After the program

After the NASA program ended on Friday, I ate dinner and went to sleep. When I woke up Saturday, I had pretty much the whole day free. My flight didn't leave until 8:40PM on Saturday so I had pretty much a whole day with nothing to do. I decided to check out Harry Potter land, at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. I ate lunch at the three broomsticks cafe, and and looked at the candy store, gift shop and toy store at Harry Potter land. I think all of the merchandise is available online or at other gift shops. I bought a screaming yo-yo at Zonko's. After lunch, I went to see the rest of islands of adventure. I made it through most of the park, except for the dinosaur area and drove to the airport in the evening. Thanks to everyone who recommended it. I had a great time. After getting back home, we tried Mandy's recipe for non-alcoholic butterbeer--everyone loved it. It was delicious.

Graduation

On Friday at 5 PM the NASA Simulation Internship program officially ended. We still have to submit final paperwork on our projects by August 5th and by the end of August we should know who won the $2500 prize. Our final project included measuring the height of the kite using math, dropping an object from the kite using a release mechanism and timing the fall to calculate the height. Another day we used the cell phone to do kite bombing. Students can either mount the phone on the kite and look for the target or put the phone on the ground at the target, looking upward to see the kite. Then they try to hit the target. Students would use an app like Qik to send video from one phone to another, so one phone is on the ground looking for the kite, and another phone is watching until the kite comes over the target. We bought some kites and tried the activities to make sure it would actually work. I had lots of fun flying kites outside the hotel and building the release mechanism from double sided tape. I said in our final video that I wanted to try out our lesson first so we were giving teachers a good lesson plan and good advice about a lesson that actually works, that won't strain their budget, and will not take away classroom time they need. We had lots of other great ideas from dad, ourselves, and our mentor, which we listed as extension activities. We didn't want to overwhelm the teachers with a 2-week lesson plan, so we kept it to 2-4 days..

Back In Michigan

I flew to Michigan late last night. I have some more pictures which I didn't post yet, and I hope to have those done in the next day or two.

Space Plants

NASA has done lots of experiments about growing plants in space. It's pretty much the same thing you see at EPCOT. One person in our group made a joke about medical marijuana after we were out of the building. We also visited a chemistry area. One person developed an emulsified iron product that gets rid of PBCs. It is the most licensed NASA product of anything they have created and is used in most of the United States. This environmental engineer also created another chemical last year for environmental cleanup that is becoming very popular. They're also working on chemicals for mars missions.

The NASA workshop has been everything I hoped for. It's go go go all the time and we don't just sit around. This week we leave the hotel at 7:20 AM every day and sometimes don't get back from everything until 6 PM or so. Then we eat dinner. Then we work on lesson plans and blogs.

Final Presentation

Today we gave our final presentation. All the teachers had nice things to say, and so did the NASA people. Everyone liked the phone app, and a number of people wanted to download it. I was very nervous, but Mr. Lewis and I practiced a lot and that helped. We delivered the lesson plan in a distance learning studio, where it was recorded. I believe I will be receiving a copy soon. The lesson was also broadcoast live to the NASA people and other teachers who were watching.

Our group has really bonded together and been nice to each other. There is a $2500 prize for the 2 best lessons, and apparently things at the other NASA centers may have gotten a bit cutthroat and competitive. By contrast, our group has had a great time. We've gone on tons of fun tours all over NASA. For the last 3 nights, everyone has eaten dinner together and usually most people in the group eat breakfast together. Technically the program ended at 5 PM today, but everyone still wanted to have dinner together right after. It wasn't a weird feel good experience. It was just people being nice. I attribute this to the director, the NASA people who were so charming, smooth and hard-working, and a few people in our group who went out of their way to befriend everyone.

Today we also had a graduation ceremony. It was a lot better than a high school graduation. First, all the mentors received awards, and they earned it. They were all incredibly intelligent and had great people skills. These people were hand-picked from all the NASA engineers. Second, all the teachers received a plaque. Then they gave us some small gifts which were very cool. Les was inspired by my kite presentation, and handed out a great kite lesson plan to everyone on how to make kites you can walk around with inside a building. (they generate enough lift to fly just by walking). The education director spoke for not too long and served cake and pop to everyone. Everyone mingled and ate refreshments for a few minutes, shook hands and said goodbye. Lisa Valencia, the director, asked questions about my presentation, our family, and our family's trip to Disney World. These people geniunely want to help teachers. I am very happy that I came and sad to leave. I miss Elizabeth and the children though, so it will be nice to fly home tomorrow. Coming to NASA was definitely a once in a lifetime experience. I bought some gifts for immediate family so you may be getting something from NASA for your birthday.

Moon rocks and meteorites

I had really wanted to get a meteorite for my classroom. Today one of the AESP specialists announced that they were going to give the certification class to all of us. We watched a video and listened to a lot of rules, and now I can borrow (for up to 2 weeks) moon rocks and meteorites from NASA. When I want to get some, I apply online and then follow the directions.

Physics Lab

In the Physics lab, they are simulating mars environments. Dr. Ikea (spelling)? is working on ways to remove dust with electricity.

Rocket Self-destruct

When a rocket goes off course, these people blow it up so it doesn't hit cities like Orlando. They send a very high frequency signal that trips a specific self-destruct relay. A Delta rocket was blown up fairly recently. They switched over to satellite tracking a few years ago-- everything used to be ground-based radar. GPS data is cleaner. Lisa Valenica, one of the education specialists, worked in this group.

Early satellites

These are replicas of early satellites. I

believe the very first satellite was about the size of a basketball. There are about 6000 satellites floating around earth, 3000 of them being old ones that don't work anymore.

Lesson plans day

Today we spent a lot of the day working on our lesson plan. We did a small paper airplane activity and heard a presenter speak on water landing tests (they take a crane and drop a capsule into the ocean, to check out the forces, etc). NASA uses cameras to take data. It's similar to satellite images -- measuring things on a picture to get data.

My original plan was to eat at Subway every day. Several people convinced me this wasn't such a great idea, and we had lots of fun eating lots of different places. The first day, we ate at the Italian Courtyard, which had pretty good food and made me think of the Olive Garden. We tried to eat only at places that were recommended by the locals. One of the NASA engineers very kindly made a list for us of all the nice restaurants in the area. We ate a few times at the Kennedy Visitors Center cafeteria, which is a tourist cafeteria for people visiting the space center. The food was pricey and not as good as the other NASA cafeterias. The Operations and Control Building had a nice cafeteria, where we ate next to NASA engineers and workers. The food was good. We ate several times at Kelsey's Pizzeria, a very nice Italian restaurant that served a lot more than pizza and was pretty good. On July 19 we had a large group dinner at Grills Seafood. The food was great -- I had lobster. Everyone from the NASA group ate together. Out by the ocean, there was a small Tiki bar where some of the group went after dinner. After that we all talked for quite a while. It was pretty fun and we got to know members of our group a lot better. I ate some really good shrimp at Florida Seafood. I did eat at Subway a few times. I wanted to try Cuban food, so I checked out Roberto's. I discovered that Cuban food and Mexican food don't seem that different, even though a few people insist they are. The funniest part was when we asked the waitress what Cuban bread was, and she told us it was French bread. We laughed and laughed. I wanted to try some Sushi, so I ate at the Siam Orchid. I think my Sushi career is over. Our group (everyone except the California teachers) had a really fun group dinner at Crabs on the Beach. We had giant platters of crab and had a good time learning how to get crab meat out of a crab. It took us several hours and we talked for a long time. It was really fun. We had another group dinner at the hotel -- the food wasn't so great. There was a final group dinner at Millikens Reef, a good restaurant where I ate crab cakes. It was very tasty and I had fun talking to people in our group before leaving. The restaurant had a nice Polynesian show outside, with a fire dancer that was cool. Inside a man played piano music on a grand piano. It was fun.

Shuttle Landing Picture after Photoshopping

We saw the historic landing of the last space shuttle.

No trespassing, for real

Even most NASA employees can't enter about a third of this building, trespassers are shot.

More older photos

These are pictures taken with an Atlas rocket(right), and Alan Shepherd's rocket. This was a special tour that tourists have to pay extra for. It's a behind the scenes look at early rocket history, before the Apollo moon program.

Older photos

The Apollo 1 memorial and Kennedy Space Center at 4 AM.

NASA Shuttle Party

Here is a picture of the NASA Employee Shuttle Party that we attended a few days ago. There was free ice cream, hot dogs, chips, and drinks, and most importantly a chance to see the space shuttle up close and take pictures. (see previous post)

We meet at this building every day. It is in the corner of the visitors center complex. On the far left is a picture of rocket garden. These are real rockets that were used in the space program.

Wire

Here is a great picture taken by Mr. Lewis (all of my postings

today are his) of the work from the wire cutting machine. A wire runs electricity through it and burns through metal at the rate of one inch per hour. It can do intricate cuts.

Improved Butterfly Photo

Here is an improved butterfly photo from the water jet machine

(see previous post).

Alligator fence

This is the walkway that runs from the Education building to the cafeteria. The fence keeps out alligators. Just ahead is the visitors center complex. Eventually the Space Shuttle Atlantis will be displayed near here. NASA is building a structure for it.

One time, NASA needed a satellite to put in space, so they took and old one from the Smithsonian and flew it. It worked. Maybe they will do the same thing with the space shuttle.

My mentor

Here is a picture of my NASA engineer mentor, Mike Conroy. (green shirt) He is a manager who is responsible for using video game technology to do engineering simulations. They use Unity, Torque by garage games, DON (don.valador.com) and more. His personality is very fun and he is very interested in people.

Curiosity, the new Mars Rover

It was a bit hard to see. The white dome is the shell. The brown disk is the heat shield, which eventually comes off during landing.

It was hard to get a clear picture through all of the equipment, so here is a picture from a live security camera of the Mars Rover Curiosity.

Our first stop on today's tour was the Mars Rover building (that's not the real name). They are just finishing construction of the new Mars Rover. It's about as big as a small car. The engineer in charge talked with us for about 20 minutes. They're landing it an a 10 km landing area. The landing sequence is pretty complex, rocket stages taking off and all kinds of crazy stuff. I learned that NASA originally had an idea to send a rocket plane to Mars, but the idea was scrapped because they didn't realize that the propeller tips would become supersonic, sending shockwaves throughout the plane and breaking the propeller. Anyway, the engineer in charge(Peter) spent about 20 minutes explaining what they do to build the Mars Rover. The rover will fly to mars on a delta rocket, I believe. The Mars Rover is nuclear powered, using plutonium to generate heat, which is used to make electricity. The earlier rovers used solar panels which can be a problem sometimes. Once on a previous mars mission the panels were getting dirty and the rover was losing power. Eventually they knew the rover would be lost. Fortunately a small windstorm came along and blew the dust off. Anyway, this time the rover lands using nuclear power and then can drive 20 km. They are looking for signs of life. The rover can sample rocks directly. It can also sample them visually with spectrometry. It aims a laser at a rock and then watches what happens with a spectrometer. Our mentor jokingly told us that one of the reasons that a previous mars rover got stuck was that they didn't have any rednecks at NASA driving the rover to get it unstuck. Rednecks know how to get a truck unstuck in the dirt. Our mentor also had an idea of sending lots of small rovers to mars, instead of one big one. Then each rover would only need a parachute and an airbag instead of a complex landing series of steps. The people in charge didn't like his idea.

The commands from earth are delayed 8 minutes to 22 minutes because of the distance from earth to mars. It took 3 weeks to get one of the mars rovers moving, because they were afraid it would tip over as it was driving off the landing platform. The current plan is to send astronauts to mars (which would take 6 months), have them live there 1 and one half years, then have them come back. The reason is that mars and earth are sometimes on opposite sides of the sun. The closest they get is 6 months distance. The human body suffers serious, non reversible health problems after being in space for more than 6 months. The soviet astronaut who spent a year on the space station had to be carried when he returned to earth. For a while, he just laid in bed, struggling to maintain vitals. Eventually he was rehabilitated somewhat but never regained all his bone mass.

Orbiter Processing Facility

The space shuttle hangar has a special door for the tail. Here we are walking in through security. Everywhere we went Les checked in with his badge and someone checked off our names from a list they had set up previously. Someone went to a lot of work to set everything up.

Drawing by the Astronauts' Children

On STS mission 87 (I think) the children of the astronauts

made a picture for them.

Nose of Space Shuttle Endeavor

I could have stepped up the ladder and touched it. It was right there.

Space Shuttle Endeavor

It's hard to believe, but they allowed us to walk under space shuttle Endeavor. We weren't allowed to touch anything. We had to leave our cell phones on the bus, as well as any flame sources. I was amazed at being so close. The space shuttles are being prepared for museums.

Orbiter Processing Facility (space shuttle hangar)

This is where they work on the space shuttles after they land. There are 3 orbiter processing facilities. They actually let us walk under space shuttle Endeavor. The picture is the landing gear of space shuttle Endeavor. All of the machinery and scaffolding covers up the space shuttle -- it's hard to believe there's a space shuttle inside there. Originally Congress wouldn't approve the money for a "space shuttle hangar" so NASA resubmitted the proposal for an "orbiter processing facility." This time the proposal passed without any problems. That is how the buildings got their name.

Inside the VAB (vehicle assembly building)

Tribute to the Space Shuttle Program

Tribute in the Vehicle Assembly Building. As you know, this week ended the last shuttle flight, after 30 years.

Another space shuttle crawler

I believe it takes about 12 people to run the crawler, which delivers the shuttle to the launch pad. 2 engineers and about 10 technicians I think.

Low Bay of vehicle assembly building

It's hard to get a sense of the huge size of this building. It takes 45 minutes to open the doors.