jacob (as the SSO) was the first to notice the bright red warning indicator blinking angrily on his monitor, and reacted by immediately hollering "Abort! Abort!" into his headset. This nearly sent our already-stressed cockpit crew over the edge, but calmer heads prevailed and after several minutes of fumbling through emergency checklists at breakneck speeds, the SRBs were released manually…somewhere over Eastern Europe. Everyone in Mission Control team let out an heartfelt cheer when the Mission Director announced that we were safely in orbit, and we had just enough time left to open the payload bay doors and deploy our satellite cargo before grabbing our jackets and heading outside for the rocket launch.

Unlike the day before, we were graced with fair skies for our rocket launch, and the entire ISS group milled around excitedly as the counselors set the rockets up on the launching pad and carefully wired them into the ignition system. Once the first batch of six rockets were ready, everyone was shooed back about 10 yards as the rockets were launched one at a time. As the kids enthusiastically counted down from 10, each rocket whooshed several hundred feet upwards with a satisfying amount of smoke and sound. Out of 18 rockets, we had a perfect 100% success rate on launches, but only about 50% on landings: several of the rockets either self-destructed mid-flight, or simply disappeared from sight. During dinner, George (one of the other male chaperones) led a volunteer search and rescue party into the woods surrounding the launch pad; they not only came back with Jacob and Ben's rocket, but nearly two dozen rockets from earlier in the week! After dinner it was time for awards, as each chaperone praised, congratulated, or roasted their complement of charges and the Camp Director presented an elegant certificate to each student. End of day #4.

Friday was another travel day, but required a bus and only three trains to return us to the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof. Mary had planned to meet us there but was about half an hour late, having locked herself out of the house while loading the van. (A big "Thank You" goes to Annette for quickly arranging an emergency visit by a locksmith…) But despite long train rides and last minute disasters, everyone arrived home safely by late afternoon, and the ISS 5^th Grade Space Camp Field Trip was logged into everyone's journal as Mission Accomplished!

KidBit: After watching their rocket leap skywards, Ben and Jacob both came running over to tell me about it. Ben arrived first and excitedly informed me "Mr. Lee! Mr. Lee! Our rocket blew up…it was soooo cool!!"

PotW: Aster helping Ben & Jacob insert the parachute and nosecone into their rocket. Their 5^th grade teacher-Kelly Chumrau-is inspecting someone else's handiwork to Ben's right.

Until next week…Tschüß!

,,,^..^,,,

16:38 09 Jan 06