Space Camp - DAY THREE!

Tater tots, again? Oh boy, I am having major college deja vu! Our balloon launched beautifully. It was terrific to see it soaring gracefully into the hot, steamy Alabama sky. It was a great start to the day! We were off to our Mission aboard Discovery. The launch was perfect, the docking well timed. I climbed through the docking hatch and entered the Space Station to perform my experiments. To spite my constant checking of the time, I almost missed my ride back to Earth! The commander opened the hatch and bellowed my name and I crawled through just in the nick of time. After another southern lunch where I discovered that I do not like okra but quite enjoy banana pudding, it was a treat to meet Ed Buckbee, the first director of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center and author of The Real Space Cowboys. He shared stories of early space travel.  Then we learned a bit of what it is like to live and travel in space. I modeled the sleeping bag astronauts wear that is velcroed to the wall so they can sleep. We learned that coke floats out of a cup and looks like bubbles in space. It separates into a fizzy half and a syrupy half so astronauts use a straw in the middle part to get a drink! Freeze dried food does not look at all appealing and using a toilet is quite an adventure. Think bulls eye! Tonight we left Space Camp for a home cooked meal at the homes of a local woman's

group - Ladies of Dumidi. I enjoyed a delicious dinner at the home of Gertrude and Max Nein.  Max , an original Rocketeer, was one of the engineers recruited by the US government from Germany after World War II. He worked on the Hubble Telescope. It was quite interesting to see some of Huntsville and to learn that the town really grew up around the NASA Marshall Space and Rocket Center.