I should have been a rocket scientist!

January 22 2016

Yes it's true, this epiphany came to me while at the Kennedy Space Center the other day. The next big objective in space is a manned journey to Mars, the initial missions will be a three year round trip. What does this have to do with me and rocket science? Everything on the Mars space craft has to operate reliably or be repairable by the flight crew. That's exactly the way I felt this past week while working on our bicycles!

Millie and I have 7 speed bikes, both are equipped with the same shift mechanisms sold under the name, Microshift. Gear changing on the bikes has been very hard to operate since they were new. Last week I decided enough was enough and I was going to fix them. After my initial inspection of the derail-er, it appeared to me to be a very poor design and I thought, it's no wonder they never operated correctly.

I tinkered with them for two days, making adjustments, tested, studied results, tried an engineering change, tested, studied results and finally came to the conclusion that my initial observation was correct, it was a flawed design and they were never going to work properly.

Several of my neighbors stopped by to offer advice or to recommend the local bike shop in Titusville. It was too late for me to relinquish control to someone else, it had become personal and “I” was going to fix them, one way or another!

The project was suspended for two days while I waited for parts to arrive. I replaced the poorly engineered Microshift derail-ers and shifters with Shimano components and bikes are now a joy to operate.

Obviously, with my mechanical abilities and dogmatic determination I would be a valuable asset to the Mars mission. The only cravat to my methodology would be my reliance on Amazon.com to provide me with parts. That and I'm not going, it gets down to minus 225 degrees at night on Mars and you know my feeling on that, “Mr. Smitty, I just can't be cold!”

Seriously now, we learned all kinds of interesting facts during our visit to the Space center. In the beginning of the space program, the Mercury project basically cobbled together rockets from military intercontinental ballistic missiles to put man in earth orbit. As we endeavored to put the larger spacecraft in orbit we still didn't have a big enough rocket to propel it out of earths grasp. The solution was to strap eight of the Redstone/Atlas military missiles together to get the needed thrust.

Saturn rocket

After Gemini came the Apollo moon mission and it's launcher, the Saturn rocket. To see a Saturn rocket in person is the only way to really appreciate it and IMHO should be on everyone's bucket list. The space center has one mounted horizontally in a building were you can walk around and under it. You cannot experience it and not be impressed, it's pretty awesome!

Space Shuttle Atlantis

The presentation of the shuttle Atlantis is one of those goose bump moments. You progress through two (crowd control) theaters seeing a short film about the shuttle program in each. After the second film the large screen lifts and you are looking at the space shuttle Atlantis mounted as if in flight. You walk on elevated decking around, above and under the shuttle, and it is here that you realize, this is real, Atlantis and it's sister ships really flew over 150 missions and millions of miles.

Larry and Dave, one of the space center volunteers

We spent some time with one of the Docents at the Atlantis exhibit. David answered all of our questions and had samples we could handle of many of the components we asked about. The really big surprise for us was how light in weight the heat resistant tiles are. They are commonly known as ceramic tiles and we expected them to be like firebrick. They are 90% air and very light. Also interesting was how they glued them in place and filled the gaps between each tile. You'll have to visit yourself to learn about that, I can't give all the secrets away!

The Orion rocket/Mars mission is still very much a work in progress. One thing they expressed many times was that young visitors can be a part of the Mars mission. There are many essential things yet to be invented before man can successfully go to Mars and they encouraged today's youth to become scientists and engineers.

There is a space shuttle launch simulator at the space center, but it was not very exciting. I suggest the “Mission:Space” ride at Florida's Disneyland for a really realistic rocket launch experience.