Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 8, 1993 TAG: 9311090021
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Wendi Gibson Richert newsfun writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That's where Kristy Greene and David Good, both pupils in Roanoke County, went recently. Well, sort of.
Both were selected to attend U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala. Space Camp is a weeklong program for fifth- and sixth-graders.
They learned about space flight and the U.S. space program, and they went on toursof the center and played on machines that simulate real spacecraft movements.
It sounds like a really swell vacation, huh?
Yeah, both will tell you it's a blast, but it's a lot of hard work, too.
Kristy, a sixth-grader at Hidden Valley Junior High School, and David, a fifth-grader at Cave Spring Elementary School, attended camp Oct. 17-22. Both also won all-expenses-paid scholarships awarded by Macmillan/McGraw-Hill publishing compnay. They received the scholarship because they make good grades and were recommended by their school principals.
When the two got to Alabama, they met all the other space campers and counselors. They learned where they would sleep, eat and study for the next five days. And they learned Space Camp would be no lazy kind of vacation.
For starters, they had to get up every day at 6 a.m. and report for P.T. That's physical training - you know, jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups. Hundreds of them.
Then it was off to breakfast. Kristy says the food in the Space Camp cafeteria was "adequate, you could say . . . I could get better home-cooked meals."
The rest of their days were spent divided into two teams of 12 where they studied the history of space travel and practiced for space missions. In these space missions - each team had three of them - they pretended to fly a space shuttle into space the same way astronauts do.
By the end of their day, the campers were ready for some free time, but they only got about 20 minutes of that before they had to go to bed at 10 p.m. and rise again the next morning at 6.
Wrapped up in all they learned at camp were several experiments they performed in and around their missions.
The campers made and launched their own small rockets. They learned about the space simulators and then rode on them, experiencing the same feelings that astronauts have when they fly in space. And, they got to play the parts of space commanders and astronauts in space and the flight directors and mission scientists of mission control (where all operations of a spacecraft are coordinated).
David's favorite mission was when he got to be the commander of the shuttle Columbia.
"You're like the top person and you make the last decision and the final decision on what you want to do if something goes wrong. You have to enter a lot of information, push a lot of buttons and throw a lot of switches to make the mission work." That meant David had to learn what all those buttons and switches did before he could be commander.
Kristy was a payload specialist on one of her missions. She did an experiment to determine the effects of weightlessness on the blood and other fluids that move through our bodies.
Both Kristy and David were public affairs officers on another of their missions. A public affairs officer, David said in the journal he wrote at camp, has to "explain to the public the words they don't understand and what's going on inside mission control and the orbiter."
Kristy says the best part of Space Camp for her was using the flight simulator.
"You don't get dizzy because you never spin the same way," she said. "But when you spun upside down, it felt like something stronger than gravity was pulling down on you."
David said his favorite part of Space Camp was learning about the history of space flight. "I didn't know as much as I thought I did."
Kristy agrees she didn't know as much as she thought, either. In fact, both know a lot more about space now than they did when they arrived at camp because they had to study and even take tests while there. At the end of camp, they went through a graduation ceremony.
Even so, the week was still "really fun," David says, and "spectacular," Kristy added. Both would love to go back.
Asked to sum up Space Camp for those who have never been, Kristy says: "Basically, it broadens your horizons about space and makes it really fun and education. Sometimes I didn't really think I was learning anything, but when you stop and think about it, the counselors do it so it's so fun. Some kids think anything fun can't be educational, but it can."
If you would like to attend U.S. Space Camp, call (800) 63-SPACE for an application.
by CNB