U.S. Space and Rocket Center Space Camp | Teen Ink

U.S. Space and Rocket Center Space Camp MAG

By Anonymous

     Huntsville, AL: To any future astronauts out there, let me say that it was not all fun and games at Space Camp. After leaving the tiny Huntsville airport, the week began with two hours of waiting in a hall so all campers on medication could turn in their pills as slowly as possible, leaving only an overzealous camper with a skateboard for entertainment.

Then came lunch, where I learned that the vegetarian rations consisted of frozen Uncrustables (solid peanut butter and jelly), occasional veggie burgers and salad. Although these meals were not the most appetizing, I heard many a horror story about how past campers had become vegetarians after eating mystery meat.

Soon I got to know our dorm. The older kids were assigned to Hab1, an interesting/ugly futuristic building that was overly air-conditioned and featured titles like “waste management” for bathrooms. In a tiny room, I and six other girls were to coexist peacefully for six days. I arrived too late to claim a coveted lower bunk and so I battled with a metal ladder to get to my top bunk, conveniently near the moldy ceiling. I kept thanking myself for bringing my own pillow.

Tired of hearing complaints? I’ll skip to the fun part - the space missions! We were issued flight suits and ordered to wear them during mock missions, which came after days of sitting through briefings on solar physiology and underwater space survival and such.

The best mission was six hours, where I literally suffered from heat exhaustion because I had to wear an orange spacesuit over my flight suit and not-so-literally because, among other medical anomalies we “suffered” from, I had heat exhaustion, decompression sickness, sudden periods of deafness, a broken arm and nearly died several times from a fire and air leak respectively in the orbiter and my own faulty piloting. Surprisingly, my teammates and I actually landed the orbiter in (mostly) one piece.

So did my once-in-a-lifetime experience at space camp prepare me for a career as an astroperson? Nah, I gave up that ambition. But it did teach me to value peanut butter and jelly in sandwich form more than I thought possible.


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This article has 4 comments.


WVBF said...
on Aug. 21 2013 at 11:36 am
The space mission are about the only good thing there. The food and habs are absolutely awful, basically like third world conditions. It can be fun, but be careful. A lot of it just depends on what is going on when you get there. The management has one good one (Matt Green) but the rest are not so great and unhelpful. (Red Bull is the hostile to customers and unhelpful sadly.) There are short programs you can go to that might be better value for the money. A lot of the activities are lame though.

Sitav GOLD said...
on Nov. 8 2009 at 9:11 am
Sitav GOLD, Cedar Grove, New Jersey
17 articles 1 photo 9 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I studied every thing but never topped.... But today the toppers of the best universities are my employees" --Bill Gates

LOL...THANK YOU!! I want to be an astrophysicist and was planning on space camp...not much of a camp person and now i never will be.=)

chelsey123 said...
on Jul. 11 2009 at 9:08 pm
i really like the space and rocket center i have only been there once on a field trip it was awesome. i want a job there for the summer like stuff to help out the little kids but i dont know how could anyone tell me how...



i would really appreciate it

thanx chelsey xoxo

xxxxx said...
on Jun. 29 2009 at 9:17 pm
i keep wanting to go back i loved it so much