The Space Center at NASA
By:  Charlie Ezgur

     Guess what I did in NASA? Well I will tell you. We got to see where real people talked to Neal Armstrong. This room was called Mission Control. Neal Armstrong was the first man to step foot on the moon. Did you know what NASA stands for? It stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We also got to sit in the very same room as many presidents, the queen of England, family and friends stayed in to watch and participate in the first space launches in our history. Then we were able to see real people that went to space, the astronauts. They showed a movie where they were in the air because there was no gravity. We got to see what they showered in and ate and drink.   
     In Mission Control, there are certain chairs that only an astronaut gets to sit in, called CAPCOM. This stands for Capsule Communication. The astronaut in space says what he or she wants to say to the astronaut sitting in the CAPCOM chair. Only an astronaut can talk to another astronaut because they have trained together and know what each other are doing and talking about. It is kind of like an astronaut language.
     You have to go through a lot of tests to become an astronaut. One young guy that we were talking to wants to become an astronaut. He told us that he was training to become one and he is almost there. The hardest part that he will have to do is sitting in a room for two months. It is really hard because you get so impatient that you cannot stand it anymore. Most people cannot do it and then cannot become an astronaut. He was also in the air force. There was one guy that didn’t make it who was also in the air force and he got so mad that he almost shot someone.
     When we were coming back on the tram ride from NASA, we got front row seats. The guy that was driving said that the space people come up with new ideas all the time one of them was called the space elevator.  If we could build a space elevator, it would make it really easy for us to get into space all the time.

 I loved NASA.

The Space Elevator... "next floor space!”
By:  Aidan Ezgur

     Recently we visited NASA Space Center in Houston. We took a behind the scenes tram ride and we saw mission control. We saw the current one and the exact old one. On the ride back the driver started telling my dad about a thing called a space elevator. It’s supposed to be an elevator that goes into space on an unbreakable cable powered by a laser that is converted into energy. At fist I couldn’t believe it but I soon realized that he wasn’t kidding. The idea interested me so when we got back I decided to do a little research. Hears what I found out.

The space elevator was first introduced in a book called Fountains Of Paradise written by Arthur C. Clark in 1979, 30 years ago. What was fantasy then is now taking flight as scientists work on the space elevator prodgect. Here’s how it works, a satellite is launched into space and shoots down a cable made of something called a carbon nano tube which is incredibly strong and so small that you can only see it with a microscope. The cable is then caught on a ship in the ocean and an elevator looking thing is clamped onto the cable. Powered by a laser which is beamed to the elevator powering the engine which will propel it into space still attached to the cable. Sounds confusing right? Well it is but as long as people are willing to believe in it the space elevator can become a reality.

If you are interested in learning more about the space elevator, watch this video. I really liked it.