NASA, rockets, and a few famous figures...

Right now, the participants of the program are in the final stretch of the Team Project. The last week has seen students working until 6am in the computer labs on: their 126 page reports, their 'flashy' executive summaries and their hour-long final presentation. Needless to say, after countless edits of our work, I am shattered. 

Tomorrow is the submission day for the team project and I am using the extra time I've got from this relatively, surprisingly early night (1.30am) to catch up on my blog.

Three saturdays ago (gosh, has it been that long?), the 14th, the participants on the program had the 'mammoth' tour of Kennedy Space Centre.

We kicked off the day with something pretty awesome. I may have mentioned that I was part of the 'Business Department' at the SSP, well there is also an engineering department. As part of this, the students involved got to design and build some model rockets, pretty cool huh? Wait until you hear this...they got to launch them from Pad 39A, the launch pad that launched most of the Apollo missions and plenty of Space Shuttle Missions. In fact, the student launches were the first launches from this pad since the Space Shuttle was retired! Needless to say, there was plenty of media coverage.

The rockets were really cool and they had to launch (maximum height of 1000 feet, set by the Air Force) and safely land using a parachute - the catch was they had an egg on board which had to return safely. Not all rockets worked perfectly, but they were all spectacular to watch.

NASA scientists helping the engineering department also built a model rocket. They designed a model rocket fashioned after the concept design of NASA's next launch vehicle, the SLS. Awkwardly, the rocket got 10feet off the ground before falling back to Earth... hopefully not a portent of the future.

The model SLS, before its fateful flight.

Onto the tour. We went to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). This is the building (essentially one giant room) where the Saturn V rockets for the Apollo program and the Space Shuttles were prepared for missions and stored. This building dwarfs cathedrals in enormity; the feeling of wonder inside of it is immense and I am sure it is a feeling that would not diminish with repeated exposure to the building.

Whilst walking around the cool facilities of the VAB, we bumped into an old friend...Space Shuttle Atlantis.

After the VAB, we headed to one of the Orbiter Processing Facilities. These are the buildings that serviced the Space Shuttle - fixing tiles, performing maintenance and just generally making sure the Shuttle is in a fit state to fly. Here, we got small, intimate tours around Space Shuttle Endeavour! (Yes, it even has a 'u' in it, despite being American! Endeavour is being fixed up before being shipped off to California to be displayed in a museum (Its a little sad to see one of Mankind's greatest accomplishments being decommissioned...)

One of the coolest things here was being given a talk about the tiles used on the outside of the Space Shuttle. We had a demonstration showing just how absorbent the tiles were; the demonstrator help the tile at a steep angle (70 or so degrees) and poured lots of water over it...not a dropped touched the ground (Surely there are some cool spin-off capabilities with this?). Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take in phones (my camera) at this point.

Our final stop was the Saturn V centre, home of the most powerful rocket ever built. The videos shown here are very touching, exploring the history of the Apollo missions in excellent fashion. The Saturn V is enormous when you see it laid down in front of you, 110.6metres...

Thats about it for now. I'm now in the final week of the SSP which is very hectic, but I'll be sure to post some more about the cool events we have coming up.