continued… We hustled over to the building the Astronaut Talk was in and took a seat in the mostly empty theater. The astronaut of the day was Bob Cenker, who did one mission aboard the Space Shuttle as a private contractor — he wasn’t an actual NASA astronaut.

Bob was chosen for the mission because he was a satellite specialist and they needed his specialist services on this particular mission. He talked about what it was like to be in space – the first day, he was very sick. Once he adjusted, he could eat fine, but preparing food was a challenge. He also talked about the challenges of using the toilet. He was very detailed about his experience — what day to day life was like, how his body changed, etc. He also talked about adjusting back to Earth upon return. He told a funny story about dropping dishes because he forgot they didn’t float. 

Next on the to-do list was an exhibit called Journey to Mars, which was in a building across the way from the theater. On the way over, we stopped to look at a vehicle called the Mars Rover Vehicle Navigator that was parked near the Journey to Mars. According to the signs, it was a prototype of a high tech mobile laboratory. The vehicle was electric and designed to traverse the demanding landscape of Mars. It could seat 4 people, cruise at 2 – 4 mph (3.2 – 6.4 kph) and had a max speed of 5 – 6 mph (8 – 9.7 kph). We found it interesting that the sign said “Not funded by taxpayer dollars.”

continued… There was also a model of the Atlas V, which has been in use since 2002. According to the sign, there have been more than 600 Atlas program launches with 100% success. It was used for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), delivering satellites to orbit, and NASA spacecraft to destinations in the solar system, including the Mars Science Laboratory mission with the Curiosity rover to Mars in 2011.

And there was a model of the Vulcan Centaur rocket. The sign was written in a conditional tense where it said that after delivering supplies to the ISS, it will fly missions for commercial, civil, science, cargo and national security space customers. So, due to the odd verb tense, we weren’t sure if the Vulcan was already in use or just planned to be in use soon.