The students:
Felmore: a Space Camp veteran (he went last year), who amazed the audience
by answering all the really hard questions in the quiz game, ‘Space Camp
Jeopardy’.
Jimmy: who conquered his fears to dive to the bottom of the SCUBA tank.
Kate: our only girl, who turned 15 on the plane and then, after crossing
the International Date Line, turned 15 for a second time, the following
day.
Kristen: who can be relied upon to plan a two-hour dash around Disneyland
taking in all the best rides!
Nic: who whipped in and around the Disneyland crowd with his white
cane so fast that we had trouble keeping up with him.
Orhan: who had to get used to trailing along the right-hand side of
corridors and stairs so he didn’t bump into the Americans who were coming
the other way!
The Teachers (Chaperones)
Deb: who may have enjoyed herself even more than the kids!
Trish: who will start up a conversation with absolutely anyone, at
any time, and who kept us entertained with the stories she gathered.
Space Camp
SCI-VIS (Space Camp for Interested Visually Impaired Students) is now
in its tenth year. The 193 students came from the United States, Canada,
Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Israel and included fourteen from Australia. The
US Space and Rocket Centre offers different programs for different age
groups – US Space Camp, US Space Academy, Advanced Space Academy (which
our students participated in) and Aviation Challenge.
Our bedrooms – six to eight to a room – were scattered throughout ‘Habitat 1’ where the air-conditioning unit was the ‘Life Support System’ and the bathrooms were called ‘Waste Management’!
Meals in the cafeteria, were a help-yourself affair with polystyrene bowls of salad, crumbed chicken, potato gems and pizza, with alarmingly colourful cereal at breakfast time.
The chaperones’ job was to assist students where necessary and to encourage team building, independence and problem solving. The timetable was rigorous and the students moved from lectures to simulations to workshops so quickly that it was easy to lose them in the large complex. We were up before 7am and activities were programmed until late – we finished at 11.30pm one night! We went to a number of movies at the IMAX cinema at the complex and saw footage of life in space – astronauts exercising in their orbiter, repairing a satellite and chasing food that had floated off en route to their mouths! Lectures were interesting and included topics such as the history of spaceflight, physics, astronomy and rocketry.
All sorts of things that you don’t find at home such as people wearing flight suits and the silhouettes of rockets on the skyline became normal, very quickly. Even walking under a space shuttle with its three huge fuel tanks seemed quite commonplace after a few days!
The Space Museum has an incredible collection of space artefacts including a little Christmas tree, constructed by astronauts from objects from the inside of their orbiter, and the oxygen tank that fell to earth in Australia when Skylab dropped out of orbit.
Space Shot was an amazing motion-based simulator where we were blasted 50 metres in the air with 4 Gs of force, giving the sensation of lift-off followed by several seconds of weightlessness as your seat quickly drops back towards earth. It was completely astonishing!
The three one-hour practice missions gave the students a feel for the final mission, timetabled for the last day. Students read from scripts, provided in their preferred format – large print or braille – and checked data presented on computers with enlarging or speech output. Communication between three separate settings (Mission Control, Orbiter and Space Station) was via headsets. The students had an enormous task to undertake and teamwork was the name of the game!
Kristen wrote: ‘The harness that I went in was to simulate a mission specialist’s job of floating around in weightlessness. The tasks that I had to perform were to work with Duc (a student from Texas) who was the other mission specialist in the robotic arm. We had to repair a satellite. Duc had to remove the antenna and give it to me. I would then take it and float around the other side of the payload bay and replace it with a new one and then take it back to Duc who then put it back on the satellite. I also had to replace certain pieces from the satellite. Being in the harness felt like you were actually floating in space because you could manoeuvre around quite well in it. It was one of my favourite parts of the missions we did.’
By the final mission, the students were ready for any drama that was presented to them. Simulated equipment malfunctions and accidents were dealt with by the team in a thoughtful manner, experiments were carefully completed and repairs were successfully undertaken.
Kate wrote: ‘The missions were phenomenal. The extended mission was for six hours. I was the pilot for three hours and a flight operator for the rest. It opened our eyes to possibilities of what mankind can discover in the future. It was a long six hours but the best experience of my life.’
Nic, whose favourite times at Space Camp were missions, wrote: ‘These were great fun because I learned a heap about the space program and it brought the entire group closer together.’
Another activity was SCUBA diving, which was undertaken to give students a feeling approximating zero gravity. It was amazing that with minimal, though intensive instruction, the students could dive to the bottom of an 8-metre tank. Their tasks whilst under water included reconnecting pipes, moving objects from one place to another and firing off rockets – all reminiscent of the activities we had seen in a movie at the IMAX cinema.
Kate wrote of her SCUBA dive: ‘It was a mind opening experience, the feeling of freedom is hard to describe. Apart from the missions, it was the best activity. The feeling of weightlessness was fantastic to be able to control your body to go anywhere you wanted it to.’
Graduation was a grand event with speeches and presentations. Kate was awarded the prodigious ‘Right Stuff’ award, which was a great honour. One of the invited guests was NASA scientist, Homer Hickam, author of ‘Rocket Boys’, on which the recent movie, ‘October Sky’ was based.
Nik wrote: ‘I really enjoyed my time at Space Camp because I was around people who liked what I liked and who were similar to me. It was a great experience and I made lots of good friends who I am missing a lot. I also became more self-confident. Most of all it was really fun. I plan to go back next year.’
Back home
The eighteen-day trip was a fabulous opportunity for the students to
get to know themselves better – to ask for assistance when it was needed,
and find a way of politely declining help when it was not; to get to know
their learning style, their place in a team and their leadership abilities;
to problem-solve in real-life situations; and to grow in confidence as
a result of their decisions.
Report by Deb Lewis, Co-ordinator, Statewide Vision Resource Centre
Contact Details for further information:
Deb Lewis at deblewis@svrc.vic.edu.au
Space Camp at www.tsbvi.edu/spacehome.htm