LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Walt Disney World bills its new Epcot thrill attraction -- Mission: SPACE -- as being as close to a rocket ride as most humans will ever get.
While most riders will never have the chance to know for sure, at least one does: retired NASA astronaut Winston Scott, a Coconut Grove, Fla., native who is now executive director of the Florida Space Authority in Cape Canaveral.
At the Miami Herald's request, Scott strapped in and tried his hand at the controls of this new motion simulator -- and decided Disney has a winner.
It's an "exciting experience," Scott said -- thanks to the ride's big centrifuge, coupled with the high-tech visuals, vibrations and sounds. Though the ride officially opens Aug. 15, it has been open off and on for previews for a few weeks.
But was theX-2 Deep Space Shuttle like the real thing?
The ride's liftoff certainly was, said Scott, who has twice thundered off the seaside launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center on his way to 25 days, 10 million miles in space. He did three spacewalks. In one of them, Scott helped capture a satellite with his gloved hands.
"When you're lying on your back and see all the smoke billow up around the windows before you rocket off, that's just like it is inside the space shuttle," Scott said.
As the
countdown nears zero, riders are rotated back and look up at the blue sky, top of the launch pad and the clouds.
The centrifuge kicks in, pushing riders back in their seats. Facial muscles start reaching for the ears as the centrifuge hits about 35 mph. The sensation lasts several seconds and is less extreme than a tight turn in a fast roller coaster.
In the real shuttle, Scott said, astronauts feel about three times the force of gravity for more than 8- 1/2 minutes.
"The acceleration up and to the back is just very realistic," Scott said of the ride.
Set in the year 2030, Mission: SPACE prepares "astronaut candidates" at the Space Training Center for a mission to Mars.
Astronaut hopefuls are harnessed four abreast in the cockpit. In front of each rider is a colorful console with buttons to push on command of the captain, actor Gary Sinise, of "Apollo 13" and "Mission To Mars" fame. Riders have a movable control stick and a screen that is set inches from the face.
Each astronaut candidate has a role -- commander, navigator, engineer and pilot must hit buttons at the appointed time to make sure all goes as planned.
After blastoff, the shuttle makes a pass around Earth. The screen fills with a panorama of Florida, a NASA photo made from low Earth orbit. Then the shuttle overtakes the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station and the moon.
Riders zig and zag through an asteroid belt just before arriving at Mars.
Then they approach the Red Planet looking for a place to land.
That's where the mixture of sensory sensations reaches a peak. Like most motion simulators, this is not a ride for people with claustrophobia or problems with motion sickness.
"Flying down through the canyons in Mars, you instinctively want to move the flight controls to keep from crashing into things," Scott said.
Even though the computer is in control, the astronaut's reactions seem to dictate the ride, he said. "You pull up and it goes up. You turn left and it goes left."
"Visual is the most important sense we have," said Scott, a former Navy fighter pilot. "So what we see is what we think we are doing, and that is so exciting."
While there are similarities to flying the space shuttle, "there are obviously some differences, too," Scott said injecting a note of caution.
Today's shuttles aren't designed for a years-long journey to Mars, nor for jinking through an asteroid belt, or careening down canyons. That's a theme-park kind of thing.
Still, Scott said he is impressed by the attention to exact NASA detail, even down to the audio during the
countdown.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration experts have helped Disney make the ride as technically and scientifically accurate as possible, said NASA's Dave Lavery, program executive for solar system exploration. Lavery works with, among other things, the space agency Mars mission underway now.
NASA astronauts, flight engineers and science team members collaborated on the project from the start, making many suggestions to make the ride more authentic, said Rick Sylvain, a Disney spokesman.
Prior to entering the "capsule," riders queue up in a room full of NASA artifacts and photos. The room is dominated by a life-size, spinning mock-up of a Martian orbiting space ship. Sinise narrates a mission overview and safety lesson.
After the ride, astronauts are emptied into a mission control center where they can play two kinds of interactive video games. Up to 60 at a time can join two teams that compete against each other.
Players use buttons and a computer screen in a timed race to prepare their ship, solve technical problems and get their shuttle though a mission.
In another part of the room, players armed with a joystick and command buttons can move individual jet-powered astronauts through an obstacle course set on the Martian landscape. Visitors also can send space-themed e-mails. Youngsters can climb through an interactive play area.
"Kids are intrigued with the whole concept," said Tim O'Brien, parks and attractions senior editor for Amusement Business, a magazine that closely tracks theme parks. The ride plugs into people's curiosity about space -- heightened, perhaps, since the Columbia shuttle disaster earlier this year.
The ride also may be the shot in the arm that could boost sluggish attendance in Epcot. Attractions in Central Florida have been slow to recover from the drop in tourism following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a slump in the economy in general.
Disney has long wanted a space ride for Epcot, but designers had to wait until the technology was right, said Brad Rex, Epcot's vice president. The centrifuge was a key. So were the NASA pictures, the other visuals and the sound system.
"We couldn't do it until we had the combination of the technologies come together." Rex said.
To Scott, the significance of the ride may be more long lasting than just four minutes en route to Mars. It may launch kids toward careers as astronauts or some equally important job in the space industry.
"I think that inspiration is what it is all about," Scott said. "I think this will inspire folks to learn more about the space program. They will want to do more and see more and that will spark their parents take them to visit the Kennedy Space Center."
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VISITING MISSION: SPACE
--Location: Epcot, Walt Disney World at Lake Buena Vista near Orlando.
--Cost: Included with regular park admission of $52 for an adult one-day, one-park pass and $42 for ages 3-9, all plus tax. Multi-day, multi-park passes are also available, including Florida resident specials.
www.disney.go.com.
--Ride opens: Aug 15.
--Requirements: You must be 44 inches tall to ride.
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MISSION: SPACE FACTOIDS
--Conception to opening: Five years to design and build.
--Person hours: 650 Disney "imagineers" worked 350,000 staff hours to get it ready.
--Color: 100 shades of red were created before imagineers decided on the shade to be used for the planet Mars at the ride entrance.
--Capacity: 160 people at a time, four to a capsule.
--Speed: 35 mph.
--Length of ride: About four minutes.
--Technical matters: Two primary computers on the ride system; 30 motion control computers and a "show control" computer. All are supplied by Hewlett Packard (HP), which helped finance the project.
--"Astronaut" jobs on the ride: commander, navigator, pilot, engineer.
Aug. 12, 2003
Source:
HoustonChronicle.com 
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șoș
Thanks for the article, MG. Though, if it is a motion simulator, how can the ride move 35 M.P.H.? Because you are supposed to feel like you are moving at 150,000 M.P.H. (Space Shuttle's speed), so that's one thing I don't quite understand.
Brendan 
I live a few miles from DLR so I have not been on Mission Space. Though I have been on centrifuge rides at other amusement parks across the country. I have never met one that I did not like! 
