When did you know?
The first time I knew was when I was a young kid in elementary school. My family traveled several hours and when we got out of the car, I looked up at rockets taller than a building, seeming to go up forever. When I walked inside, I was greeted by a giant shuttle running from one side of the building far back to the other side. I loved the rovers with boxes full of gadgets. There were so many different parts that all had to be in perfect sync to make them work. I was intrigued by their complexity, falling instantly in love with spacecraft and by extension, space itself, from my first visit to the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas.
I’ve had the opportunity over several years to attend 5 sessions of summer space camps at various locations, including Texas, Florida, and California. Each camp level has a different ‘mission’ and teaches kids how to work together, doing different tasks, to achieve very difficult goals that no single person could do alone. Like those shuttles and rovers, all of the different kids with different tasks had to work in sync. The third camp’s mission has left a lasting impression on me. My crew and I knew ahead of time there was going to be some emergencies to overcome, but we had no idea what to expect. We actually encountered several life threatening problems, one of which was oxygen tanks depressurizing. It was only through clever and quick ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking and teamwork that we managed to return our shuttle safely to earth. The fifth session of camp took me to the Jet Propulsion Lab in California where it all became real to me. I walked into the mission control where the Opportunity Rover was controlled and saw the Rover being controlled on Mars in real time. Seeing this was powerful and incredible, knowing that I was seeing the finest technology at work on a different planet. Each of these experiences have felt life changing and further reinforces my love for space, engineering, and robotics.
Space is very exciting, with so much still unknown and waiting to be discovered. Space also presents many challenges that cannot be overcome by one person alone. Through this kind of monumental and world-wide collaboration, we’ve recently been given the gift of actually seeing what a black hole looks like. This is the sort of experience I really want to be a part of in my life and career, whether it is helping to build the next Rover, discovering new planets around distant stars, or finding some currently unknown object waiting around the corner.
That first Cosmosphere visit so many years ago and space camps ignited a spark of curiosity and intrigue for me that has helped me find my passion. Stars, black holes, space shuttles, rovers, and rockets have so many interesting things to learn about them. Because of the Cosmosphere and its camps, I know that I love space and everything in it.
