PDR

The trip to Houston was (mostly) a success!  It began with the 12 hour drive from Manhattan, KS to our hotel near the Johnson Space Center.   The fifteen passenger van actually made decent time, but our advisor, Dr. Lease, flew and beat us there.  He had the rooms all ready for us though, so after running through the presentation and hammering out some last minute details, we decided sleep would prepare us more for the day ahead.

Our presentation to NASA’s Flight Deck of the Future department was first thing in the morning.  We had imagined we would be showing our designs to Mary and Christie, our main NASA contacts, but to our surprise we had many more people in attendance, including some dialed in on a conference call.  Several different departments of NASA have stock in this program, and while the collaboration between different groups is informative and thorough, it definitely added to our nerves.

The presentation went fairly well.  We all spoke our different parts, and answered any questions the best we could.  We have taken home with us several notes of things to change and adjustments needed in our ideas, the redesigns of which we will post in here when they are more finalized, but generally the design review was a positive experience. 

From the left: Amy, Rachel, Chris, Adam, and Aaron

After the presentation and lunch, we went on our private tours of a few of the JSC facilities.  We started by touring a building that had the Mission Control Center used by the Apollo missions and the current MCCs used for both current (potential) launches and the International Space Center.

To the right we are sitting around the Flight Director's desk in the Apollo MCC.  From the left, Christie, Chris, Aaron, Adam, Dr. Lease, Tiffany (NASA intern), Rachel, Mary, and Amy. 

We then went over to see some of the retired shuttles and crawled around in several of the mockups (Orion too!)

To the left is Chris sitting in a shuttle cockpit! 

Next we saw the Habitat Demonstration Unit used in the Desert R.A.T.S (Research and Technologies Studies) experiments. Finally, we ended by viewing a rocket built to fly, but never actually went up.

When the tours were over, we met with Christie and her family for dinner at the Kemah boardwalk, The Flying Dutchmen restaurant.  The food was delicious, the weather was perfect, and the boardwalk was beautiful.

To the left Dr. Lease is shutting Rachel in a hurricane simulator, one of the many activities to participate in along the Kemah boardwalk.

All in all, we adored our trip to Houston, and we are working hard to redesign our reconfigurable habitat to suit all the suggestions and idea changes we received at the presentation.   New designs will be posted shortly!