Week 2, part 2 (finally)

Okay, then. Here's my account of the second half of the JSC trip!

The next day started about five hours after we got home from the Outpost, and wow was I happy for a hotel coffeemaker. That's what kept me going and awake for the day's activities. But slowly, I'm adapting to an average six hours of sleep a night.

The day started with a welcome from General Howell, the Center Director of JSC. He's always a great speaker, really giving a good idea of the purpose and scope of Johnson. After him, Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield spoke to us in a very fancy conference A/V room in the Mission Control Center (MCC). After that was the Apollo era Mission Control tour with Milt Helfin and then the current Flight Control Rooms with our Academy alumna Flight Director Holly Ridings. Then some lunch in delicious Building 11.

After lunch Doug gave his awesome Intro to Astrobiology talk, and it was inspiring as always. Then the Shuttle Avionics Intergration Lab (SAIL) tour with very impressive amounts of cables, a presentation on mini AERcam and one on Robonaut.

Following dinner, we all headed back to the Apollo Mission Control with pillows to watch Apollo 13. The room does look just like in Apollo 13, to give you an idea. It's a very awesome experience.

After that some of us headed back to the Hilton to hang out in the pool for a bit of relaxation, which actually happened after all the other people left. Then we did a couple of laps and had some nice pool talking.

Friday started off with some Building 9 tours, followed by the Jake Garn Training Center simulators, but I skipped out on these on account of there being plenty of people to go with my RAs, and the fact that I'd seen those tours about eighty times each. More importantly, the French Consulate required that I make an in-person appearance in order to get my long-term visa for studying at International Space University this fall. So I took the mini-van and ran to downtown to do just that.

As I headed back to Clear Lake, having got a go-ahead from the lady behind the counter to mail in the rest of my billion documents proving everything that can be proved about me and my residency and my citizenship and my financial situation and other things, the Academy groups were moving along to the Sonny Carter Training Facilty. The SCTF houses the Neutral Bouyancy Lab (the giant spacewalk-training swimming pool as seen in Armageddon) and the Advanced Space Propulsion Lab, where Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz's VASIMR engine lives. I believe they also saw some EVA (extra-vehicular activity = spacewalk) suit equipment.

After that, the Academies broke up, and Goddard went to a BBQ place, while Glenn and Marshall went for the super-cheap Ci-Ci's Pizza buffet. After that, some very awesome contacts eventually helped the Marshall Academy get back onsite to JSC to tour the X-38 (ISS Crew Escape Vehicle) and see the Mars Drill that my buds in EX had been working on since at least 2002.

Following that, we headed back to Hobby and flew out through Dallas again. On one of the flights there was some very beautiful lightening out the window of the airplane.

We finally rolled in about 10:30 pm to Huntsville, and a semi-random guy that Omar knows very helpfully picked up a carload of RAs at the airport, who then returned with their cars to pick up the rest of us.

That weekend we did some ice skating and had a movie night at my place, then went and saw Batman Begins, which was quite enjoyable. Good week.