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Our eldest is going to one of the NASA Space camps later this year. It's costing us a bit in airfares and suchlike, but she expects it will be worth it.

The US Space and Rocket Center [spacecamp.com] in Huntsville Alabama is a great museum and home to Space Camp. I went several times as a kid. They've got actual rockets (Saturn V *huge* and many more) and an SR71.

Let's see from the site: "In the museum collection, there are the original Mercury and Gemini capsule trainers, the Apollo 16 capsule, Casper and a full life size replica of the Apollo 11 Saturn V."

Great stuff.

Both rapid explosions of greed and slow paced growth will eventually reach the same equalibrium state.
But with very different societal costs along the way!

That's the "no child left behind" argument, hold back anybody who may excel so that others don't feel bad about themselves.

Some people have unlimited wants, which as I already explained is the very definition of being an insane animal.

Most everybody has unlimited wants. It reminds me of the story where in India a guy had bought an old plane fusilage and was selling tickets to people to enjoy a similuated plane flight. Many people who take flying for granted chuckle, but then I realize those same people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to experience simulated space flight. No matter what you have, you'll want a little more.

In reality the equilibrium is when sane, sentient beings decide on their own that getting a 5,000 room "house" is not a reasonable thing to want to do.

Why? If I work hard and take risk, should I not reap the rewards of my sweat? Does the man who decides to spend his free time making a fishing net instead of slacking off be forced to give up the extra food he catches?

LOL! If that were so, every scientist would jealously guard "his" discoveries, locking them up in a safe in his basement, to go there at night to count them by candle-light while giggling to himself! Instead they share them with everyone with an access to a library in scientific journals! A positive bunch of heretic Commies!

Yes, scientists always publish anonymously. They never compete for grant money. They all work for minimum wage and only care that the wealth of human knowledge has expanded. One of the reasons scientists share their discoveries is because they must to get the resources they need. Society gives scientists resources and expects the product of them to be shared with society.

See above. You've already completely conceeded the wholly indefensible point of "Science is Greed Motivated", now you've only got free-loaders-cum "enterpreneurs" left to ineffectively try to prop-up your lost arguments.

Yes entrepreneurs are all just free-loaders. All they do is profit, without ever taking a single risk. No venture capitalist lost money on the dot-com bubble; none ever had a company that failed to capitalize on a scientific discovery.

And that on top of the fact that these "wants" are satisfiable without anyone else having to part with anything, and their results are also freely shared with everyone, in exchange for nothing physical.

You mean scientists do all their work as a hobby in their free time, not expecting to be paid? Science like every other aspect of society has to deal with the fact that resources are limited. An electon microscope doesn't appear magically, it takes resources to make, resources that could be used for something else. It's economics that determines how resources are allocated.

Information, just in case you are confused about it, is not subject to any kind of trade, simply due to its properties.

Information itself no. Being able to apply that information in a meaningful way, yes; that is why education is one of the best predictors of economic earnings.

You remind me of a salesman I once knew, who claimed that everything in life, from family, friends to school to work to marriage is ... making sales!

There are many perspectives on modeling how a society works. If there was one perfect model, human behavior would be predictable.

Which requires no

"Space Shot" is an amusement park ride at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Alabama.

It's pretty cool: a 4G liftoff, then 2 seconds of weightlessness. If you let go of a penny at the top, you can watch it fall with you as you drop for a second or two.

http://www.spacecamp.com/museum/attractions/mu_sim s1text.php

Maybe he meant to say a "shuttle launch"?

This is cool.
The U.S Space and Rocket Center has the G-Force attraction http://www.spacecamp.com/museum/attractions/mu_sim s1text.php that would couple with this very well. When I saw G-Force (many years ago) a film of a rocket launch was shown, on the ceiling, as you picked up more Gs. Not quit a perfect take-off simulation, but close. Being able to watch the I-Max after that attraction should be realy eye onpening.

If you want to get a better idea of what it takes to restore a mighty Saturn V, I have on my website an article from the December 1996/ January 1997 issue of Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine an article that details the efforts involved in restoring the one in Florida.

The same company is being tapped for the Huntsville Saturn V and I would imagine the one in Texas, also.

The Google cache of the first page (my poor little website can't afford a Slashdotting) can be found here and the second page will load from my site, but at least I've cut my load in half.

People should read this.

And after you do, feel free to make a donation to help save the Saturn V Werner von Braun left the U.S. Space & Rocket Center

I don't think that it is the only one. There is a Saturn V at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsvlle, AL (you know Marshall SFC and Redstone Arsenal fame) that is sitting upright and intact, complete with Apollo capsule and emergency escape system on top. There are also pieces of a second one laid out on the grounds (not sure how complete, I can't remember).

The one laying down is suffering from deterioration. The Space and Rocket Center is attempting to raise funds to save it and one of their fund raisers is the first reunion of Apollo and Saturn V folks. They are inviting everyone who had anything to do with the Apollo and Saturn V programs to visit and help save the Saturn V rocket.

Buzz Aldrin will be the featured guest of this reunion. Here is a link to the flyer for the event.

How favorably, I'm left to wonder, is this science center compared to the one that's practically in my back yard? I've been meaning to get there in the last five years that I've been living in Hudson County, NJ. An old geek friend I used to work with recommended it highly, stating emphatically to "bring your inner child" to this place.


My geek friend, was not a scientist, by the way. But she did tell me about a rather fascinating fact. It'd been a childhood dream of mine to attend spacecamp (having been inspired by the schocky movie of the same name). And, yeah, I had the hotts for Lea Thompson! (hey, whaddya want? I was an 80's kid!). So, I wanted to go. It's my fave type of vacation...a learning vacation! BUT when I called, I was 16 years old. I was told (rather rudely, btw) that 15 was the cutoff age! NO SOUP FOR YOU!!! I was crestfallen.

But I was very glad when Camille (my geek friend's name) told me that SpaceCamp now has adult programs that you can attend either with or without the kids in tow. It tends to attract brighter than average, professional adults, I'm told. Once I learned that, this venture DEFINITELY made my adult "to-do list".

Has anyone had experience with either of these learning programs, or insights to offer? I would love to know how complete and erudite either/both are. I see from the website, that SpaceCamp now has an "advanced" spacecamp for the returning adult! (seemingly!) TOO COOL!

NASA does not own the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. The government in general provides little of the funding that runs the place. The rockets and aircraft on display are on loan from NASA or the orginal owner in most cases. Click here for faq

I live near Huntsville, Alabama - where our wonderful Pathfinder mock-shuttle sits by I-565. You can view the shuttle from a very close distance by visiting the Space and Rocket Center. The external fuel tank is covered with the same foam that was in service for the Columbia.

Many visitors to the center will stand underneath the tank (toward the rear of the assembly) and throw coins into the foam (sort of like a wishing well). You can see the foam and the thousands of dents from coins with the naked eye, including quite a few coins that have managed to stick.

Many people wonder why the foam replaced the bright white paint of the fuel tanks of the extremely early flights (STS-01 and STS-02). All that paint weighs in at about 240 kilograms. While it doesn't seem much, it costs an extraordinary amount to get enough thrust to lift one pound of material into space, let alone about 110 pounds.

The aforementioned link is a good paper (from NASA) that explains the "lessons learned" approach to space flight.

You absolutely can't miss the U.S. Space and Rocket Center - it's the Earth's largest space museum, featuring a real Saturn V moon rocket lying on the ground and a mock-up standing on end, a slew of other rockets (Redstone, Atlas, Jupiter C, Hermes, V-2, a Shuttle mock-up, real engines all over the place, and more), space station presentation, Skylab mock-ups, full lunar lander and rover exhibits, and more, plus a helicopter and some missiles. They have a moon rock on display. (You can touch the one at the Smithsonian.) There's an IMAX Dome theater showing something spacey, a climbing wall, Mars rides, a centrifuge, and a really fast outdoor elevator to nowhere they call "Space Shot."

Yeah, I grew up 2 miles from here and here, and now live 10 miles from here and here, so going to KSFC doesn't really get the ol' motor started.

Especially for a honeymoon. Who the hell goes to Albequerque on their honeymoon?

There is no such thing. IMAX is an extremly large flat screen that uses a different millimeter film than a normal movie theatre. When you turn it into a dome screen like the article said, it is called OMNI. IMAX is much more widely available. OMNI theatres can be found at such places like the Boston Museum of Science (Mugar Omni Theatre, or Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama (they have IMAX at their other campuses).

A little over a year ago, I took all my photos from various years at camp and decided I wanted them digitized.

I had over 200 photos to scan on my newly purchased, but definitely consumer-level Umax Astra 3400.

Over the course of a month, I would lay 3 or 4 photos at a time on the scanner, and scan them in 600dpi so I would never have to scan them again! Then I spent many hours sepearting the pictures and removing dust, spots, etc. that my have cropped up on the photo anywhere between flaws in the object in frame to possilbe dust lying on the scanner, and saved them individually, one-by-one.

Further, I used a Photoshop action to convert and save the photos at various other resolutions, so I could just quickly look over photos if I wanted to but didn't need all the detail available with the original scanned pictures.

Again, this took a little over a month, working mostly on weekends, and I was pretty burned out, as far as scanning stuff goes, for a very, very long time after, but it was well worth it...and soon after I bout a digital camera! I'll never have to do that again!

I do honestly think the key though was to take the time and scan at a very high resolution in the firstplace. Not only will this offer the same or (sorta) better quality (depending on how you look at it) than the original print, but it should also withstand time...at least to the point of whatever better equipment comes out won't matter a whole lot because you've already scanned your photos at "more than adequate" resolution.

Why not just build some of those rotating thingies from the Lawnmower Man?

Because they don't do anything. Your static while the the "sphere" rotates you along two axes simultaneously. Since your rotating in two directions you don't get disoriented. (I know I went to Space Camp. The idea is just to ride it, not to stop it like they say in that sucky movie.)