Some Space Operations

During our recent visit to the US Air Force Museum, Kenzie and Lukey were able to participate in a few space activities.  The Air Force has always been an integral part of the US Space Program and that is abundantly visible at the US Air Force Museum.  The museum has rockets used for launching space missions, the progression of space capsules, space suits, launch pads, simulators, as well as artifacts from different missions including artifacts collected from the moon, 

Kenzie and Lukey had an opportunity to get up close and personal with a real space suit and to step into one of these big, heavy suits.  They didn't get to actually wear the suit but they were able to step into the suit from behind.  

In the photo below, we have Mission Specialist Mackenzie and Mission Specialist Lukas on a tethered space walk.  They are captured floating in space while completing their mission to repair a solar array while at the ISS...  Earth is 254 miles beneath them, the ISS is right above them, and the Earth's moon is softly illuminated in the distance behind them...

In these photos below, they are using the MMU (manned maneuvering unit) in a simulation.  They have a big screen in front of them depicting a simulation of their space scene including the ISS, the space shuttle and the Hubble Telescope.  They need to successfully maneuver themselves from the space shuttle cargo bay to the Hubble Space Telescope using the small joystick controls mounted on the MMU within reach of their fingertips.  

In space, they would be wearing thick cumbersome gloves to keep them safe from radiation, the extreme cold and the extreme heat.  If the sun was shining on them in direct line of solar radiation from our sun's solar wind, the temperature would be around 250 degrees.  If they were in the dark behind Earth which would block the blazing warmth of direct sunshine as well as some of the solar radiation, the temperature would be around -250 degrees.  As one would expect, that heavy space suit makes doing everything difficult including maneuvering the MMU.  There really is no way to grasp these joysticks while wearing the spacesuit and gloves.  The joysticks would be carefully nudged in one direction or another by a single gloved fingertip.  

When I was an aerospace officer teaching aerospace to cadets, I would have the cadets compete in Mission Specialist teams in timed competitions that entailed accomplishing small tasks while wearing hockey gloves.  The hockey gloves provided about the same amount of dexterity as spacesuit gloves.  Your fine motor skills kind of go out the window and you need to rely on cumbersome large motor skills to accurately grasp things, turn things, and even pull yourself along in the vacuum of space.

Below we see Lukey and Kenzie in the MMU simulator attempting to complete a simple task and they aren't even wearing hockey gloves!

Lukey and Kenzie had an opportunity to try to land the Space Shuttle while we were at the US Air Force Museum.  A short video of their attempt is below.  

Neither of them succeeded in successfully landing the shuttle but Lukey did manage to get all the way to the long runway at Edwards Air Force Base.  He crashed on the runway but he almost had a successful landing.  Kenzie drifted too far off her glide path so her flight was terminated as a missed approach and hence a doomed mission.  The space shuttle has no engines when coming back to Earth so once you start on the glide slope, you are committed and must land.  You glide that behemoth in on a seemingly overly steep downward angle and at a speed far too fast for landing then slightly flare just before touchdown on the runway.  If you stray off your glide slope path as Kenzie did early in her flight (she kept drifting right in the video), it's game over, since you would have no way to get back into position to land.  

In hindsight, both Kenzie and Lukey could have used some advice on the unique flight dynamics of the space shuttle and how to operate the controls before they stepped into the simulator.  They jumped right in before I had a chance to offer any advice so I had assumed they knew what they were doing.  As the video shows, my assumption was wrong.  I should have pulled them aside and explained a bit about what they needed to do and how they should best go about accomplishing successful landings.

Here is a short video of their attempts at landing the space shuttle....

We had a really great time at the US Air Force Museum and I'll post more blog entries about the different things we did and saw there in more blog entries.  As I've written many times in the past, I could visit this huge museum weekly and never lose interest (I know this for sure...  I did this when I lived in Dayton!).  I know Sheila would enjoy it a couple of times a year too.  I know Lukey enjoyed this visit.  This is one of the places he had been excited about visiting and he was not let down at all.  I don't think Kenzie was too optimistic about visiting this museum, especially for a full day, but I think even she was pleasantly surprised by some of the activities, movies and displays so I think she left the museum feeling like it was enjoyable at times and not a waste of a full day.  When I post more photos of our visit, you'll see that Kenzie did indeed enjoy herself.