(30/11/05) The first snow of winter hit the Wolverhampton area on Monday afternoon!

(21/11/05) Two tracks from a recent film-editing and digital music-making session with Ettingshall Primary School have been added to the City Learning Centre podcast.

To download individual tracks from the podcast, and for instructions on using podcast receiving software (e.g iTunes) to download the complete set of music, visit the podcast page on the CLC Blog.

On the 19th of September 2005 Archana, Hitesh, Samantha and I, all pupils at Highfields Science Specialist School set off on the trip of a life time to see the real NASA. We were going to meet world famous British and American, Astronauts and Cosmonauts, and see some of Florida’s and Houston’s best tourist and VIP attractions.  The trip started with a one night stay in London. Near Gatwick  airport where we met all the other ISSET winners from around the country.  The day after was the day in my opinion where the trip really started and where I really began to get excited.

It was an early start, we all had to wake up at 6:00am to catch our 10:30am flight which I found pretty hard but just about managed.  The flight to Houston was a 9 hour flight, landing at 7:30pm followed by an hour drive to the Wakulla Hotel where we would spend the next 4 nights.  That night I couldn’t sleep, a mixture of the humid weather and great excitement made it really hard to sleep.

In the morning we went for a short walk to the nearby beach where we could see the launching sight of the Apollo missions.  Later that day we visited the Apollo/Saturn V centre where I saw the historic Gemini and Apollo capsules and the amazing Saturn V rocket which size stunned me as the picture I’d earlier seen just didn’t depict it’s ‘humongous’ size.

Day four, I thought was the best day of all, it was the day we were all put to the test though some of the vigorous astronaut training programme. This involved a short briefing followed by a moon walk.  A contraption with springs attached to a harness was used to make us 6 times lighter, the same weight reduction as on the moon due to its weaker gravity.  Then we went on a three axis sphere called the tri axis trainer which is designed to give the same feelings as an out of control rocket or shuttle, this made some people fell sick, but most of us, including me found it no problem.  After all our training we were tested in a shuttle flight simulator which simulated takeoff, obit and landing, all were very difficult tasks.  Finally we went on a G Force simulator which gave the same amount of G force as a F14 Tomcat, this is about 4 to 5 G’s, 1 G means 2x your normal body weight so when it goes up to about 4/5 G’s it begins to hurt, but it was still the highlight of the day to me.

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A second set of photos from Lawrence is online now:

• http://www.wolverhamptonclc.co.uk/space/lawrenceUSApics2

Lawrence beneath the Saturn V rocket at Kennedy Space Center

Thanks again to Lawrence and his father for getting these to me.

Richard Anderson, Wolverhampton CLC 

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