Where No One Has Gone Before

Space – The Final Frontier; These are the voyages of Jeff and Robyn. Our continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where….. wait, sometimes I forget I’m not in Star Trek. It’s an understandable misunderstanding considering our amazing mission this past week.

We had the opportunity to attend the Christa Mcauliffe Space Center this past weekend. If you don’t know what that is, it is a program started by Victor Williamson in 1990. In the beginning, he just wanted to do something creative to help his students learn astronomy. He would turn off the lights in his classroom and use a projector as a view screen and they would pretend they were travelling through space. He later was able to get some grants to help build the Space Center itself. It is a simulator where you can climb aboard a Starship and join Starfleet. The stories are all based in the Star Trek universe. Since 1990 they have created several new simulators, so now there are 4 “ships” and a “space station” as well.

We got to be aboard the DSS Magellan. It is a space station that is equipped with a trans-warp drive. This means that it can actually jump to hyperspace and travel through the folds of space. Our mission took us into the heart of Romulan space. I was the communications officer. The bridge had no communications except for one phone. There were several projects going on on the bridge where we were updating various technologies. I got to contact the doctor about 14,000 times to let them know that we were experimenting on things and that it could cause people to get hurt and have to come to sick bay. I also got to receive subspace transmissions and I was in charge of decoding them and giving them to the admiral.Robyn was in charge of ship’s repairs. She was also the first person to get shot when bad guys came on the bridge because of the location of her seat.

Of course, a few of the best moments were:

1)The space station blew up because of improper use of the trans-warp drive (it wasn’t entirely Megan’s fault, only partly) and we had to start the mission over.

2)The Romulans had boarded our ship and were trying to to get onto the bridge but Kenny stuck his arm around the corner and continually sprayed the hallway with phaser fire. The Romulans kept screaming, “Come out here and fight you pansy.” And Kenny would scream, “No!”

3)We were working on generating a weapon that could destroy planets, and it was called the THX-1138. I don’t know how many people appreciated the name of that weapon but in case you’re wondering that is the name of George Lucas’ first movie. In honor of that movie he named his sound company THX and he has embedded the number 1138 in many of his later movies. But don’t ever see THX-1138, it’s a horrible movie.

All in all, it was a fabulous experience. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I recommend that everyone give it a try. I also think it would be an excellent place for a Wright family reunion in the future.