SpaceCamp Memories-Complete Missions

300 Pages·2012·33.02 MB·English

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"Space Camp Memories -- Reflections of Life" is a journal
collection depicting real-life events. Names, places,
and events are real and have not been fabricated.

"Space Camp Memories – The Complete Missions" is Copyright © 1995 - 2012 by
Richard Giovanni Russo (Author) and kept by Vortex/RGR Productions, Inc. (Publisher),
a subsidiary of Communicore Enterprises. All Rights Reserved, including the right to
reproduce this body of work or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Any
unauthorized reproduction of this material without the expressed written or otherwise
permission from the author and Vortex/RGR Productions, Inc., is strictly prohibited and
will be challenged to the full extent of the law.

The events pertaining in this collection is the intellectual property
of the author and is hereby Copyrighted. Unauthorized use of author
recanted events and situations within this work are prohibited by
registered marks. Failure in complying may result in penalty under law.

Editions:
1.0: September 1995
2.0: January 1996
3.0: August 1996
3.2: April 1997
4.0: June 16, 1999 (10th Anniversary Edition)
5.0: June 16, 2002 (Space Camp 20th Anniversary Edition)
6.0: June 21, 2012

Version: 6.0

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T H R O U G H T H E S E D O O R S

W A l K T H E F U T U R E

A S T R O N A U T S, S C I E N T I S T S,

E N G I N E E R S, A N D L E A D E R S

O F T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S.

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Space Camp Memories could not have been made possible
without a select few, those individuals who had the insight to provide
this wonderful experience for me. First, I wish to say thank you to those
corporations (below) who sponsor and help keep the Space
Camp/Space Academy programs funded and running. Without their
support, my dream may not have been realized. I would also like to
bow to the ingenuity and creativity of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center
for their programs and museum. A special mark must go to Werner
Von Braun (Rocket Scientist) and Edward O'Buckbee (Museum
Director) who saw the insight to create a Space Camp in the first place.
And, last but not least, I would like to thank my parents, Jennet and
Ralph Merriam, and my grandparents, Dick and Betty Walters, for not
only sending me to Space Camp once, but also allowing me to
experience my dream a second time. The experiences are with me for
the rest of my life. Thank you.

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SPACE CAMP MEMORIES: YOUTH PROGRAMS.

PROLOGUE
............................................................. 08

U.S. SPACE CAMP | Session 31 | June 11-16, 1989.

- Day Zero: ORIENTATION DAY
o Sunday | June 11, 1989 ................................ 11
o Vladimir Report: “Shuttle Launch Sequence”............. 21
- Day One: ASTRONAUT TRAINING DAY
o Monday | June 12, 1989 ................................ 24
o Vladimir Report: “Marshall Spaceflight Center”......... 39
- Day Two: MICROGRAVITY DAY
o Tuesday | June 13, 1989 ............................... 43
o Vladimir Report: “Space Shuttle Tile System”........... 56
- Day Three: SHUTTLE MISSION DAY
o Wednesday | June 14, 1989 ............................. 60
o Vladimir Report: “The Pathfinder”...................... 71
- Day Four: ROCKETRY DAY
o Thursday | June 15, 1989 .............................. 73
o Vladimir Report: “Missile Row”......................... 85
- Day Five: GRADUATION DAY
o Sunday | June 16, 1989 ................................ 87

MIDLOGUE
............................................................. 93

U.S. SPACE ACADEMY | Session 24 | June 16-21, 1991.

- Day Zero: ORIENTATION DAY
o Sunday | June 16, 1991 ................................ 96
- Day One: SHUTTLE OPERATIONS DAY
o Monday | June 17, 1991 ................................ 108
- Day Two: MISSION EXPERIMENTS DAY
o Tuesday | June 18, 1991 ............................... 118
- Day Three: TEAMWORK BUILDING DAY
o Wednesday | June 19, 1991 ............................. 131
- Day Four: SHUTTLE MISSION DAY
o Thursday | June 20, 1991 .............................. 141
- Day Five: GRAUDATION DAY
o Sunday | June 21, 1991 ................................ 154

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SPACE CAMP MEMORIES: ADULT ADVENTURES.

PROLOGUE: “THE LONG ROAD BACK”
............................................................. 162

ADULT SPACE ACADEMY | Session 52 | September 26-28, 2003.

- Day One: ARRIVAL DAY
o Friday | September 26, 2003 ........................... 169
- Day Two: MISSION DAY
o Saturday | September 27, 2003 ......................... 184
- Day Three: GRADUATION DAY
o Sunday | September 28, 2003............................ 196

MIDLOGUE
............................................................. 207

ALUMNI SPACE CAMP | Session 38 | June 14-17, 2007.

- Day One: TRANQUILITY BASE HERE
o Thursday | June 14, 2007 .............................. 209
- Day Two: AVIATION CHALLENGE
o Friday | June 15, 2007 ................................ 223
- Day Three: INFILITRATING AREA 51
o Saturday | June 16, 2007 .............................. 241
- Day Four: EARNING OUR WINGS
o Sunday | June 17, 2007 ................................ 257

SPACECAMP 30th ANNIVERSARY | June 14-16, 2012.

- Part One: HALL OF FAME
o Friday | June 15, 2007 ................................ 269
- Day Two: THE DREAM IS ALIVE
o Saturday | June 16, 2007 .............................. 283

EPILOGUE
............................................................. 295
MILESTONES
............................................................. 296
BIBLIOGRAPHY
............................................................. 299
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Imagine having a dream so different that it is hailed as “the first of its kind in the world.”

In 1950, when Dr. Werner von Braun arrived in Huntsville, the tiny Alabama town that
called itself the “Watercress Capital of the World,” it boasted a population of just 15,000
souls. Over fifty years later, it is forged forever in history as the place where America’s
space program began, where the rockets were developed that put the first U.S. satellite
into orbit, sent men to the moon, and power the Space Shuttle, all thanks to the ambitions
of Dr. von Braun and his team.

It was during his tenure as Director of Marshall Space Flight Center when Dr. von Braun
approached the Alabama Legislature with the idea of creating a museum jointly with the
US Army Missile Command and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
After the state’s lawmakers and citizens voted in 1968 to finance construction, the US
Army donated land on its Redstone Arsenal. Two years later, the U.S. Space & Rocket
Center was dedicated: “By the citizens of Alabama to those Americans who have made it
possible for man to walk on the moon and to explore the universe, and to the youth of
America who will use the technology of space for the benefit of mankind.”

But Huntsville is known for more than just being a Rocket City.

Von Braun also believed that young people had a lot to offer. He cultivated the idea to
expose young people to science and math, using the space program as the focal point of
such a course of study. If the country had baseball and football camps, why couldn’t
science have a camp to encourage interest in the space program? In the mid 1970s, he
began to work on the Space Camp idea with then US Space & Rocket Center Director Ed
O'Buckbee, who saw the idea through to fruition. In 1982, U.S. Space Camp opened its
doors to its first cadet group and hasn’t looked back since.

* * *

Space Camp Memories as a book is a product of my experiences at the US Space &
Rocket Center’s youth programs: Space Camp (for 4th, 5th and 6th graders) and Space
Academy Level I (for 7th, 8th and 9th graders). In the past, an attempt to write a memoirs
about my Space Camp experiences was discussed, but the project never seemed to
progress beyond a few scribbled notes in a steno pad and a loose plan. But I knew that I
would eventually have to organize those notes into some kind of final form or lose those
memories forever. The journey from there to here began in the summer of 1991, after
completing my Space Academy experience. On a blistering hot summer day, I decided to
make a recording – the “Dream Tape” – to not only stand as testimony to some of the
dreams I had before my first Space Camp experiences, but to define some of the events
that had just transpired.
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The recording was short – about 30 minutes or less – but invaluable in noting some of the
more pressing events that took place at Space Academy, Level I.

Three years later, in 1994, during the week of June 11 through June 21, of what you will
come to know as the “Space Camp/Academy Awareness Weeks”, I would again put my
voice to a recording for a tape called “Space Camp Memories”. This turned out to be a
rather bold step in this process as it would provide, for the very first time, the means for
me to discuss whatever I remembered about both programs, to dig deeper and provide a
more in-depth analysis of some of my most treasured memories of Space Camp and then
have it saved for posterity. Little did I know how instrumental both tapes would become
in the creation of the Space Camp Memories book.

But that isn’t what you’re going to read; not exactly. Let me explain.

Even with all the past work I had done, the dream of a “complete” “Memories” book was
still not solid. Through writing things out on paper, minute details I thought I had long
forgotten began to surface and that helped. I was astonished that these details were kept,
locked in the various passages of my brain, but there too time had reared its ugly head. It
was a relentless enemy and though I tried to keep the stories that unfolded from that
exercise in the order of their actual occurrence, much of what unfolded there was
woefully inadequate. But by the end of the summer of 1995 I was ready and the first
version of Space Camp Memories was released. Over the years since, up through 2002, a
number of updates have come to the text bringing with them more clarity in both pictorial
form and memory recollection. But that still wasn’t enough.

What I had written was disconnected from the experience, told well after the fact in
distant third person form. What I really wanted was to be able to re-live the experience –
from the jittery first day of orientation to the accomplishment and sadness of graduation –
placing me, and the reader, in the midst of the action; however, much like during the
gestation of the first edition, the redux project never seemed to progress beyond a few
outlines and a number of well intended notes. By then, though, I had returned to Space
Camp as an adult – twice – and thought of writing about those experiences instead. But if
I did, what would become of the original experiences? And how would I tie the two
together?

In the 10 years between the last version and this I’ve had time to hone a flurry of outlines,
to write scores of pages of notes, and mull over what I should and shouldn’t do with the
material at hand. Sadly, no matter what I did (or do), some of the memories I have of
Space Camp and Space Academy are lost completely. So what I have done here is
completely re-imagine the experiences as a series of entries in a journal, presented (with a
smidgen of artistic license) as if they had been written at the moment the experiences
were occurring. I have in effect placed myself (and you as the reader) in the midst of the
action so as to get a piece of it. An act I had originally intended all along. So I hope you
enjoy this new look into my Space Camp experiences, as much as I did crafting,
remembering and re-writing…

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U.S. Space Camp
Session 31
June 11 – 16, 1989

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