Some time ago, I started keeping track of hits received to the main page here at Hab1.com.
In far less time than I might ever have expected, Hab1.com has received 10,000 hits to the homepage!
This is the second milestone in just a few days, as the HabForum very recently reached 5,000 posts!
I would like to thank everyone for visiting, and hope you come back often!
Long time visitors to Hab1.com may remember that in July 2001, I posted that the Enterprise sim and it’s MOCR would be receiving renovations that fall….And then everyone that came back from camp told me nothing had been done!
Well, I’ve received word that Enterprise flight deck has just been gutted and the MOCR has been relocated.
It would seem that they’re really revamping things on the Training Center Floor, what with this as well as the other happenings posted here earlier.
On another note, I’ve also heard some rumblings of some coming changes to the ASA program for 2003, but nothing specific as of yet.
You really should think about actually applying!
If you’ve been to Space Camp’s website recently, you may have seen a message stating there are currently 200 counselor positions available.
…I waited a few days to see if it would change to 20 or something, but it hasn’t, and I guess there are indeed 200 available positions just waiting to be filled.
So if you think you have what it takes, why not apply?!
This just in!
The Training Center Floor is currently undergoing some pretty major changes!
Check out the pictures…notice any changes?
(highlight below for the answer)
Well, Columbia simulator has been completely dismantled (hence it’s not in these pictures anymore) and the Atlantis simulator has been rotated. Why, you may ask…well, that indeed is a very good question!
This story from News.com.au today reports that a nine-year-old boy in China was injured when debris fell from a discarded rocket that had launched a satellite into space (he’ll be fine though).
…Sure makes one believe it was possible that a jackrabbit really was crushed when that oxygen tank from Skylab landed in Australia! Well, sorta, anyway…
As no one around here, myself included, was really sure the fate of Space Camp Florida after the foreclosure of the Astronaut Hall of Fame and Space Camp Florida, I thought I would post an article I came across that pretty much spells it out.
Space Camp Florida is dead.
Published yesterday in the Sun-Sentinel, this article cites a young girl’s efforts to save it (She wrote to Jeb and George Bush!) as well as citing that when the Astronaut Hall of Fame was purchased, “Space Camp Florida was not spared.”
*sigh*…And then there was one.
An article in the Washington Post last week indicated that the prospect of another Space Camp opening up were quite possible in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
The article cites a study currently underway to determine if a Space Camp there could be successful.
If approved, a Space Camp along with a new Space and Flight Center would be opened, and is estimated it could attract up to 90,000 visitors per year.
The article can be read online, and a website with a mockup of the proposed center can be found here.
Despite the recent troubles of Space Camp California and Space Camp Florida, officials in Maryland are confident their situation is quite different.
If it goes through, I truly hope so.
Meanwhile, it would appear as if a Space Camp in Korea has been approved! A story on that can be found here.
The USSRC’s SpaceDome IMAX Theater has just received an equipment upgrade to allow it to run films in excess of 2 hours. This is a large upgrade from the previous limit of 55 minutes.
This comes at a wonderful time, as IMAX has just mastered Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones onto 70mm IMAX film.
The USSRC will be showing Episode II 4 times daily beginning November 1st and running until January 2nd. Ticket prices are $10.00 for adults, $8.00 for children (an increase, if I am remembering their old prices correctly). Of course, the prices are half that if you get a membership.
A full list of theaters showing Episode II can be found here.
This press release was put out near the beginning of the year to highlight various things that would be going on through the coming 2002 year, such as the 20th Anniversary of Space Camp.
So I was at the library studying for an exam today when, not really wanting to study at that moment, I started perusing the bookshelves near me and, quite literally, at the very last bookshelf at the back of the room in the corner bottom rack, I found a book from 1976 titled, “Werner von Braun” by one Erik Bergaust.
I flipped through it a while and looked up “Alabama Space & Rocket Center” in the index and found a passage telling about the arrival of the Saturn V to the museum that I thought would be worthwhile to share here, as I know I myself have heard at least two somewhat different stories as to how it got and stayed in Huntsville.
When the [Space & Rocket] Center was conceived in the mid-sixties, Saturn rocket stages were scattered all over the United States. They had been used by a variety of contractors and other Apollo program participants for a number of tests and shop work. As the Center developed, von Braun put out the word to have the Saturn I and Saturn V stages returned to Huntsville for even more testing, and when the hardware arrived and all the other testing had been completed, von Braun made arrangements to have it assembled for “a final transportation test.” It involved hauling the stages the six miles from Marshall to the Space Center. Once they arrived there it was decided to store them for safekeeping in the event additional testing became necessary…
So it would seem this is how he got all the parts there. Quite resourceful indeed!
