Day 9

Day 9

Today the people in room 219 woke up at 8.00am, it was great to sleep in without a 6:30 alarm going off by accident (caused by people forgetting to turn off their alarms). Once we were all up, we all got ready for the day ahead and went down to breakfast. We had pretty much the same  choices as we had yesterday.

 

After breakfast, we went and collected our rockets and put the eggs inside the rocket and made some final adjustments. Then we walked to the launch site and launched our rockets. All of the rockets went up straight and high with the parachutes jettisoning from the rockets at the right times and making a successful landing for the eggs to survive. After the launch of the rockets we noticed loads of parachutes from previous launched rockets sitting in the trees around us. I asked the person launching the rockets how many rockets had been launched in the area and she said around a million rockets had been launched.

 

The leader then took us to the Freefall and all but a few of us went on. We all had a great time; it was great because it gave us a sense of weightlessness at the top of the ride because there was a freefall after we reached the top. This made your stomach feel weird but the feelings of fun and excitement helped us overcome any negative sensations. We had many rides on the Freefall before we eventually  had to go. .

We then proceeded to practice our missions. This was our third and fourth rotations, with each team member having rehearsed all aspects of our shuttle mission up to the International Space Station and return.

After lunch we took the bus to the Pamper Pole. We all stood in a circle and told our names to the group and took a picture each. We then made our way to the pole and put our harnesses on in preparation. The harness once again were quite unconformable but we still put them on nice and tight and got a special seatbelt strapped around our arms to our chests. I was the first man to go up the pamper pole and when I got to the top the pole was wobbleing all over the place. It was very hard to stand but I still managed to do so and the started to try to turn around on the pole but was pulled off by one of the leaders.  Almost everyone in our group managed the daunting task of climbing the 15m high pole and to take a leap off the top. We had to place our trust in our team to lower us on a cable safely back to the ground.

Meanwhile the other team had their final 3 hour mission. Despite the challenges set (including on board fires, sick an injured personal, cargo bay doors sticking, etc.etc.) they managed to achieve all their goals.

 

After dinner we had a range of interesting activities including some astronomy presentations and talks on the history of space flights.

With lights-out in 2 minutes we will have to cut our blog short.  We are off to bed-hopefully to sleep till 8am.

By Aaron and Andrew