I just came back yesterday from six days of the High School Aerospace Scholars program — also known as "HAS." While I'm not sure I can call it a blast, I went through a lot of introspection. I discovered that I'm quite the control freak and that I can't really take quick showers. Days at HAS were divided into three basic activities: tours, team time, and competition time.
We left the hotel by 7:45 and went through tours of NASA facilities here in Houston until noon. These tours were always the highlights of my week — we went to all three Mission Controls (Historic (famous for the Apollo missions), Space Shuttle, and Space Station), several laboratories, the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL), the enormous thermal vacuum chamber (The door was 40 ft. in diameter; the actual chamber was 192 ft. Apparently the door is so precisely engineered that a few of us without too much effort could have pushed it closed — but we weren't allowed to!), Rocket Park at Space Center, several training facilities (one of which an astronaut was using when we came by), and a room containing full-size mock-ups of new modules for the ISS.
Team time was a bit more intense. Our project was to plan a manned mission to Mars, further broken up into four categories: Administration, Getting There, Living There, and Working There (my team). My team in particular was in charge of creating ways to "work" on Mars and my subgroup had to create a new spacesuit that would be efficient on the Martian surface. We went into a high level of detail, even creating a brand new life-support system, and researching the efficiency of both O2 and liquid oxygen as air sources (pure O2 is unfortunately highly flammable and liquid oxygen is too cold — we had to resort to a mixture of various gases). The suit itself consisted of five layers. The outermost layer was a blend of Teflon and Kevlar — which we lovingly nicknamed "Teflar". Below that was a layer of Tyvek, an essential ingredient in HAZ-MAT suits. Since Mars is rather cold in comparison to normal Earth temperatures, we needed a heating layer, followed by a layer of Nomex — a fire-retardant and insulator used by firemen — to keep the skin protected against burns. The innermost layer was comprised of oxygen tubes that would keep the suit pressurized and ventilated.
For the most part, the people on my team were quite nifty. I ran into some trouble with one of them who not only redid the Powerpoint presentation I had prepared (so I had to waste thirty minutes fixing it — a long time, considering how tight our schedules were), but also refused to let me help him with his script. Now, I'm not Peggy Noonan or anything, but I've been on Debate for a year with quite a few speaker points in round, and I recently won $300 for a speech for Veterans of America. I think that makes me at least qualified to give a speech. Now that I think about it, I would have felt more comfortable if either myself or another guy on our team gave the speech, simply because you can't be that stubborn when giving a team presentation and barely covering the details of one-half of our research. I also found that only about half of the team could understand when I was using sarcasm, which tells me that I was maybe messing around too much.
The stress of the actual competitions was much less than the hectic four hours we had to spend with one another. All of our designs — for our rocket, rover, and lander — were highly successful and helped us win the competition. I usually found myself helping to design the craft while others took over actual construction. It was amazing how well we came together as one large team, but how much we argued in our smaller groups. I was also the "team artist" which meant that I spent most of my time trying to draw our crafts and logos for presentations (I was sad when the detailed rover I drew wasn't even used). Since the computers we were using only had Paint, I needed a new program for coloring. I tried to download a trial of Adobe Photoshop CS 3, but I would have had to wait an hour for the download to finalize. So I turned, quite happily, to GIMP, which is essentially Photoshop on a budget. I had all of the functionality I needed without the enormous memory consumption or file-size. I highly recommend it!
I really have to thank our mentor, Heather, and our co-op, John, for their absolute dedication to us. I've always underestimated the inherent kindness of people, but I don't think that I could after meeting the two of them that I could doubt people ever again. I'm not quite as extroverted as I think I am, I suppose, but I still love people. After HAS, I don't think I could join NASA for the sake of joining NASA, but I still adore space and the innovations of a century that made spaceflight possible. Upcoming missions, such as Constellation — a planned return to the moon and the first manned exploration of Mars, which we were "helping" to plan, will only test the pioneering spirit of our race. It is saddening that we will only ever know a minute portion of the universe, and of that, barely a decimal from actual human contact, but human life is simply a phase of evolution. Maybe there will be greater and more wonderful things after us, and then, our legacy to science will be fully appreciated.
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Rohit said:
Oh my god! You’ve been to NASA! That’s so cool :) I have had an interest in astronomy and space exploration ever since childhood :P …
Posted on August 2, 2007 5:59 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
I love space, but I’ve never been quite brave enough to want to be an astronaut — I think that’s the most disappointing discovery I made while at camp. Kinda funny, considering that my dad used to work for NASA, which means that I grew up surrounded by mission patches, space shuttle toys, NASA shirts, and the like.
Posted on August 2, 2007 10:43 AM; Permalink
Rohit said:
Wow! Your dad worked at NASA ?! That’s cool - suprising you were not influenced enough to actually become a astronaut.
Posted on August 8, 2007 6:10 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Well, it takes a lot of courage, dedication, and training to be an astronaut. I’d rather direct education spent on space to things that can help our world now, maybe change the necessity of going to space from “impending doom” to exploration again.
Posted on August 8, 2007 12:47 PM; Permalink