Mission Log of Operations Officer Leah S. Yost
July 20th, 2019
Lindon, Utah
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Mission 1: Teach Workshop
Today we taught another great Learning Festival! We taught at the Christa McAuliffe Space Center which is located in an elementary school in Lindon, UT. We woke up early, got breakfast at McDonalds, and then went to the school to set up.
There weren’t as many students at this Learning Festival, so we decided to split them into two groups and only have two workshops running at once instead of the normal three.
Caralyn and I ran our first workshop and all the students were so nice and engaged. They had lots of great ideas to keep a ping pong ball moving as long as possible (one of our build challenges). We became so involved in this build challenge that we didn’t leave enough time for our second challenge of designing a carnival game. Instead, we decided to do the opposite of the first challenge and design a structure or device to move a ping pong ball across a set distance as fast as possible.
It turned out just fine and the students came up with some fun and interesting ideas. They were also so nice and insisted on helping us clean up afterwards.
Mission 2: Lunch
After our workshop, Caralyn and I had a break so while she organized our area, Devin and I went to get lunch for the team. We ran to Walmart and bought some sandwiches, cheese and crackers, grapes, and drinks.
Shopping for 8 people is a learning experience in itself. Everyone thought I’d be the best because I’m the second oldest of 8 children so I should know how much food to make for a lot of people, but I honestly have no idea most of the time.
At the start of the trip, we didn’t buy enough food because we were estimating for 8 people not 8 people biking long distances everyday. Now, we tend to severely overestimate.
So of course Devin and I ended up getting too much food. It was okay though because we shared some cheese and crackers with the students and talked to them about what their interests were and a lot of them were interested in our biking trip.
Mission 3: More Teaching
After lunch, it worked out that Caralyn and I wouldn’t teach again, so while she cleaned up our materials, I helped Maile with her workshop. I hadn’t been able to see Maile and Bill’s DNA workshop until now, so it was really fun to see what they were doing and how they taught. Everyone has a different teaching style, and I definitely think Maile is better at giving clear directions than I am. In my workshop, things tend to be a little more chaotic, so I think I could learn a thing or two to make our workshop go smoother.
Mission 3: Space Simulation
Now, you probably are wondering what was at the beginning of this blog and why I have these mission statements and whatnot. So we taught at a Space Center right? It would be a crime if we didn’t do a space simulation while we were there. After the workshops, we had an hour break, and then we did a two and a half hour space simulation.
It was so much fun.
Here’s what happened.
So a lady working the center first introduced us to our mission called Fallout which she said was more action packed. Then she explained the universe we were in which was heavily Star Trek based.
The short version is that an alien race called the Borgs was wiping out civilizations and although we stopped them, we needed to develop new weapons for when they came back.
We were on the UFP Odyssey, a science vessel. We were heading for a remote part of the galaxy to test two Gemini torpedoes, weapons capable of destroying an entire planet. We were with another ship, the UFP Eclipse that had the torpedoes. We needed to test the weapons and report back to Admiral Wynn at the Nautilus Station. There were also some threats from Orion space pirates, but we’ll get to that later.
After we were briefed about the mission, we chose roles. Here is what everyone was and a brief description of their role:
Captain: Bill - Kind of obvious.
First Officer: Erin - Also obvious.
Tactical: Edgardo - Fires weapons and controls shields
Sensing: Caralyn - Scans space for debris, planets, and other ships. Also builds probes to see farther.
Flight: Devin - Flies the ship
Communications: Evan - Receives and sends messages and also hacks into other messages
Operations: Leah - Controls power, transportation, and the lithium ion core
Engineering: Maile - Fixes up the ship
My job was decribed as a “glorified rock babysitter” which doesn’t sound great at first but I actually thought I had a pretty good job (more on that later).
After getting through the airlock in 4 secs (even with Caralyn’s knee), we did the trainings for each of our jobs so we knew all the controls.
I had three main jobs: power distribution, transporting objects into/out of the ship or to different areas, and stabilizing the lithium ion core which kept the ship running. The core needed to be constantly adjusted otherwise it would explode and destroy the entire ship so that was fun. I also had a set amount of power but lots of things that needed power such as shields, phasers, torpedoes, communications, sensing, life support, etc. So I distributed power to necessary functions but when the ship was damaged I often lost power and had to pick and choose which functions were needed. I could also transport things into the ship and move materials to different places.
Before our mission started, Bill gave a rousing pep talk. Definitely saw the types of football coaches he had growing up in the way he talked.
We set out for an isolated area of space at warp 5 but before we even got there we discovered our sister ship, the UFP Eclipse, had sustained heavy damage from Orion pirates. The pirates had stolen the Gemini torpedoes, and to take us out they planted a bomb on our bridge!
After shooting the bomb out of a torpedo, we made a plan to tow the Eclipse back using our tractor beams to the Nautilus Station before their life support failed. We made it to the station but couldn’t attach the Eclipse to the docking bay in time.
The silence was deafening in the bridge as the time ran out, and we realized the entire Eclipse crew had perished.
Admiral Wynn was less than pleased about the demise of the Eclipse but she was even less pleased about the stolen Gemini torpedoes. She informed us to chase after the pirates and retrieve the stolen torpedoes ASAP or dire consequences would ensue.
We tracked down the pirates and Evan hacked into their communications. The pirates were selling to an arms dealer, who was planning on using them on a Klingon planet to start an intergalactic war between the Klingons and the UFP. Not great.
We came up with a plan called Operation Dine and Dash. Evan would send out a message to the pirates saying we were turncoats from the UFP had Apollo torpedoes we were willing to sell to the pirates. We would tell them that Apollo torpedoes had the capability to explode five planets, but in order to sell him more, we needed to return to the Nautilus station with the Gemini torpedoes. In exchange for the Gemini torpedoes now, we would give him an Apollo torpedo and promise more sales in the future. Meanwhile, I would scan for the torpedoes and transport them to our ship so we could then book it out of there at warp 9.
Evan made contact, and the pirate captain Sneed connected. What followed was pretty incredible. (The conversation has been shortened and paraphrased.)
“So you have weapons to sell me eh?” Sneed asked.
“Yep,” Bill replied. “Our Apollo torpedoes have the capability to blow up five planets.”
“How do I know you’re legit? Why’d you turn from the Federation?” Sneed asked.
“What motivates every man? Money. Do you know how much they pay captains now? Not nearly enough. I’ve got three ungrateful kids to put through college and I’m just trying to make a buck,” Bill replied.
I scanned for the torpedoes but no luck.
“Hmmmm,” Sneed said. “I believe we can make a deal. Hold on.” The line cut out and we all cheered.
But it was all a farce.
Soon all three Orion pirate ships targeted us. Sneed came back over the line.
“So I think you miscalculated. There’s three of us and one of you. We can just take the Apollo torpedo and keep the Gemini as well,” Sneed said.
“Well we have the Apollo and we will use it!” Bill shouted back.
“A weapon capable of destroying five planets would surely also destroy you at such a close range,” Sneed reasoned. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Don’t tell me what I would do! I’ve got 150,000 in student debt and three ungrateful children. I’ve got nothing left to live for!” Bill replied.
“I’ll take my chances,” Sneed replied. Then communication cut out and chaos broke out.
Weapons were fired, shields were raised and then destroyed. Probes were launched and then they self destructed. The phasers were damaged, and then the warp drive was damaged. I was frantically managing power when the lithium ion core overheated and almost exploded. Maile was frantically running around trying to fix everything. Edgardo was frantically firing weapons at the pirates. Caralyn was frantically building and the. exploding probes. Devin was frantically trying to get us out of there. Erin was frantically trying to manage everyone and I’m not really sure what Bill was doing other than shouting.
It was pretty frantic.
Except for Evan. He was chill. Probably because I had to cut power to all communications so he couldn’t really do anything.
We ended up destroying all the pirate ships but the other buyer managed to escape with the Gemini torpedoes. They headed to Klingon space territory while our ship sputtered and smoked in their wake.
We made repairs and decided to chase down the other ship before any planets blew up. We called it Operation Dine and Dash 2 and the plan was to go in, blow things up, steal the Gemini torpedoes, and get out at Warp 9.4.
We tried to immediately punch into Warp 9 to get out of there.... while we were in an asteroid belt. Not a great start. We sorted it out and entered Klingon space to catch up to the other ship.
We didn’t have shields.
We didn’t have phasers.
Our backup was light years away.
But we had guts.
We had each other.
And an intergalactic war wouldn’t start on our watch.
We owed it to our families.
We owed it to our planets.
But mostly, we owed it to the UFP Eclipse. May they rest in peace.
So we went roaring, launching our torpedoes and self-destructing probes. Caralyn named the probes after the Inigo Montoya speech (“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”) so they knew we were serious killers.
Amid the chaos, I managed to transport a Gemini torpedo to our ship, which Edgardo promptly fired, causing everything to explode.
Good news: the buyer ship was definitely gone.
Bad news: by firing a torpedo capably of destroying an entire planet, our ship was definitely caught in the shock wave and could be described best as “Swiss cheese”.
After this, we ran out of time. Our mission was declared a success on shaky grounds (no one was really sure if we were alive at the end or not but backup was on its way).
We took pictures at the end and although Bill’s captain jacket was a little too small, I think we looked real spiffy.
After we left the space center, we headed back to the dorms. Edgardo and I went to Walmart to buy taco ingredients and discovered that neither one of us knew how to pick out ripe avocados. Or buy appropriate amounts of food (we may have gotten 6.76 lbs of beef for 8 people which was a bit much).
Back at the dorms, we cooked and consumed many tacos and Caralyn made three small red velvet cakes with MIT written across that was even more delicious than it looked.
After this, we cleaned up and pretty much collapsed into bed. Overall a great day for everyone. Except the crew of the UFP Eclipse.
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