Crossing the Threshold

I’ve always been interested in astronomy, space, NASA, imagining what lies beyond our wildest imaginations…  In fact, as a kid, I watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series in the early 80’s pretty religiously.  My dad was a high school science teacher and my stepmother taught astronomy, so the pursuit of scientific knowledge was certainly encouraged in my house.  Not only did we watch the Cosmos series when it originally came out, but I still own all the VHS tapes of every episode. Some of the incredible shots of nebula, galaxies and stars in space captured my imagination and have held it latently captive all these years.

Watch the Introduction from Cosmos:

 
This semester, when given the opportunity as one of the options for our paper to research organizational learning within NASA as it related to the Hubble Telescope errors, it was a pretty safe bet I’d chose that topic. The Hubble Space Telescope has put a beautiful face to some of the vivid pictures in my mind’s eye. Its updated and improved technology has recorded some of the most amazing images known to mankind and brought the furthest corner of the universe into our sights. If only Carl Sagan had lived long enough to see the returns on this project.

Hubble Telescope Image:
 

So after the excitement of researching and writing about the Hubble Telescope and NASA as a learning organization, I got a most precious treat this week. My family and I were in Orlando for the Thanksgiving holidays to visit my brother-in-law, an avid golfer. He had made plans for himself and my husband to play golf this past Saturday, leaving me and my younger daughter an entire day with nothing to do but explore some nook and cranny of Florida in our rental car. For me, it was the perfect opportunity to drive the 40 miles to Cape Canaveral and visit NASA and the Kennedy Space Center firsthand.

The visit was even more amazing than I anticipated.  I had no idea the space center visitor complex was so big and had so much to do.  We took a bus tour from the main complex to 3 other locations to see the shuttle launch pads, learn all about the Apollo missions and tour a replica of the skylab.  Back at the main complex, we watched a great IMAX about the magnificent desolation of visiting the moon, and we saw an exhibit on…you guessed it, the Hubble Telescope.  The pictures from the “new and improved” version were stunning, and the exhibit did mention the adjustments that had to be made following the mirror fiasco.

One of the other cool things we got to do while we were there was to meet an astronaut.  The astronaut that spoke to us and hosted a presentation was none other than Story Musgrave, who, among a host of other things, worked on the Hubble Telescope.  It was fascinating to hear him talk about what it was like to practice using the delicate instruments needed to adjust the Telescope here on Earth before having to do it “for real” without the help of gravity.  He was one of the astronauts who actually performed the major repair and maintenance on the Hubble during a mission spacewalk, and they trained extensively to prepare.  At the meet and greet portion after his presentation, I was dying to ask him if he thought NASA learned anything from the Hubble mistakes, but I thought that might be a offensive, so I settled for merely telling him I wrote a grad school paper on the problems with the telescope…

All in all, visiting the space center was a hugely rewarding experience for me. It was nice to be able to put my research on paper together with the real thing, although my only regret was not being able to stay one more day to see the shuttle Endeavor land on Sunday. Of course, it wouldn’t have done me a lot of good since the weather in Florida was bad enough that the altrenate site of Edwards AFB had to be utilized as the landing site anyway…

Our Trip to the Kennedy Space Center:

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 1:46 pm Filed under ADLT623 and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.