WEDNESDAY

First full day at UHCL.
First guest speaker was astronaut Dr Lee Morins in his blue astronaut overalls. HE gave us a talk on the space station assembly process and his role in it. He then moved on to talk about his interest in "rocks to rockets" which is about using the resources already on the moon for energy and construction. Millions of kilogrammes of existing materials such as metal oxides can be utilised rather than bringing everything from Earth at enormous expense, risk and time. Solar energy and microwaves can be used to effect the physical and chemical changes to produce building materials and conductors etc. Telepresence can be used to allow robots or machines to carry out tasks while being operated from Earth.
Then we finally got together as a team in a breakout room to start our project - Red team is working very well and I'm really impressed with our progress.
After lunch the leader of the JSC imagery group Patrick Chimes gave us a fascinating talk and dozens of historic and contenporary shots of spaceflight. This gave students a very valuable insigh into the evolution of the technology, society and culture of space exploration. Then back to breakout room for more project work and finally a briefing.
Dinner was at Tierra Luna Tex-Mex restaurant on Saturn Drive near JSC. The owner's husband is, of course, an astronaut (Jose Hernandez)!