Day 17 - Monday, July 25

Today was so much fun! I decided I'm letting myself be too lazy so I got up at 6:30 and went for a jog. I'm gonna be really sore tomorrow!

Our first lecture today was by Canadian Astronaut Bob Thirsk. He talked about preparing for an Extended Duration Mission (EDM) on board the International Space Station (ISS). Everything he said applies to our SSP time this summer. Here's a brief recap:

• In order to have a happy / productive crew, it is necessary that each person takes care of himself or herself.
  
• It feels better to be ahead of daily tasks than behind.
  
• If you're not having fun you're doing something wrong.
• Put stressful situations into perspective.
  
• You've got to figure out how to deal with separation from family
  
• Be flexible
• You can interpret everything positively or negatively
• Hang out with positive people
• Pace yourself - don't be a workaholic
• Ask for help when you need it
  
• Preserve your personal space (at least 30 min alone time per day)
• Set realistic goals so you don't burn out
• Your team includes the ground crew (I love you, Mitch!)
• Develop relationships early
• Discuss group expectations

The next lecture was about space propulsion and the final lecture for the day was about cost estimation, insurance and risk management.

After lunch half of the Human-Robotic Cooperation Team had the opportunity to visit Magna Steyr where they assemble Astin Martin Rapide and Mini Countryman! We saw the Mini part of the factory. So cool!! There are about 300 robots in the Mini assembly line and only 3 in Astin Martin. I really liked seeing the body assembly robots. Sparks flew everywhere from the spot welding. It was very dramatic! We also saw the Countryman post-paint. They are so colorful in bright blue, navy blue, white, black, silver, dark silver and brown. Each one is different and is custom ordered. We saw the finished cars rolling off the line. Ten percent of them go through the rain test before shipping. This field trip was to show us robots in action. The most exciting robot they had on the Mini line was the one that puts the wheels on the car. It can "see" the incoming wheel, assess its orientation, "see" the car on the line, match its speed, rotate the tire to the appropriate angle and put it on. Pretty sophisticated!
wikipedia page
company page

After our tour we came back for dinner and then watched 4 teams compete in the Rube Goldberg competition. A Rube Goldberg machine is basically an intentionally over-Engineered machine that performs a very simple task. For this competition, the students were given no money and no supplies. For example watch this.... Honda "Cog" video

Here is a picture of their creation. For more, see my Facebook page.

So that was today! Really fun! Nevertheless, I am counting the days until I can be home with Mitch. :-)

Week 2 Highlights

Time is just flying... I can barely keep up!

This week we had 3 classes every morning and workshops after lunch. Here were the classes from Tuesday through Friday:

• Management of Space Projects
• Cultural Rationales for Space Activities
• International Dimensions of Space Exploration
• Systems Engineering & Requirements
• Space Medicine
• Astronaut Selection and Training (Soyeon Yi)
• Space Futures
• Financial Issues / Techniques of Space Projects
• Space & Sustainability
• Spacecraft Configuration
• Satellite Imaging, Payloads, Sensors & Data
• Spaceship Earth
  

The "Spaceship Earth" lecture title reminds me of one of my favorite rides at Disney World in Florida:

We had a "Team Skills" workshop on Tuesday afternoon where we did some pretty neat team-building activities. The first one was that we had to individually draw a comic based on a short dialogue between two imaginary characters. Then we had to pick a partner and draw our representation of the dialogue together with both hands on the pencil. Pretty tricky! Then our whole team (40 people) went out into the lobby where there was a circle of chairs prepared. Each of us stood on a chair and we had to arrange ourselves in order according to first name. Then we had to re-arrange ourselves by birth date and month without talking. This was a really fun activity and helped me get to know some more names on the team.

The workshop on Wednesday was about report writing and presentation skills. We had to make an elevator pitch answering the question "what is your mission this summer." It was video-recorded so we could watch ourselves later. Then we had a grammar quiz. The native English speakers were each paired with 3 non-native English speakers to review actual content from previous SSP TP reports. Our last activity was to practice writing a timed essay. No biggie for me, but all these things will be challenging for non-native English speakers.

This week was the annual International Astronaut Panel. In the pic below (left to right) is the moderator, Nicole Stott (USA), Soyeon Yi (Korea), Jean-Jacques Favier (France), Chiaki Mukai (Japan), and Franz Viehbock (Austria).

On Thursday, July 21, the shuttle Atlantis made her final entry and landing. We stopped our third class that day about 5 minutes before the landing and watched NASA TV together on the big screen. It was a very special moment and I'm glad I was able to share it with other space fans. I'm sad to see the shuttle program end, but this step is necessary to move funding into developing our next human spacecraft.

The highlight of this week was Culture Night on Friday. Each culture night, 5-6 countries will present 15 minutes about their country. This week was Ireland, Turkey, South Africa, USA, and Austria. Team USA acted out 8 stereotypes of Americans: cowgirl, intellectual, military, Sarah Palin, hippie, couch potato, surfer, space nerd (me). We got a lot of laughs. Then we performed a dance to the chorus of Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA." Someone has a video so I'll post that once I get my hands on it. The Austrians followed us and had everybody evacuate the auditorium. We convened in the foyer and learned the "slap dance" in two groups. I was starting to get the hang of it but need more practice! Then the 5 countries served food and gave away gifts they had brought with them. We served hot wings from Hooters, s'mores, and drinks. We gave away tons of NASA mission stickers, NASA stickers, pins, NASA cups, and flyers about ISS and shuttle. Our table was very popular and I kinda felt like a movie star! After all the food was gone we had a dance party in the basement of that building. So far this is the most fun I have had at SSP. Everybody was just having a great time and letting go.

This weekend I decided to stay in Graz rather than take any side trips. I was really dragging this week. Definitely not getting enough sleep. I think next week will be much better since I'm going to be all rested and ready to go! I even had a chance to do some yoga with others who stayed here. But I hope the people who went on weekend trips to Munich, Vienna, Venice, Salzburg, and Innsbruck are having fun!

Day 10 - Monday, July 18

Wow! I can't believe a week has gone by already! Monday we had the usual flow: 3 lectures then lunch. After that we learned about STK (Satellite Tool Kit) which is a program that can calculate orbits and attitudes of satellites. As an exercise, we practiced tracking the International Space Station and created a list of sighting opportunities. It was pretty cool because you can change the view to the satellite you are tracking so you could look down at earth from ISS as it flies over.

John Logsdon talked about his new book "John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon."
The most interesting part was a video showing JFK proposing cooperation with Russia rather than competition. I purchased a copy of the book after the talk and had John sign it for me!

After the book review, Soyeon Yi, the first Korean astronaut gave a really fun talk about her selection and training. Soyeon is hilarious and she strives to show the world that science / space fans are cool, not nerds. Then she served us Korean food she had prepared which was delicious! After the presentation, some students and faculty joined Soyeon on stage to play some songs like "Fly me to the moon" and "Hey, Mr. Spaceman." The band was called "Soyeon and the Space Schnitzels." :-)

Day 9 – Sunday, July 17

Vienna pics on Facebook

Today I went to Vienna with 5 other students. Two from Italy, one from Canada (but she is Romanian), one from Turkey, and one from Uruguay.

We left the dorm at 8am and took a taxi to the train station. It was a 2.5 hour ride to Vienna. When we got there we happened to stumble across a film festival. The food there was amazing! The best meal I have had so far. I had chicken cordon bleu with spatzel “hash” which was fried in a huge cast iron skillet with crispy onions. Mmm!

We toured around led by Emre from Turkey. We saw 3 cathedrals. Two were open so we went inside. We also saw Mozart’s house. We had dinner pretty early so we could catch our train back. I really got a good feel for the city even though we only had 7 hours there. Vienna is incredibly beautiful. The buildings are so tall and ornate. Here are my pictures from the day. I also learned about Sacher Torte which is from Vienna and is very popular in Italy. We had a piece at dinner.

We took the subway / train / bus / tram back to Graz and got back at 10:30pm. After a video chat with Mitch, I did my reading homework (100 pages of the 1991 SSP report) in preparation for Monday. Late night! ISU is living up to its name so far: Insufficient Sleep University. Hopefully Monday I can get to bed early.

One nice thing about the Graz and Vienna tours was that I was able to get lots of steps for the “Boeing on the Move” challenge! Back home, I am competing with my teammates at Boeing for the most steps. I have to wear a pedometer every day until July 31 when the competition ends. You can convert exercise and various activities into steps as well. Even though I don’t have any time to exercise, I am doing lots of walking – at least 3 miles a day. The Graz and Vienna tours helped me get from 86% of my goal to 96% of my goal! I have two weeks left and I’m trying to get up to a daily average of 10,000 steps. So far I am at 268,459 steps since June 20 when the program began. :-)