"The two crews have completed the initial outfitting of the Harmony module that was attached to the station last week." , says NASA in it's portion of the website dedicated to the space station, today.
Well, it was a hot summer noon in 2000 when I visited the Kennedy space center of NASA in Cape Canaveral, Florida. We just missed the program wherein visitors can talk to those ex-astronauts - guys for whom the epithet - "been there, done that and having seen it all" would be so apt, much more than anyone else! Although my initial mood was a bit sombre - on account of silent resentment at my cousin for being more than a bit casual regarding the schedule for the day or else we would have made it on time, the rest of the day more than made up for all that. We went on a conducted tour - so well configured by NASA that the narrative on the TV sets installed next to each row on the bus is very well in synergy ... err ... harmony, if you will, with the scene one gets to see outside. So then, we saw the launch pads - unfortunately there were no shuttles in sight - one of them, Discovery I guess, was inside the tallest single storeyed building in the world and the other Columbia was up there, scheduled to land in a couple of weeks time. We were also taken to the Apollo assembly hall where a real life model of Apollo was kept - we were also given a "live" experience of the successful Apollo launch that bridged a giant leap for mankind (the expedition that took Armstrong and the others to moon) - this was a very well orchestrated audio visual - the voice over (live recordings of that moment in history) played out in the very room that created history - with all the action happening (lights getting turned on, screens showing data, the countdown happening .... and then a huge swoosh .... the lift off ... or rather .... the blast off, and then congratulations all around). Well, not the least of all was what preceded it all .... JFK's inspiring speech asking America to deliver the first man on the moon .... all this was a very heady experience, presented in the true US of A way.
And then, as part of the tour, we were taken to a chamber where NASA scientists were at work, on the International Space Station. We were shown a life-size model of the module that they were working on. The guide also informed us that the scientists were working on a module that was sponsored by Italy and that would go into space 'x' number of years later. Guess what, now I remember, it was named "Harmony"!
So, the next time I look up to the skies, I know that there is harmony up there - harmony that I saw and knew from so close quarters more than seven years back .....!
Well, it was a hot summer noon in 2000 when I visited the Kennedy space center of NASA in Cape Canaveral, Florida. We just missed the program wherein visitors can talk to those ex-astronauts - guys for whom the epithet - "been there, done that and having seen it all" would be so apt, much more than anyone else! Although my initial mood was a bit sombre - on account of silent resentment at my cousin for being more than a bit casual regarding the schedule for the day or else we would have made it on time, the rest of the day more than made up for all that. We went on a conducted tour - so well configured by NASA that the narrative on the TV sets installed next to each row on the bus is very well in synergy ... err ... harmony, if you will, with the scene one gets to see outside. So then, we saw the launch pads - unfortunately there were no shuttles in sight - one of them, Discovery I guess, was inside the tallest single storeyed building in the world and the other Columbia was up there, scheduled to land in a couple of weeks time. We were also taken to the Apollo assembly hall where a real life model of Apollo was kept - we were also given a "live" experience of the successful Apollo launch that bridged a giant leap for mankind (the expedition that took Armstrong and the others to moon) - this was a very well orchestrated audio visual - the voice over (live recordings of that moment in history) played out in the very room that created history - with all the action happening (lights getting turned on, screens showing data, the countdown happening .... and then a huge swoosh .... the lift off ... or rather .... the blast off, and then congratulations all around). Well, not the least of all was what preceded it all .... JFK's inspiring speech asking America to deliver the first man on the moon .... all this was a very heady experience, presented in the true US of A way.
And then, as part of the tour, we were taken to a chamber where NASA scientists were at work, on the International Space Station. We were shown a life-size model of the module that they were working on. The guide also informed us that the scientists were working on a module that was sponsored by Italy and that would go into space 'x' number of years later. Guess what, now I remember, it was named "Harmony"!
So, the next time I look up to the skies, I know that there is harmony up there - harmony that I saw and knew from so close quarters more than seven years back .....!
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