Thursday, July 15, 2004

I am currently writing from Advanced Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama. For future reference, they hardly have any technology. Snec has more sophisticated technology. XP, more computers, etc. Alright. Lemme see what I can say while I'm here before I forget.
 
I would start back at Alpha Mission, but I more clearly remember the EDM (extended duration mission) since we did that this morning. By the way, NASA is the king of ... of... whatchamacallits. Beware of special space camp quotes. They indicated a fictional condition.
 
Okay, so the EDM is six hours long. (More like five and a half since we break for lunch.) Anyhow, my position was ISS (that's International Space Station for you non-NASA fans) commander for the first four hours and MS1 (mission specialist one) for the last two hours.
 
The first "half" (as in, the first four hours), we were in the shuttle (Enterprise for you who know). All eight of us: Enterprise commander and pilot, two mission specialists, station commander, station specialists, and a couple of flight engineers. At T+00:05:00 ish, the commander had a "heart attack" and collapsed on the control panels. The mission specialists got up out of their chairs, whereupon they "broke their arms". Along with one of the flight engineers, they thought they could safely stand at that time, as the MSes had done in the one hour misions. At a safe time of after T+00:08:30, we stood and took care of the "injured".
 
During this, the commander apparently "floated" down to below deck to get out of the pilot's way. Someone opened the unpressurized airlock. So, of course, he got "depressurization sickness".  He was "moaning with the benz," as he puts it. I didn't pay attention.
 
Sometime after he was cured and the MSes were out on their EVA (extravehicular activities), four of us crawled into SpaceHab. At that point, three people passed out, and I was "disoriented." (Oh, yes, the crawlway back to middeck definately looks like a Stargate.... Right...) Eventually, someone came and saved all of us, and we finally figured out that there was a crack in SpaceHab. So after searching with helmits on inside a simulator, we finally found this tiny crack. And what does the commander (who saved us) do? She puts her fingers right by the crack, where she "loses" all of them.
 
We all came extraordinarily close to "dying", but... Nobody did, actually.
 
Around then, we docked with the station and all got completely out of the orbiter, walked across a concrete floor, around some floating kids (figuratively) up a few stairs into the Liberty module of the ISS. All was pretty much going well. We had a few anamolies, including balloons marked "smoke" (whereupon we found the fire) and "pee" and "poo." One of the flight engineers stepped on "solid waste" and popped it. That was about the only anamoly I fixed.
 
Then we had a meteor shower.  Oh, fun. So after a few checklists and flipping several switches, (Please ignore my horrid grammar.) we evacuated into the Columbis module. All eight of us. Fun. Some confusion there with MOCR (aka. mission operations control room, aka mission control, aka Houston). And when we came back, we found a stuffed, bloody flight suit. We all kind of looked around like "Who did we forget?" Actually, I was wondering if SpaceGhost had killed the person we sent ahead to hit a button on the keypad.
 
For lunch, we were "beamed" to the cafeteria. The following are the gists of our (meaning my) conversations before and during the EDM:

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