Colorado Buffaloes head coach Mike MacIntyre‘s time in Boulder is reportedly nearing an end.
According to Denver7’s Troy E. Renck and Joseph Peters, the Buffaloes and MacIntyre will part ways at the conclusion of the season.
Colorado is 5-5 with two games remaining in the regular season. MacIntyre is in his sixth season on the job and has gone 30-43 overall.
The Buffaloes worked their way into the Top 25 while starting this season 5-0. However, as the competition has gotten tougher, they have lost their last five games.
They finish the regular season with games against Utah and at California.
WhenMacIntyretook over in 2013, he was tasked with trying to get the program—which had recorded five consecutive losing seasons—back on track. He won just 10 total games through his first three years but led the Buffaloes to a 10-4 record and an appearance in the Alamo Bowl in 2016.
That marks the only year the Buffaloes made a bowl game or even posted a winning record underMacIntyre.
Colorado has gotten off to promising starts in each of the past two seasons before fizzling out. Last year, the Buffaloes started 3-0 innonconferenceplay only to lose seven of their final nine games.
MacIntyrewas previously the head coach at San Jose State, going 16-21 in three seasons. He guided the Spartans to an 11-2 record, including a bowl victory, and the No. 21 spot in the final AP poll in 2012.
Prior to becoming a head coach,MacIntyrehad no shortage of assistant coaching experience, both in college and in the NFL. He has been the defensive coordinator for a handful of programs, including Duke, and has also served as the defensive backs coach for both the Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets.
Every product here is independently selected by Mashable journalists. If you buy something featured, we may earn an affiliate commission which helps support our work.
Crayola’s latest digital app, Create and Play, uses a subscription model.
Over the past few years, Crayola has been pairing traditional creative experiences with digital apps.
Now, the handicraft company is launching a new initiative that brings a bit of the real creative world into the digital one, melding the look and feel of traditional crayons with modern applications.
Create and Play is a subscription app for iOS and Android that provides five distinct experiences. Art Station, Pet Park, Color Lab, Colorful Classroom, and Arcade pull from Crayola’s 133-year history.
The price seems right, for use at $5.99 a month or $39.99 annually. Plus, through Dec. 15, you can get it for just $3.99 a month.
I’ve been testing Create and Play for about a week, and it’s both creative and entertaining. Bits of a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) curriculum are sprinkled throughout the app’s colorful playground. The Art Station experience gives you access to a blank canvas or several coloring pages. You can also snap a photo to make a custom template.
The ability to make your own coloring page is fun.
Image: Screenshot jake krol/mashable
Even better, Crayola has a digital version of the 120-count crayon box. It includes every possible crayon color you could want or need in addition to colored pencils, markers, watercolors, and special tools. There’s even one that can drop sparkling glitter or a graphical pattern — you can spread animated fire, if you’d like. There are plenty of opportunities for creativity here.
On coloring pages, you can’t color outside of the lines, which is an odd design decision. This feature is meant to make it easier to color more precisely on differently-sized devices, but it can be a bit fiddly. Hopefully, this can be customized in future updates.
When it comes to your finished colored pages, the app will autosave all drawings, adhering to the mantra that all creations are worth valuing as they are. The files live in the gallery and can be exported to post or save elsewhere.
Your drawings are displayed in a Crayola themed digital gallery that allows for easy exporting.
Image: Crayola
Like many other kid-focused apps, the experience is somewhat gamified. You’ll collect XP toward unlocking chests by using the different modes. You’ll find coloring pages, accessories for in-game figures, and eggs hidden inside, which allow you to hatch an animal in an area known as Pet Park.
Even though it’s all digitally created, the end result looks like it was made with real crayons.
Image: crayola
The egg hatching process begins when you start coloring the shell. When it hatches, surprise! Any decorations you’ve drawn will then appear on your hatched animal — a nice payoff once the hatching process is complete. You can then pick a habitat for your newly hatched creature, like a pirate ship or a jungle. Younger users may enjoy the ability to dress the pet, as well as its accompanying mini games.
You can have a lot of fun with the pets.
Image: Crayola
Color Lab, Colorful Classroom, and Arcade all deliver expected kids’ app experiences with a Crayola twist. In the lab, you’ll get to see a cartoon version of the Crayola factory where you can make a crayon from scratch. Colorful Classroom and Arcade modes feature lighter experiences based around matching colors and using stencils.
I’ve enjoyed the Create and Play experience, and it’s a seamless one that runs well on iOS and Android alike. The child in me really likes the art station and having a digital box of Crayola crayons. Bundling all these modes into one app should guarantee one thing at least: kids are unlikely to get bored.
Tempers flared after Green took the ball up the court in the final seconds of the fourth quarter with a chance to win the game but never got a shot off as he lost control:
During the ensuing stoppage in play, Durant and Green exchanged words on the bench before being separated.
Durant—who was whistled for six fouls while recording a triple-double (33 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists)—reportedly left the locker room before the media entered, and Green (six points, 14 rebounds) offered few words on the situation.
“It don’t matter,” Green said, according to Mark Medina of the Mercury News. “You all are going to report what you want to report.”
Golden State veteran Shaun Livingston provided more insight into the confrontation:
Mark Medina @MarkG_Medina
Shaun Livingston addressed Lou Williams, the team’s heated huddle with Draymond and Durant, and more https://t.co/YDBbk9AAdx
“Just team spirit. Guys wanted a different outcome than what happened,” Livingston said. “[Draymond] had a turnover. Guys thought they were open or wanted the basketball and didn’t get it. Things happen like that in a sport. But it was good to see some fire and some emotion.”
While noting it was a judgement call, Warriors coach Steve Kerr admitted he would have called a timeout to draw up a play if he had a chance to do things over.
This is not the first time that Green and Durant had a run-in during their two-plus years as teammates, as the two previously had an on-court exchange during a January 2017 game.
Durant and Green will have to quickly put Monday night’s exchange behind them since Golden State is back in action Tuesday night against the Atlanta Hawks.
Police officers stand guard outside the court in Colombo, Sri Lanka [Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters]
Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court has overturned President Maithripala Sirisena’s decision to dissolve parliament and has ordered a halt to preparations for snap elections.
The decision on Tuesday was the latest in a protracted political crisis that was triggered by Sirisena’s surprise move on October 26 to fire Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replace him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, a controversial former president.
That’s disappointing for many consumers, who will be either squeezed to pay more for the devices they want or simply priced out altogether. But Apple’s deepening love for the high end might not be good for the future of the company, either.
The iPhone XS Max raised eyebrows when it became clear the top-of-the-line model costs $1,449, or more than many laptops. The iPhone XR — now Apple’s “affordable” iPhone — starts at $749, or roughly the starting price of what was the higher-end model two years ago (the iPhone 7 Plus). The starting price for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro went up by $200, and maxes out at a spit-take-inducing $2,356 (including an Apple Pencil and keyboard case). Even the MacBook Air and Mac Mini, both formerly notable for their relatively low prices, are now significantly more expensive than their predecessors.
Some of this is due to inflation. And some of it is due to meaningful upgrades to entry-level models (for example, the iPhone XR has the same state-of-the-art chip as the more expensive iPhone XS), naturally raising the price of the whole line.
Apple’s high-end addiction
The trend didn’t just begin this fall. Apple has always leaned toward the high end wherever it aims to compete, and in recent years it’s appeared to consciously double down on that strategy. Its debut smart speaker, the HomePod, and the Apple TV are both priced much higher than competitors. The Apple Watch (which also got more expensive this fall) has perhaps been the poster child for Apple’s luxury brand aspirations, even if you put aside the absurdly expensive Edition models.
The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max are considerably more expensive than high-end smartphones from just a couple of years ago.
Image: Dustin Drankoski/Mashable
This, I submit, is not how Apple marketed the iPhone and iPad, at least at their early years. Apple was aggressive on pricing for both. Yes, the iPhone was expensive at launch, but it got cheaper quickly, dropping from $600 to $400 within a few months. The iPhone also had the advantage of carrier subsidies in its early years, hiding the device’s true cost. But however you slice it, the relatively low cost out of pocket led to lots of people buying an iPhone who otherwise might not have.
When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad in January 2010, he said Apple had been very aggressive on pricing. Toward the end of the keynote, he said:
When we set out to develop the iPad, we not only had very ambitious technical goals… but we had a very aggressive price goal because we want to put this in the hands of lots of people.
He meant it: Revealing that the entry-level price would be $499, the crowd erupted with sincere applause. It was a surprisingly low price point given how novel and advanced the tablet was at the time, but the second part of the quote, getting the product in the hands of “lots of people” is what Jobs apparently understood better than anyone at today’s Apple.
The low pricing of the iPhone and iPad was a key part of how they defined their categories. The iPhone in particular went from aspirational gadget to growing phenomenon to ubiquitous, which in turn helped developers get on board. And it was apps that turned the iPhone and iPad from cool pieces of hardware into world-changing platforms.
Things are different now
Now those platforms are mature, and the markets are large. As such, Apple has responded with more models, at multiple price points, so customers need to pay more for the latest and greatest. That’s perfectly natural and appropriate: in a large, mature category, the number of consumers who will pay more for the best experience is proportionally larger.
However, the obsession with perfection and the high end is also evident in Apple’s other, more nascent platforms. HomePod is probably the best (or worst) example of this. Ostensibly Apple’s debut smart speaker, it costs $349, or more than three times the price of an Amazon Echo, or seven times that of an Echo Dot or Google Home Mini, the ground floor for the category.
Apple’s HomePod starts at $349, or about 7x the price of an Amazon Echo Dot.
Image: Lili Sams/Mashable
Certainly, the HomePod is loaded with audio technology that improves the experience, which at least partially justifies the high price. But it’s hardly defining its category; the Echo is. With aggressive pricing, Amazon has been able to cultivate a rapidly growing audience, which in turn is encouraging developers to get on the platform, which in turn is improving the experience for everyone. As the platform evolves, those customers’ loyalty increases by the day, and they evangelize the product to others.
Sound familiar? This is the iPhone playbook, and Amazon is schooling Apple with it. To a lesser extent the same thing is playing out in streaming video: The Apple TV is undercut by Amazon, Roku, Google, and others, and Apple has also so far refused to make a streaming “dongle,” because dongles are, almost by definition, cheap.
It seems clear that smart speakers and video streaming will be two of the most important consumer product categories for the next decade. But it’s difficult to see Apple dominating them like it did with the iPhone if it keeps trending north on price. That’s a winning strategy for a mature, top-selling product like the iPhone — and may even win back the company’s trillion-dollar status — but less mature product categories would benefit from a different approach.
Look, I get it. Apple aims to define the “high end” of whatever category it chooses to compete in. And Apple’s brand counts for a lot: It can afford to charge a huge premium and simply watch the profits ring up.
Profits don’t equal influence, however. And if you look at the iPhone and iPad — the company’s most influential products so far — Apple was more aggressive on price than you might remember. They were premium, but they were still accessible compared to what they were competing against. That a lot less true today, and it may mean Apple has less of a voice in what happens tomorrow.
The deadliest wildfire in California history has ravaged the town of Paradise, claiming the lives of at least 42 people.
Stephen Colbert talked about the President’s response to these wildfires — and the contrast to that of most . “I’m gonna start out tonight by saying to the people of California, our thoughts are with you because the golden state is being ravaged by three deadly wildfires in Malibu and northern California,” said Colbert. “There’s been a tragic loss of life and an unprecedented loss of property.”
“At a time like this, it’s hard to know the right thing to say. But for the wrong thing to say, let’s check the president’s Twitter feed,” he added.
Colbert cited Trump’s tweet which blamed “poor” forest management and threatened to withdraw federal payments.”
“I think that’s called blaming the victim,” said Colbert. “I’d hate to be choking with only Trump there to save me.”
“‘Are you choking? There’s no reason for this massive loss of oxygen except your chewing management was so poor. Remedy now, or now Heimlich,’” Colbert added, impersonating Trump.
French authorities intercepted migrants in the English Channel 23 times in 2016 and 12 times in 2017 [Olmo Calvo/AP]
Twelve migrants have managed to reach the English coast after crossing the Channel in a stolen French fishing boat, using what authorities said was a “unprecedented” means of getting to Britain.
French agents monitoring the coastline alerted their British counterparts after seeing a boat that was taking a “bizarre” route between 9.30pm and midnight on Monday, said Ingrid Parrot, spokesperson for maritime authorities in northern France.
Officials identified the 12-metre boat and contacted its owner, who said the vessel had been stolen from the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Agents from Britain’s Border Force intercepted the migrants on land around 1am after they crossed in calm waters, according to French authorities.
“It’s an unprecedented method,” Parrot said, noting that previous migrants had previously used rafts or small sailboats unfit for Channel crossings.
Britain’s coastguard confirmed it had assisted the Border Force but British authorities had yet to confirm details of the incident, including the nationality of the migrants or where they had landed.
French police are investigating the theft of the boat.
French authorities intercepted migrants in the English Channel 23 times in 2016 and 12 times in 2017.
So far this year French maritime officials have again launched 23 operations, either to rescue migrants in the Channel or to stop groups about to set sail.
Many of the African and Asian migrants who travel to France in the hope of reaching Britain continue to attempt to stow away on trucks crossing the Channel at Calais and other ports.
Last month, French authorities cleared 1,800 people, most of them Iraqi Kurds, from a makeshift camp near the port of Dunkirk.
The excitement of finding out I was pregnant is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
My husband and I were overjoyed, on vacation, blissful and so, so excited to start a family. We had this little, personal secret. This tiny human just starting to grow in my body, and not even I could really feel it.
And then the Googling began.
“My doctor won’t see me until I’m eight weeks along. Is that normal?”
“When does the chance of miscarriage decrease?”
“What is a chemical pregnancy?”
Hundreds and thousands of the same questions from soon-to-be parents appeared before my eyes with each new search.
At first, that kind of immediate gratification brought me some sort of peace. I felt less alone when I saw all of those people experiencing the same extraordinary and scary things.
But as with most moments on the internet, it was fleeting.
I quickly became consumed by the message boards, random articles, and the extreme amount of information out there about pregnancy. It was … a lot.
All those beautiful feelings of excitement gave way to anxiety after the searching began.
At the beginning of pregnancy, it’s hard to get any clear answers from anyone. Many obstetricians in the U.S. won’t schedule a patient until they’re at least eight weeks along, so those first months of pregnancy can be nerve wrecking. Hence why so many of us probably turn to Google.
But Google comes with its own anxieties.
While there’s a huge amount of information out there about pregnancy and fetal development, it’s very difficult to parse out what’s real and what’s fake.
I had to use every trick in my book as a science editor to try to figure out what internet-based advice I needed and what I could do away with.
It wasn’t easy.
Finding actual studies with large sample sizes related to specific pregnancy questions is far more difficult than it should be.
Websites seeking quick search-based pageviews also love to publish stories that prey on the fears of pregnant people. Short stories that don’t use expert voices but answer heavily-searched questions do a disservice to their readers, particularly when they’re pregnant women who are anxious already.
The truth is, the thing that really helped me get over those early, anxiety-ridden days was time and our baby himself.
I couldn’t help but think that if I — a person effectively trained in how to weed out scientific fact from fiction on the internet — had a hard time dealing with the overwhelming amount of pregnancy information out there, it might be nearly impossible for a person with less experience using that type of discernment to figure out what to pay attention to.
It took me weeks of obsessive Googling — plus a few doctor’s appointments — to actually accept that my pregnancy would progress in the way that it would. No amount of new information delivered to me through my phone could change that.
The truth is, the thing that really helped me get over those early, anxiety-ridden days was time and our baby himself.
I’m a bit over seven months along now, but I remember the moment I managed to let go of all those questions and just let pregnancy be the mundane miracle it is.
I was about 17 weeks pregnant, lounging on my couch when my cat Fenby jumped on me and plopped down on my lap and stomach. Almost immediately after Fenby got comfy, I felt two tiny pops that felt like popcorn bursting in my abdomen.
Somehow, even though I’d never felt it before, I knew that it was the baby, kicking away, already probably annoyed that my cat was muscling him out.
And just like that, most of the worry and fear I felt around the unknown disappeared. This little person moved around in my body — the body that was feeding and housing him — and I knew we were in it together. Suddenly, it wasn’t all about me and my worries: It was about him. And that made all the difference.
Aside from checking in on my weekly pregnancy apps and making it to my appointments, I try not to worry myself about those unknown questions anymore.
That said, as labor nears, Google has returned to my life and pregnancy in a big way. But at least now my kicking, wiggly baby is always there to remind me exactly what matters — and what’s at stake — far away from the internet.
The Orion MultiPurpose Crew Vehicle is designed to take America back to the Moon, and possibly further. It is being built by NASA and the ESA at a total projected cost of more than $20 billion.
Some personal news: I’ve been chosen as Commander of the Orion MPCV for a lunar transport mission named Rising Star. You’re welcome, Earth.
But as I go through the pre-flight checklist in the vertically-aligned capsule, feeling the tug of gravity at my back and tapping on the flatscreens and keypads above me, struggling to locate the NH3 SYS button on Coolant Loop 2 on panel F1 in the allotted time, I am forced to admit: I’m not doing the best job of it.
None of my team is, to be honest. My Hungarian pilot is still hunting for his C4 Aux 2 switch. One of my lunar specialists was late back from lunch and stumbled into the capsule just before I secured the hatch; I wonder if they too rebelled against cafeteria food and found the adult cafe where they serve beer.
Meanwhile down at Mission Control, it sounds like CAPCOM responded to the Flight Director’s request for a communications check by piping Elton John’s “Rocket Man” through our headsets.
The author aboard the Orion, and I think it’s gonna be a long, long time till touchdown brings me down.
Jon Morgan / National Geographic
Back when I was merely one of two astronauts fixing anomalies and doing experiments aboard the International Space Station — was that really just yesterday? — our whole team was intensely serious. Lives seemed at stake. But then the Space Shuttle crew landed with their cargo bay doors still accidentally open.
“All the buttons lit up at once,” said one of our instructors after the Shuttle debacle. “You guys were dying, and I was loving it.”
Since no one chastised us for dying, our seriousness levels have gone downhill since then. I fear this moon mission may give our overlords more of what they love.
Space Camp’s centerpiece: a giant model Space Shuttle.
JON MORGAN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
This, of course, isn’t for real. It’s United States Space Camp, an increasingly beloved 36-year old piece of Americana near NASA’s Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama. It’s a place that can inspire and fire you up for our interplanetary future, but one that also leads to a strange mix of emotions — including the terrible fear that we’ll always be stuck on Earth, simulating space.
Some 800,000 people, mostly kids but also thousands of adults, have simulated space experiences here since it opened in 1982. It was born out of the vision of legendary rocket pioneer, Huntsville resident and only occasional Nazi Wernher Von Braun, who was disappointed that America had soccer camps and music camps but no science camps that could turn out Mars-bound generations of astronauts.
The nonprofit U.S. Space and Rocket Center, which runs Space Camp, reports to the state of Alabama, where it has been the number 1 tourist destination since 2013. In the 1980s, it took 300 attendees at a time; now it’s up to 2,300. Organizations such as The Mars Collective and companies like Honeywell now dish out hundreds of scholarships for kids and teachers annually. (There are three other space camps in Turkey, Canada, and Belgium.)
Your $300 weekend-long or $1,000 weeklong all-inclusive Space Camp sleepover culminates with a graduation certificate that means precisely nothing. On the other hand, there’s Space Camp’s “terrific ten” alumni who went on to become actual astronauts. That means there’s a 1 in 80,000 chance an attendee could go to space for real one day. (As Han Solo put it: never tell me the odds.)
In a world that too often still thinks of space as a “boy’s thing,” Space Camp is particularly proud that 40 percent of all graduates were female. You see their images everywhere. And no wonder, because women comprise seven of the terrific ten. Personally I’m most inspired by Samantha Cristoforetti, the Italian alumna and ESA astronaut who in 2015 took one giant leap for coffee drinkers: aboard the ISS, she made the first espresso in space.
Top: Space Camp shows off alumnae who went to space on their own wall of fame. Bottom: NASA astronaut Dottie Metcalf chats with space camper Bria Jackson in July 2018.
Top: Chris Taylor/ Mashable Bottom: Vasha Hunt/AP/REX/Shutterstock
In 2018, alas, Space Camp is also the nearest you can get to space tourism.
Right now not even $30 million will get you aboard the Soyuz rocket in Kazakhstan, the last functioning launch system that takes people to space, which suffered a catastrophic failure on October 11. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic: all are developing space tourism offerings. And all seem perpetually five years away from their launch date.
Yes, we’ve seen a lot of important developments in private space flight, such as the fact that both SpaceX and Blue Origin have made their booster rockets reusable by figuring out how to land them after a launch. But that doesn’t necessarily bring spaceflight closer for the average Jane.
When space tourism companies have setbacks, they act as cautiously as governments: Virgin Galactic took four years off after a fatal crash in 2014 before resuming test flights earlier this year. Branson had said he hoped to take the first flight for paying customers in 2015.
The ever-slipping deadline also applies to the Orion MPCV, not that it will ever take tourists. The Orion capsule I “commanded” is perfectly screen-accurate, as they say, save for the fact that NASA astronauts have reportedly decided against touchscreens for their control systems. But both versions are equally stuck on the ground for an indeterminate number of years into the future.
Old school: Apollo veteran Lowell Zoller and a NASA prototype for the Apollo 11 moon lander.
JON MORGAN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
“Orion is supposed to launch in 2023,” says Lowell Zoller, one of the last remaining engineers who worked on the Apollo program, with a wry smile. “Well, if it does, it’ll be at 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 2023. It’s just not ready.”
These days Zoller gives tours of his and America’s fading space past at the Space & Rocket Center. A stupendous test version of the Saturn V moon rocket he worked on, which Von Braun intended to take us all the way to Mars but which NASA no longer has the components to build even if it wanted to, hangs forlornly over everything.
Zoller, 82, is the picture of both grandparental affability and barely-disguised frustration. Asked about Space Force, Donald Trump’s unfunded fantasy proposal for a fourth branch of the military, Zoller’s mouth curls and his eyes roll skyward. “Does that answer your question?”
I can’t help but consider that here at Space Camp — at a three-day course to promote the second season of National Geographic’s future fantasy series, Mars — we’re playing at Space Force, too. For a challenge in which we split into teams to design a heat shield that will protect an egg from a fiery torch (and more importantly from a NASA perspective, to do so as much under budget as possible), my team ironically adopts the name Space Force. A camp counselor enthuses that they should ironically do the same for a future program.
A heat shield that skimped on its budget and didn’t protect the egg for 3 minutes. (For the record, Space Force’s egg survived.)
JON MORGAN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
On the first morning of camp, inside the simulated ISS, an apparently bored trainer (I later learned he was a Ph.D, and thus didn’t blame him one bit), took us through the scripts for our mission. For that’s what we did: ran through scripts in ring binders, scripts that thousands of kids have performed.
We pressed a button to talk to Mission Control next door, flipped fake switches and performed grade-school chemistry experiments in blue jumpsuits. All the while, the trainer kept us on our toes with station system anomalies that randomly flashed up on screens, usually something to do with the nitrogen and oxygen supplies.
“You know LARPing? Live-action roleplaying? Yeah, this is basically that.”
It was fun, but a faintly ridiculous air hung over the exercise. The whole thing reminded me of the mobile party game Spaceteam, in which players have different controls on their screens and need to yell bits of technobabble such as “engage gyro socket pulley” at each other to keep their fictional ship together.
“You know LARPing?” asked the trainer. “Live-action roleplaying? Yeah, this is basically that.”
Probably the ultimate in Space Camp LARPing was the 1986 movie SpaceCamp. Inspired by the Huntsville facility, it featured a class of kids (including a very young Joaquin Phoenix) attending a rather more glamorous version. In this fantasy Space Camp, the kids and their astronaut teacher got to sit aboard the actual Space Shuttle on the launch pad while it went through a routine rocket booster test, because what could possibly go wrong?
LARPing and pointing: the author and his trusty ISS second-in-command.
JON MORGAN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Then whoops, wouldn’t you know it, a cheeky sentient robot that has befriended Phoenix overhears his wish to go to space. The robot triggers a malfunction on the Shuttle’s right solid rocket booster — so that the only way to save the kids’ lives is for Mission Control to hit the launch button. The first teacher in space and her plucky kids have to find their way home.
But something horrible had occurred between the filming and the release of SpaceCamp. An actual Space Shuttle, the Challenger, suffered a catastrophic malfunction in its right solid rocket booster. It exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing seven astronauts including Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space.
In the aftermath, SpaceCamp was deemed unmarketable. Sending kids into orbit was no longer a safe dream. The $25 million movie made just $10 million at the box office.
At least one of the kids that saw SpaceCamp did have his life changed by it — to the point where he ended up in the Space Camp Hall of Fame, a mere seven spots below Von Braun.
Robert Pearlman, then age 10, actually wanted to see Karate Kid, but his dad thought that was too violent. Pearlman groused, but changed his mind as soon as the movie started. At the end, he insisted they sit through the credits to see if Space Camp was listed as a real place.
Indeed it was, and Pearlman was besotted. He went to Space Camp for the first time the following year. Attendees, then as now, were from everywhere; Pearlman made friends with a kid from Japan, and his parents were confused when he returned home to West Orange, New Jersey with a Japanese accent.
A diagnosis of Crohn’s disease didn’t stop Pearlman from going back four years in a row. He met real-life astronauts such as the legendary Buzz Aldrin. He skipped a year when his dad passed away, then went back three more times.
Space Camp “was the motivator to get me out of hospital, the carrot to get me out of bed,” he says.
It was also the beginning of an earthbound space career, as the designer and editor of space websites. His latest, Collect Space, covers memorabilia from that old-time space age era, such as moon rocks that are on the block at Sotheby’s this month. Estimated sale price: $1 million, or twice what they cost in 1993.
The more we don’t go back, the more their price goes up.
“In some ways, Space Camp back in the 1980s was very much like it is today,” Pearlman says. Sure, you stayed under a large tent rather than today’s two space-age dorm room “habitats,” and rose at 5 a.m. for calisthenics — something that isn’t inflicted on today’s Space Campers.
Inside one of Space Camp’s futuristic “habitats.”
Chris Taylor/ Mashable
Nutrition was different too; Pearlman remembers at least one meal where kids could only eat “space food.” Tang and dehydrated ice cream for everyone! That isn’t an option in Space Camp cafeteria these days, which is highly focused on getting kids to compete ecologically by weighing and reverse-ranking their solid and liquid food waste.
There were still LARP scripts in those days. Instead of the Orion and the ISS, they covered missions in the Space Shuttle and Spacelab, a reusable science module that could travel aboard the Shuttle. But their content was pretty much the same, and apparently attendees have always approached these missions with a mixture of deathly seriousness and larking around.
Top: The first President Bush visits Space Camp on the campaign trail, 1988. Two years later, Bush declared NASA would land on Mars in … 2019. Bottom: Adult space campers in the 1980s.
But this isn’t just a program for armchair astronauts. Most of the vomit-causing and stress-inducing tests that those with the Right Stuff go through are represented here, too. You simulate G-force and blast off in fairground-style attractions named G-Force and Moon Shot (although when we visited, Moon Shot had been closed due to a swarm of bees).
You may never walk on the moon, but you can sit in the 1/6th gravity chair, attached to a series of springs on the ceiling of a warehouse, and simulate the not-quite-light-as-air sensation of walking on the moon.
A water pulley system allows for weightless “spacewalks” outside the fake ISS module. And for a little extra scratch, you can do astronaut-style SCUBA missions in the Space Camp pool, assembling a structure made of PVC tubes underwater.
The Multi-Axis Trainer spins up.
JON MORGAN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
And then there’s the Multi-Axis trainer, easily the thing at Space Camp most likely to make you lose your lunch. This was featured most recently in First Man, the Neil Armstrong biopic I happened to see the same day I started Space Camp. Armstrong, or at least the Ryan Gosling version of him, passed out in one, but it stands him in good stead when he has to correct a heart-stopping, out-of-control gyroscopic wobble in the Gemini VIII capsule.
As I stepped into the Multi-Axis, I learned that this too was a Hollywood lie (shocking, I know). Armstrong hadn’t even trained in this nasty piece of equipment, because NASA hadn’t deemed it necessary for Gemini; he just used his mad pilot skills to correct that killer roll.
I have never been more glad for having eaten a small breakfast.
So as the rings spun up and the sickening upside-down lurches began, it wasn’t Armstrong in my thoughts, but Dr. Ellie Arroway, the hero of Contact (1998), played by Jodie Foster. “I’m OK to go,” Dr. Arroway said, forcing her steely will past the tremble in her voice as her capsule dropped into an unknown alien wormhole, and it became my mantra, too. “OK to go. OK to go.”
I have never been more glad for having eaten a small breakfast.
Some hours later, our team stumbled out of the training zone, past the full-size Space Shuttle made of cement and into the bright light of Space Camp’s amusement park zone. There were clusters of kids of all ages everywhere, Space Camp’s daytime visitors. “Rocket” by Def Lepperd blasted over the tannoy, followed yet again by “Rocket Man.”
One youngster clocked our blue jumpsuits and haunted expressions. His eyes went wide. “Are you guys astronauts?” he said. Why yes, we deadpanned. Yes, we are.
At the graduation ceremony, where everyone is presented with astronaut wings for their jumpsuits, I was thrilled when our team won “Commander’s Cup” patches. Despite our early failure sticking the Space Shuttle landing with closed doors, we’d held it together for our moon mission.
I’d delivered our specialists to the lunar surface — tragically, I was the Michael Collins of the mission, forced to orbit the moon without walking on it — and received two scientists from America’s future moon base in return. They “docked” the lunar lander and joined us via a corridor between the two, gleeful as kids entering a ball pit.
Commander’s Cup winners.
JON MORGAN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
We headed home in sped-up time, went through the obligatory 30-second communication lapse in the upper atmosphere (“Rocket Man” now mercifully silenced) and splashed down safely, sound effects and video screens included.
I don’t know how much of a pipe dream this all is. At this lull point in America’s space efforts, filled with lots of predicted launch dates and no action, it doesn’t seem like we’ll ever head back to that dusty piece of regolith in the sky that taunts us every night.
As a child in the post-Apollo glow, the notion that I would go to space one day seemed inevitable and obvious. Then the Challenger exploded, the Columbia exploded, and our collective dreams withered on the vine. Now it seems inevitable and obvious that I will not ever slip the surly bonds of this gravity well.
The rich and the lucky few at NASA may get to orbit. The days of journalists in space are still decades away, if they ever come — and given trends in both journalism and the space program, I’m not hopeful.
But if the opportunity arises, thanks to my time at Space Camp, I’m OK to go.
We asked seniors in Milwaukee—one of the most racially segregated and politically polarized cities in the nation—what they want the next Congress to do. Read More
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F881692%2F6a8bb8bd-ff3e-4fc5-8b86-dc97d94d520d.png)
![Police officers stand guard outside the court in Colombo, Sri Lanka [Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/11/13/3c716f8c08ca413ba9e4e1285602d98e_18.jpg "Sri Lanka Supreme Court overturns dissolution of parliament")
![French authorities intercepted migrants in the English Channel 23 times in 2016 and 12 times in 2017 [Olmo Calvo/AP]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/11/13/4f801ba6d09743199cd5779c464881c5_18.jpg "Migrants reach UK in stolen French fishing boat")
Daily Trends Hunter 