Space Camp!

Sarah arranged for Robert to get into Space Camp. I thought it might be a nice drive.

It was not a bad drive, and I’ve done my part to warp Robert’s mind: we listened to all of Moon Over Morocco on the way down.

With a few stops, it turned into just about exactly 12 hours.

As we were there Saturday night, we got to check out the museum Sunday morning before registration and orientation.

That gave Robert a chance to try our several command modules. Mercury was kind of cool, but clearly a mock-up. The control panel was wooden.

Apollo was cooler: space for three and real switches to switch (some even activated lights — I warned him about the switch that turned on the red light).

There were rockets outside to look at; the first full scale space shuttle mockup (used to figure out how to move it around).

And a really impressive Saturn V inside, suspended sideways overhead. It takes a while to walk from one end to the other.

After a surprisingly good lunch in the Mars Cafe, we joined the rest of the trainees: found the assigned dorm room and scored an excellent bed, picked up the cool flight suit, found his book, took one more look at the museum displays.

Then joined in the orientation. The first part of the orientation was leading the parents away (many of the kids had flown in and so parents were were the minority). The parents were told it would all be fine, see you in a week.

What the trainees were told… we’ll have to wait and find out.