Hello from Johnson Space Center,

"In Nebraska, I look outside and say 'Whoa! It's a hurricane out there.' However in Texas, it actually is a hurricane. " And thus begins week four. Across the continent, televisions were tuned into Hurricane Alex. However, due to our Education Specialist's careful planning, we were prepared for anything the storm could throw at us. We prepared an evacuation plan, as safety is key in every aspect of our life: work and play. Fortunately, Alex hit further south so we were able to continue as regularly scheduled.

We are all super excited this week as we picked up our official badges. Some of the highlights of our week included guest speakers, badging appointments, and meetings. We were lucky enough to sit front row for Gene Kranz's 'Failure Is Not an Option' lecture. He is a captivating speaker and fully explained the entire Apollo 13 incident. After this, he opened the floor to pictures and signatures. Then, we were privileged to go to a Storytelling Event that featured an astronaut speaking on the ISS. Also, we attend our weekly INSPIRE meeting that showcases bright students that inspire us with advice. The first guest was an experienced co-op from USRP for Project M. The second speaker was Zaida who interns with the education office. They not only speak to us about advice for our internship but also advice for college.

Following is a weekly update of each project and the progress our interns have made.

For Brian and Kevin, work continued on the Mass Estimation Model, as the actual program began to be written. Equations were studied, altered, and combined with others to get a complete sense of the direction we have to go in order to complete it. The ultimate vision of completion of the program is within reach, but the end of our project still looms in the distance, as once the program is complete we have to size and design an actual rocket and test it with the trajectory program that we have access to. Based on an ideal velocity change required by the rocket, we can now find the amount of propellant and approximate total mass of the vehicle. Now we can go into detail and outline the basic parts of the launch vehicle, adding engine masses and thrust structures. Our project continues to get more and more exciting, and we fully understand our end goal and vision.

Shelby and Kelsey are putting their finishing touches on the research part of our first project. In the next two weeks we will give a presentation to promote myJSC, a JSC website that acts as a homepage for oneself, to the OAS panel. We have also been working on our larger SharePoint project. This week we started on our SharePoint development site. We tailored the site to serve as a collaboration place for the other INSPIRE interns. All of the interns can post documents, participate in discussions, and complete surveys. In this next week, we will continue to develop the site and encourage the other interns to use it to its full potential. This past week we also completed our first solo IT job. We hope to complete more solo computer fixes in the coming week.

Christopher and Hollie visited the Mission Control Center and were able to have a behind the scenes tour. This was awesome and they enjoyed it thoroughly. The main thing they worked on this week was revising their Project Build Approval as they had to re-do all of it. The thing about it is that their original idea was not very good. However, thanks to the collaboration with their mentor and supervisor, they attained true innovation and a new idea of how to build the Apollo 17 Lunar Landing Site. The new idea includes wire mesh, less clay, contoured foam board, and a lot of in-genius thinking. Hollie's favorite point of the week is the meeting she attended put on by her supervisor. The meeting was very intriguing and captivating as well as extremely education.

In addition to our daily work schedule we also stay busy in the evenings.  Tuesday and Thursday are our weekly project nights.  We spent this time working on several projects including our DLN presentation, vodcast, and began working on our glog.  The other evenings we partake in non-work activities to reenergize ourselves.  On Monday, we were tired and decided to stay at our hotel for the night. Some of us slept, while others watched The Blind Side. This was an amazing movie with a very inspirational story.  Everyone loved it and highly recommends it if you haven't seen it. On Wednesday, we participated in Wednesday Wii night with Stan the Man. We all had an awesome time with karaoke as well as playing Wii Sports again. 

Friday night we went to the movies as several of us anxiously awaited to release of the new Twilight movie. Half of us saw Eclipse, and the other half saw the Karate Kid. Eclipse was even better than what was expected. After the movies we went back to the hotel and played cards and the game of Life until midnight.

 

Saturday we left at nine o'clock in the morning to spend the day at downtown Houston. We went to the Downtown Aquarium to see the many exhibits including thousands of fish, shark tank, and white tigers. In addition, the aquarium also has a petting zoo.  If you haven't heard, the aquarium also has several rides outside. While on the Farris Wheel, we had an awesome view of the city and the skyline.

  

After riding all the rides we headed to the Hard Rock Café for lunch. The Hard Rock Café is an experience like no other as it literally ROCKS! In the afternoon, we walked around the Galleria, which is a giant mall that includes many high fashion brands. At the end of our shopping trip, we went ice-skating in the huge rink housed in the mall. We are democratic and the Cheesecake Factory won the dinner vote.

Sunday we headed back to downtown to celebrate the 4^th of July.  Before heading to the holiday festivities we toured Rice University. Kevin plans to attend Rice after graduation and was a great tour guide.  He not only showed us some of the highlights, but also shared a lot about the university's history.  It is a beautiful campus and has three intriguing statues on display in the inner quad.  The statues are entitled 45, 90, and 180 degrees.

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We grabbed a bite at California Pizza and headed to Eleanor Tinsley Park for Freedom Over Texas. Freedom Over Texas is an outdoor festival that consists of games, food, and four stages of live music.  All afternoon we listened to a variety bands and ate great food in preparation for the fireworks.  The final act was Little Bigtown and Pat Green. The fireworks started at 9:30 and were absolutely amazing, as they are the largest land-based fireworks show in all of America. Today we're resting up after our late night yesterday and we can't wait until our new week begins. As of right now, "Houston, we do NOT have a problem."