Are we Go/No-Go for launch?

Happy 2009 everyone! It's going to be an interesting year, I can tell you that already.

This coming semester is going to probably stress me out even more, with radio and broadcasting bootcamps, which I have NEVER done before. It'll be very interesting to see what happens, but, I'll leave this stress to a later blog post.

I was watching a movie the other day and remembered something which I had long since forgotten.

The movie was Apollo 13, with Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise, which is a FANTASTIC movie.

And I remembered when I was a kid, that I went to Space Camp ... yes, SPACE CAMP.

Go ahead, everyone get your giggles and laughs out.

It was a one week camp, and from what I remember, it was a lot of fun. I also went to a nature camp, which was great.

In this space camp, we spent days learning about space shuttle launches, all the NASA missions that had been done, and everything else you could ever possibly want to know about the CSA, NASA and space in general.

The culmination of the week was a trip to the Science Centre, to a special area which is off-limits to the general public. It was an exact full-scale replica of NASA mission control. And we got to FAKE a space launch.

Each student was given a position, either in NASA mission control or on the respective "space shuttle pod." I was assigned to Enviro, which was responsible for the environmental conditions that could prevent the space shuttle from launching, such as inclement weather.

My brother was relegated to the "pod" where he did some sort of experiment with plants and a fumehood. It was behind closed doors and no one talked about what happened in there ... to this day, he still refuses to talk about it.

I had a lot of stuff to enter into a computer based on different coloured cards. Green was safe, blue was caution and red was an emergency. If I got a red card, I had the authority to scrub the mission!

And I did, ending the scenario when the instructor, acting as the head of mission control, asked if we were "Go/No-Go for launch."

In response to him asking, "*Your control station name here*: Go/No-Go for launch?"
You replied, either: "Go Flight" or "No-Go Flight."

"Enviro: Go/No-Go for Launch?"

"GO FLIGHT!!!!"