Once again, Adventures in Kentucky explores outside the Commonwealth but this time Brandon Lokits has a cohort in crime. This week, Gene Birk accompanies Brandon, as they prepare for lift-off in Huntsville, Ala., for a taste of Space Camp.

As Told By Brandon:
NASA Space Camp has been challenging individuals both young and old for twenty-five years. For this adventure, Gene Birk and I head down to see what the buzz is all about.

One of our first missions at Space Camp is to experience the sensation of a weightless environment. In order to simulate outer space, we dive underwater twenty-five feet, to the bottom of the neutral buoyancy simulator.

Once on the bottom, we see how weight is affected underwater. We demonstrate by tossing a one-hundred pound ball of concrete back and forth with ease. We can even spin the mass of concrete on our finger like a basketball.

Though this environment is not entirely weightless it is fairly close and certainly a sensation that I will never forget.

After the scuba exercise, we take our Space Camp training to a much higher level. Continuing the challenging weekend we are going to take it to a fifty-foot wall and as a team of three, we’re going to make it to the top and I think we get to ride a zip-line down.

The purpose of the tower is leadership and team building. We are each connected to the other by a rope and must all climb together to make it to the top. If one falls we all fall. For safety, we have teams of belayers at the bottom also working together to protect the climbers from such a fall.

We climbed as a team and finished as a team. At the top, the only thing left to do was to get down. That just takes a leap of faith.

For more information on NASA Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala., log on to www.spacecamp.com.

And be sure to tune in next Monday to see part two of Brandon’s Space Camp adventure and Gene Birk’s three part series on NASA’s newest mission.

Visit Brandon's Blog to find out more about his adventures by clicking here.