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From the "prototype photos" department... I have uploaded a bunch of pics I
took on Friday. I was lucky enough to get a "behind the scenes" tour from a
friend of a coworker who is in X38 avionics development.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=6361
Highlights include
- The X38:, I got to touch the one that's been droptested and was only a few
yards from the one that will be Shuttle launched in early 2003 as an Assured
Crew Return Vehicle for ISS.
- The highbay simulator building. Here astronauts get to play with huge
foam/cloth mockups of the station components so they can put the ISS pieces
together for real up there
- Mission Control. I got to see the current mission control for ISS and the
shuttle but couldn't go in since a mission was in progress... I also got to
see (and sit at Chris Craft's console) the old Apollo era control center as
well as a payload ops room
- The moonrocks: We got a pretty detailed explanation of the process, saw
some rocks very very up close (although through 3 layers of glass and some
bag seals, and got a thorough understanding of their sorting process.. they
track every fragment and know where it came from. Makes our brick sorting
discussions seem pretty straightforward.
- The motion simulator facility: I got to sit in the shuttle landing
simulator as well as the payload bay operations simulator, although they
were not operational in the sense of moving, they did have images in the
viewscreens
Sorry, some of the pics are a bit blurry or mislighted, I was using
expendable batteries (forgot my recharger last week so had no charge left on
my normal AAs) and also was kind of rushed so I took as many different pics
as I could instead of reshooting ones that I knew didn't come out. I ALMOST
didn't make my flight back to GR (1) I was so rushed.
One thing that really struck me about JSC is how dingy everything is. Not a
lot of money is spent on building upkeep or new fancy equipment or even
paint. (cf. the X38 exterior building... it's just some random 30 year old
shed with a highbay door that has been reworked into a development shop) You
really get the sense that NASA is getting by with the very least it can
(although I heard that there still is a lot of red tape that burns off
significant cash).
PS, my Houston client's theme for their United Way drive was Building a
Better Houston so they were giving away lots of Lego basic bricks (AND candy
blox)
1 - which would have been the first time I ever missed a flight but it would
have been worth it!
FUT ot.fun
This tour is probably the same sort of informal tour anyone with a friend at
JSC could get, (that is, not as good as what a high government official can
get, they would get to see stuff we couldn't enter) but it was better than
what the GP gets and it floored me... I'm still drooling.
++Lar
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