Thursday, January 2, 2014
Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2007. That day I went into Mattie's kindergarten classroom and I read the class a book called, The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. Mattie's preschool teacher introduced me to this book and we both liked it because the main character's name in the book is Matti! After reading the book, I gave each child a huge gingerbread cookie that I made from scratch. I know young learners need hands on activities, so with the cookies I also brought all sorts of frostings and candy decorations, so the children could dress up their cookie person as they saw fit. The visit was a hit and as you can see Mattie brought his cookie home with him.
Quote of the day: We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. ~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce
We visited the California ScienCenter today. I have lived in California when I was a teenager and naturally I visit my parents each year. Yet this was our first trip ever to this science museum. It is a huge complex and one of its main attractions these days is the Space Shuttle Endeavour which is now retired and resting here. This special and permanent exhibit is entitled, Endeavour: The California Story. It celebrates Endeavour’s many scientific achievements and its strong connection to California, where all the orbiters (space shuttles) were built. The California Story includes images of Endeavour under construction locally in Palmdale and Downey, as well as artifacts that flew into space aboard Endeavour. Dramatic video programs, such as one of the shuttle assembly, roll out and launch convey the emotion and power of Endeavour.
The exhibit is extensive with a gallery of information and then a walk through of the HUGE hanger where Endeavour is housed. Space Shuttle Endeavour is one of the retired orbiters of the Space Shuttle program of NASA. Endeavour was the fifth and final space worthy NASA space shuttle to be built, and first flew in May 1992 with its last mission was in May 2011. The United States Congress authorized the construction of Endeavour in 1987 to replace Challenger, which was lost in the STS-51-L launch accident in 1986. Structural spares built during the construction of Discovery and Atlantis, two of the previous shuttles, were used in its assembly. NASA chose to build Endeavour from spares rather than refitting Enterprise or accepting a Rockwell International proposal to build two shuttles for the price of one of the original shuttles, on cost grounds.
NOTE: Visitors who come to see Endeavour often notice that the flag on the starboard side of the orbiter appears to be "backwards" (see the photo above!). But tradition (and an interpretation of the U.S. Flag Code) suggests that the blue field on the flag (where the stars are) should always be pointed forward, into the wind, as if the flag were flying on a flagpole in the breeze. The flag is painted the same way on many aircraft, such as Air Force One.
This space shuttle is named after the British HMS Endeavour, the ship which took Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery (1768–1771). This is why the name is spelled in the British English manner, rather than the American English ("Endeavor"). This has caused confusion, most notably when NASA itself misspelled a sign on the launch pad in 2007.
When the space shuttle, officially called the Space Transportation System (STS), rocketed off the launch pad for the first time in 1981, it became the world’s first reusable spacecraft to carry humans into orbit. Over the thirty-year course of the space shuttle program, the shuttles and their crews assembled parts of the International Space Station, deployed and serviced the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory, repaired and re-launched satellites, sent probes to Venus and Jupiter, and more.
Five different orbiters flew into space as part of the program—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour—for a total of 135 missions. Counted together, the space shuttles have carried 355 people, flown over 500 million miles, and spent over 1,300 days in orbit.
The space shuttle was actually made up of several separate components. What people usually call the “shuttle” is actually the orbiter—the part of the shuttle that held the crew and the cargo, officially called the payloads. The main engines are part of the orbiter. In addition to the orbiter, each shuttle “stack” included two solid rocket boosters and an external tank. All the components were reusable except for the external tank, which by design burned up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean following each launch.
The exhibit features a fabulous film showing its viewers how Endeavour was transported to the museum. After low level flyovers above NASA and civic landmarks across the country and in California, it was delivered to Los Angeles International Airport on September 21, 2012. The orbiter was slowly and carefully transported through the streets of Los Angeles and Inglewood three weeks later, from October 11–14, to her final destination at the California Science Center in Exposition Park. Endeavour encountered a few obstacles while transiting the streets narrowly missing telephone poles, apartment buildings and other structures. The lack of obstacles was due, in part, to the fact that over 400 old-growth shade trees had been cut down beforehand. The power had to be turned off and power carrying poles had to be removed temporarily as the orbiter crept along Manchester to Prairie Avenue then Crenshaw Boulevard. News crews lined the streets along the path with visible news personalities in the news trucks. There were several police escorts as well as considerable security helping to control the large crowds gathered. Endeavour was parked for a few hours at the Great Western Forum where it was available for viewing.
The journey was famous for an unmodified Toyota Tundra pickup truck pulling the space shuttle across the Manchester Boulevard Bridge. The space shuttle was mainly carried by four self-propelled robotic dollies throughout the 12 mile journey. However, due to bridge weight restrictions, the space shuttle was moved onto the dolly towed by the Tundra. After it had completely crossed the bridge, the Space Shuttle was returned to the robotic dollies. The footage was later used in a commercial for the 2013 Super Bowl. Having taken longer than expected, Endeavour finally reached the Science Center on October 14.
Space shuttle main engines (SSMEs) for the orbiters were originally built by Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, California. Clustered in a set of three at the back of each orbiter, the SSMEs burned propellants from the large, orange external tank mounted on the orbiter's underside. The SSMEs helped to push the shuttle up to orbit. Engineers at the Rocketdyne Operations Support Center (ROSC) in Canoga Park remotely monitored the SSMEs during launch and for the first eight and a half minutes of every shuttle flight, checking pressures, temperatures, and other readouts until the shuttle reached orbit. If something went wrong, Rocketdyne staff could provide recommendations to launch control in Florida or Mission Control in Houston.
The exhibit went into detail about living conditions aboard Endeavour. Naturally that includes bathroom use and food!!! In the microgravity environment on orbit, where everything floats, waste doesn't plop right into the toilet like it does on Earth. Without the familiar tug of gravity, poop doesn't fall off and urine clings to any surface it touches. Water can't be used for flushing because it wouldn't stay in the toilet! To solve the delicate problem of separating waste from astronauts in space, engineers and scientists developed the Waste Collection System, or WCS, which pulled urine and poop away from the body using airflow--kind of like a vacuum cleaner works.To use the WCS, astronauts would urinate into a funnel attached to a hose that sucked it away. They would poop in a hole in the potty seat, but the hole was much smaller than the holes in toilet seats on Earth. Airflow would pull the poop into the right spot to be stored.
Astronauts on Endeavour used a special kitchen, called a galley, to prepare meals in space. The galley’s oven heats food, and a rehydration station (the machine you see here) adds hot or cold water to food and drinks. Water for the rehydration station comes from the orbiter’s fuel cells. The galley on display at the California Science Center is the Shuttle Orbiter Repackaged Galley (SORG), and Endeavour was the first orbiter to use it. Later, all the orbiters were updated to include the SORG.
The science museum also features several imax films. We chose to see Flight of the Butterflies today. This film takes viewers on a journey that spans thousands of miles, three countries and several generations — tracking real monarch butterflies that leave Canada for their mysterious Mexican winter haven. Based on true events, Flight of the Butterflies 3D follows the extraordinary migration of the iconic monarch butterfly and the determined scientist, Dr. Fred Urquhart of Toronto, who spent 40 years to unearth where they went each fall. It is an incredible and haunting sight to see hundreds of millions of butterflies in the hidden butterfly sanctuaries set 10,000 feet high in the mountains of Mexico.
Seeing the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the film about butterflies today was very special and yet of course it all reminded me of Mattie. The museum was swarming with children and families, almost to the point that it was overwhelming and a persistent reminder. The museum store was also another wake up call. It could have been designed with Mattie in mind from the special machines that stamp one's location onto a penny (which Mattie LOVED and collected), to Lego type space shuttle products everywhere. I sent Peter a photo of one of these Lego things and he got it immediately. It only takes a photo to identify something Mattie would have loved! Needless to say being inundated this way makes me edgy and internally unhappy and yet for a mom who lost a child to cancer, this is one's everyday existence. Which is why so many of us want to live under a rock on certain days!
