Space Camp Photos: August 1987

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Huntsville, Alabama in the summer is hot and humid, but i can remember the excitement driving on the bus from the airport in the small town of Huntsville… I was on my way to Space Camp! I had been wanting to go to Space Camp ever since i saw the NASA space shuttle take off and set the US into a space exploration frenzy, and I thought I too one day would be an astronaut! These 7 days at camp were filled with so much stuff that I could barely sleep at night because of the following days agenda… mostly IMAX movies, mission specialist training, rocket model building, fun space fact finding, and all out NASA geeking! I ran across my negatives from the over four rolls of photos I brought back… my mom asked why there was none of me in any of the pictures because mostly I was taking cool photos of rockets, space suits or the sort of engineering thing I would learn about later in life… but i did find a few that made the cut and wanted to share them again…

This would have been about 99% of my photos I returned home with on my film…

Now some of those kids in the foreground were part of my group and I had become friends with most of them… thus never having the photo, because i am sure i sent them the developed photo so they could remember their time at space camp…. as not a lot of kids had a camera… I was very lucky I guess.

Here is a great one… I am in an official NASA space suit …. smelly and a bit large because it had to fit 99% of all attendees of Space Camp… so I am sure I was the millionth sweaty kid to try it on!
Another good one of me (on the far left) with our team lead (Camp counselor) and our group. Don’t ask me why cut off shirts were in style… it was 1987!

My mom allowed me to take for ‘show and tell’… I was showing and telling even if they didn’t have that as part of space camp, my LEGO Brick Space shuttle to share with my fellow Young Astronauts… it was something I really felt a great deal of pride knowing I had the opportunity to be apart of this camp and the kids I was learning what we all thought would be our job one day… but of course most of us would never become astronauts, it was still nice to dream for those 7 days.

I even show and telled the LEGO space shuttle with my class at Lena Juniper

Here is to dreaming like a kid again… you can do whatever you put your mind to, so dream big!

Pretty official certificate, but it is still one of my favorite memories from when I was still a boy able to dream big and have fun telling people… ” Hi my name is William, and I am going to be a future astronaut!”.

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