Today was spent doing a little research down at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center. I drove down early and met up with Bill and Terry who both work with NASA and have helped see off some of the greats in our history of space exploration. Today, I just did a whole lot of listening, and an equal amount of learning realizing as much as I thought I knew already — I barely knew anything at all. Sobering.
They put me first into a G-Force Trainer flight which was really intense. The amount of pressure that you feel especially during the first moments is pretty powerful — my entire face flew back like a piece of tissue paper during ignition and at one point I lost all feeling… your entire head just becomes numb and cold. The one mistake I did make was wearing my glasses inside the trainer. Rule of thumb — if you need glasses to see, remove them before you get on a NASA Official G-Force Trainer. I know without my glasses I can in fact see — not well, but I’m far from blind — apparently though, I thought going in seeing was more important than being able to hold my own body weight down. Big mistake and tactical error. I had no idea the amount of strength and force that takes over you. Crashing and getting thrashed around inside a G-Force, or seeing? Which one would you choose? Luckily I was allowed to take off my glasses and even though I was a bit blurry, I was snugged in there nice and tight. I spent a total of 45 minutes inside the Trainer and they even allowed me to keep my ipod on which I was shocked about. My music of choice during the training.
Terry, who is now 80 years old, talked to me a lot about how he remembered suiting up John Glenn and Sally Ride before their missions. I loved this guy. He had such a love and passion for space and space exploration you could sense it when he talked. He spoke about how after Neil Armstrong returned from the moon, while he was cleaning out his suit, it has this unrecognizable smell… an odor of some kind that he just couldn’t place. What was it? Apparently, the smell of the moon. Yes, the lunar odor of the moon is apparently incredibly strong and guess who got a special smell? Me. Yes, I was priviledged to take a giant whiff of a lunar sample and while I can’t say that it’s bad, it’s definitly unique. 
It smells like the moon. Imagine a real dusty basement that’s been frozen for years and suddenly it’s sealed doors are violently opened releasing this wave of condensed air. That was how I would describe the smell. How’s that for a description. Can you imagine it? The air of the lunar surface combined with the gas and smoke from the shuttle all combined to form a distinct scent that still remains on all the lunar samples even today. Lunar moon perfume? I would’t go that far just yet — it’s an aquired taste.
After a while of G-Forcing and storytelling, we drove out and I got to meet some people in the VAB Building which really impressed me. There are four entries to the bays located inside the building, each is the largest door in the world. Each door is 456 feet (139.0 m) high, takes 45 minutes to completely open or close. I felt like an ant in this place — completely tiny. Like a bug. I wonder what it must have felt like for all the astronaunts to see their craft being built just before they took off… the amount of people that go into putting a production like this together is massive. Again, I had no idea.
Later in the afternoon they took me to see two shuttles. One which was part of the remains from the Challenger which Christa flew in, and the other is the upcoming launch currently scheduled for a few weeks from now. Certain things were strictly off limits for me to share, but I was able to snap a few pictures together with the crew which I’ll see if I can get up here soon. I got to ask a lot of questions about Christa as well as the crew, and it was good to spend some time in the very same places she had been just before the mission.
If you want to hear a call-in I did for the “When We Left Earth” special which aired on the Discovery Channel earlier this year, you can do so here here. To experience that from the VIP area at Banana Creek with all the family and friends of the crew on board Discovery was an incredible experience. Also, you can view my pictures and comments from the day at my twitter thread here. I learned a lot, and now, I have even more questions.
As I was leaving I spotted an armadillo walking through the woods. I loved it. They always remind me of long lost little dinosaurs.
Here he is.
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet and writer, In the Shadow of the Moon
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