We're All In This Together!

Well this will be the last blog post as I am starting to write this from Newark Airport in New York where we are waiting for our connecting flight to Heathrow.

The past few days have been some of the busiest of the trip and with the least amounts of sleep (getting out of bed at 6.15am during half term!)- but it's all good! So lets back a track a bit to...

Tuesday Morning! - This morning we visited Cocoa Beach High School - a real American High School which was far from the like of High School Musical (mainly). We spent the morning talking to three classes of International Baccalaureate students during their "Theory of Knowledge" lessons. This was fun as it was quite informal and we got to learn more about real life American culture.

From Cocoa Beach High we travelled to a Mall in Meritt Island where we did a bit of shopping around before we set off for dinner - where we ate at the Whistle Junction Cafe which was a buffet restaurant with all manner of meals and even better all manner of deserts.

During the evening, we visited an observatory which was great. Firstly, we went and sat in a theatre with comfy reclined seats.

The room was then plunged into darkness and the roof illuminated by a massive projector that projected an image of the night sky around the whole of the room. The presenter could do all wonder of things with the system such as highlighting certain stars, certain constellations or zooming in on a certain patch of sky.

After watching a little introduction he ran a little presentation video telling us all about the skies and the life of a star. After an hour in the iMax-esque experience, we went upstairs to the "real" observatory with a large (and expensive) telescope - the cost of the eye piece alone was into four digits. In here the observatory administrator would focus the telescope on a certain point of interest in the sky and we would all get a chance to look at it through the telescope - we then got back at the Wakulla at about 11ish (all tired of course).

Wednesday we were up bright and early (6.30am) to visit the ATX (or Astronaut Training Experience). This included a whole array of interesting activities including a tri-axis trainer and a 1/6 chair which tries to replicate gravity on the moon. We also made rockets using proper solid fuel engines but the best part of the day was a mockup of the Shuttle and Mission Control.

We were each chosen roles that we had to play either on the Shuttle or in Mission Control - it was a great experience and I really enjoyed it.

The big test, the test was approaching the launch of our rockets!!!

On route to launch we met with Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden who gave us some last minute tips!

Standing at launch contol the presure mounted... would our rockets work as planned? , Were our aerodynamics calculations correct, would the electrical firing mechanism operate as planned, had I calculated the effects of wind speed. Had I remembered all the details and checklists from the previous 8 days of training from NASA engineers and scientists correctly.

Air traffic control confirmed that we were clear to launch and the teaching staff were also on lookout duty just in case any small aircraft moved into our airspace.

The count down started 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…… firing button pressed and nothing happened! Oh no what had gone wrong?

NASA range safety officer was called, he disconnected the electrical firing mechanism instructed us not to move from our safety zone. After a few tense moments he identified the reason why the sold fuel boosters had not ignited. It was a wiring fault on the launch pad.

Count down could started again

air traffic control confirmed that air space was clear.

Checks remade count down started….

Then zero and my rocket lifted off the pad and went 300 metres into the air… following my planned trajectory. My thrust calculations worked!! As the sold fuel motor cut out gravity and newtons laws took over.

Mission Accomplished

The day at the ATX was really great and one of the best days - after the ATX we travelled to Orlando to the opening match of the NBA (Basketball) season - Orlando Magic vs. Atlanta Hawks. This was the first time I had been to a big sporting event and I have to say I enjoyed it to my surprise, we all had a good laugh at the game and enjoyed it a lot even though most of us didn't know the rules of Basketball. Making it back to our hotel just before midnight!

Thursday was another early start - we were off to Kennedy Space Centre for another look around the centre and then to "Cape Canaveral Airforce Station: for the Here and Now Tour" - parts of it were interesting but most of us were quite tired so the real experience wasn't felt by all. After the tour we went to WalMart for a quick shopping trip to buy food, sweets and most of us ended up buying more bags as we had too much stuff to bring home.

This was our last evening as a proper group and everybody was on a downer over dinner in a nice Italian restaurant - after the meal we had a number of speeches - the teachers giving a departing speech and then talking about us all individually and presenting us with some gifts which included a team badge - one for the Birmingham Group and one for the Cornwall group - our group was named Gemini by James. We then presented a little gift to the teachers of some postcards we had all got signed for them. After this we returned to Wakulla to pack and prepare for departure and start to say our goodbyes.

I am now writing this from home, Friday and Saturday consisted mainly of travel and about 5 hours in Newark airport where we shared photos, phone numbers and email address. When we all had to part with each other nobody wanted to but we did. Now, we are back in the grey West Midlands, have homework to do and back at school tomorrow :(.

So with this its goodbye to the trip, I suppose we say goodbye to our blogs as well - we still have the blogs and photos for memories though - and our bus’ song "We're all in this together".

Attention Class! Quick summary...

Well haven't blogged for quite a while now as we have been busy, busy, busy but we have been keeping notes!!
Well after our intense day of physics last week we went to a very nice Italian restaurant where our table sat with some "real" Americans and learnt all about America and the US way of life. We also discovered the loss of Alex's (a roommate's) pillow!! The thought was that the staff had cleaned it but it did turn up in the end under my bed – why the Hilton staff put it there deludes me.
The following day we spent another full day in Johnson Space Centre on "The Level 9 Tour" with VIP passes and all. To start, we had a little exclusive tour with a great guy called Anu, who teaches a Great Barr, and seems to know everything about space. The tour was a basic history of space travel around a yet to be opened part of the centre. The "Level 9" tour consisted of visiting a number of exclusive places – to start Sonny Carter Training Facility: Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (a giant swimming pool that is used for training in a artificial zero gravity environment). We next visited the Mission Control Centre, where we could see the end of a simulation of the docking of a Soyuz space station. The highlight of this day though, had to be visiting "Historic Mission Control" – this was the room where missions such as Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 were controlled from by Gene Kranz who we met yesterday – we got to walk around the room from behind the glass (much to the disgust of the other tourist). The last thing to do that day was a visit to "The World's Largest Bell Jar" which gets to incredibly high pressures and is used to test parts of various crafts. After this we went to a proper American mall for the first time and then to "The Cracker Barrel" which was a little shop/restaurant where we had a very nice meal (although it was a little too Air Conditioned).
Saturday was our last day in Houston, of course we started the day with iHop pancakes and then we spend the morning building rockets – our rocket should have worked had our team not stuck the bottom on upside down and had to do a last 2 minute rip and tape job to fix it. It still flew though! although the teachers did win – fix? – It was also one of the staff's, Geoff's birthday so we had a good sing of Happy Birthday and got him some NASA goodies! We then went to a Cowboy shop that not only sold $200,000 cowboy boots but also is frequented by George W Bush – $12 for some Cowboy slippers is a bargain! That night we went to eat at a Chinese Buffet restaurant as a parting view of Texas – it was also our last night with Anu, the teacher, much to everybody's disappointment as he was really inspirational.

We returned home to pack and then have a last night in the Hilton, which was a little surprising when we returned to see Witches, Wizards and mages in the Atrium for a Halloween party. But we returned to pack and sleep before an early morning.
The following morning we got up early to a goody bag of breakfast before a drive and a sing-a-long to the airport. We then boarded the plane to Orlando –a bit of commotion whilst the plane was reorganized as Row C had disappeared. I slept for most of the flight but we arrived 90 minutes later to a lovely, sunny Orlando. We spent an hour or so learning card games in the airport whilst we waited for the bus – but this was no ordinary bus we got two minibuses and a Hummer!! 0 but we shortly departed for Kennedy Space Centre where we were to pick up our "Commander Club" passes which mean if we return to the States in the next year that we can visit KSC for a year. We then checked into the Wakulla suites for our accommodation – and I get a very nice King Sized bed in our own little suite (although no iHop pancakes over here, we make our own pancakes!). After unpacking for a bit we went to a very nice restaurant five minutes from the suites next to a surf shop.
Today is Monday! And we have spent the whole day out at Kennedy Space Centre. That was after a nice walk down the beach at 7:15am to watch the sunrise and the tide going out. At Kennedy we had the "Up Close Tour" – this included a bus tour of the KSC grounds and we visited a number of buildings including the Vehicle Assembly Building – it is 160 meters tall, 218 meters long and 158 meters wide. We also watched a number of presentations on launches and the Apollo 13 mission. We then went to a small NASA museum which although small was really good because you actually got to get up close to the objects rather than from behind a plastic sheet – we even got James, the group leader, into a space suit (although it took little persuasion). After this we went straight for dinner at a buffet restaurant and that just about somes up our trip up to blogging now!
I'll try and update again soon!

Stu

HOWDY FROM TEXAS!

Well howdy from texas, its about 6 o'clock here and during your
period 7 today we were just sitting eating stacks of pancakes!!

Well, yesterday was mostly all travel with 11 hours on the plane.

Today was our first proper day - over our pancakes this morning we met two members of the thunderbirds (the US equivalent of the red arrows).

We spent the day of the Houston space centre learning all about the physics behind the going into space and going to Mars. We were interrupted though to meet "Mr Failure is not an option" who was behind the apollo 13 mission to the moon.

The trip has been great so far, the people are great, the science bits are interesting and the general Americaness is really exciting!

Anyway off for dinner :), The americans certainly like everything
larger over here, I couldn't finish dinner yesterday! Bye!

T Minus 2 Hours!

T minus 2 hours!

Well, it has come to T minus 2.

It seems not that long ago, on the 18th July that the CLC manager, James, beckoned me into his office - what had I done? Had I done something wrong?
I could see out the corner of my eye, Jules, Lee & Merryl the other CLC workers all staring at his office.

That was when he asked me if I wanted to go to NASA in America. - You're joking? I literally didn't know what to say (which is weird for me!), I seem to remember just stumbling all over my words.

Well here it is I just got in from school dumped my school bag and got the luggage ready.

Right...time to go! See y'all in two weeks!
Tarar!

Mission Possible

Mission Possible

Keep track of Stuart on his 11 day Space Adventure.

Birmingham North CLC working with the British National Space Centre and NASA have created a series of science masterclasses, its aim is ignite interest in space exploration. He will undergo Astronaut training including microgravity, experience the multiple–axis space training facility and command a Space Shuttle. Along the way he will learn to convert Physics theory into practice!

Does he have the right stuff to be Britain’s first Astronaut? NASA is looking for candidate astronauts for 2020 when mankind will returns to the moon, will Birmingham lead the way?

Space Centre Houston, Stuart standing by!