Lance's Lab - Matthew

Lance Bass is a rock star.  He is currently living in space on the ISS (International space station). He wants to write a song about space so he has gone to space to get some ideas.  He also went because he wanted to see if it was easy to record music there.  Lance must also communicate back to earth and conduct experiments in his module.

Living

Lance Bass has a comfortable living quarters.  His bed is like a sleeping bag but it is on the wall.  It is on the wall because there is no gravity in space and it saves room. He has Velcro shoes and Velcro carpet so it holds him down.  Lance has a fridge which is bolted to the wall with Velcro strips inside.  Inside the fridge is canned food with Velcro the bottom of them so it sticks to the fridge. To cook his food he uses a microwave with again Velcro.  To eat his food Lance uses a spoon and just spoons it into his mouth.  If some fly’s away he quickly grabs it. Once Lance has gone to the toilet he closes the toilet lid and turns the suction pump on.  The pump sucks up all the human waste and holds it in a holding tank on the wall.  On the other wall is a two metre wide Velcro pad where he stores his water and cloths.  His water is held in sachets with nozzles.  To brush his teeth Lance must use a few drops of water which he has to catch on his tooth brush.  To wash his clothes Lance has a washing machine that uses little water. There is no gravity in space so as a result of that the clothes tumble by themselves.

Exercise

To exercise Lance has a machine that pulls him down while he is doing squats.  His shoes are Velcro to hold him in place.

Music

Lance has a small sound proof room at the front of his module. To record music Lance sings it into a microphone records it, puts it on his laptop and edits it (if he needs to).the he can send it to earth through his high powered satellite.

Communication

To communicate Lance has a high powered satellite.  On the wall is a screen which he can see the person he is talking to.  It is kind of like Skype but a lot more advanced.

Science

Lance has a science shelf on the side  of his module. He is experimenting on how far sound carries in space.

By Matthew.

My Boat Kohine- By Matthew

Finally after an hour and a half we had made it to the Bay of Islands.  We loaded our luggage onto our boat, Kohine.  Kohine is white with a dark blue stripe down the side. A black mast sticks up through the middle of her.  Once we were on board we started the motor and Kohine smoothly glided out into the bay.

Firstly we went to meet up with our friends. There were four of our friend’s boats in total.  Jakamy, Furlo, Andante and Tenderlion.  We stayed the night in Indigo Bay.  The next day we went to the beach.  On board Jakamy were my friends Justin (11) Kyle (10) and Andrew (15).  Justin and Kyle came to the beach too.  We decided to dig two forts and have a sand ball fight.  The teams were Justin and I against Kyle.  After an hour or so we got bored so we went on a paddle board.  A paddle board is a board like a surf board but you stand up and paddle.  We play lots of games on the paddle board like ‘last man standing’ and ‘hand paddling’. After another hour we went back to our boats. The time was about 12:00 so we decided to go for a snorkel.

Justin, Andrew and Kyle came with us.  We looked around the rocks it was crystal clear water and really refreshing. Then Andrew yelled “Octopus!”  He dived under and grabbed it.  He chucked it at me. I swam away.  The octopus went to the bottom and squirted ink.  It camouflaged it’s self on the bottom.  I was just about to show Justin when it swam away. Then we decided to go spear fishing and to get some mussels.  Andrew swam around the rocks and we went in the dinghy.  We got in the water and swam around the rocks for the mussels.  We had to dive down two metres to get them.  They were really hard to pull off the rocks. After we had about 50 mussels we watched Andrew spear a moki.   It was a gigantic moki about 60cm long.  We put it in our dinghy and drove back to our boat.  We had a delicious dinner of mussels. YUM!  Then we went to bed.

The Next morning I set the net with my Grandad. My Grandads boat is called Andante.  We left the net out and went to the beach.  When we were on the beach we saw some mullet swimming round 2 metres off shore.  Without scaring them away Grandad and I whizzed to pick up the net.  We brought it back to shore.  We put the net around the mullet and slowly pulled it in.  We caught 4 mullet.  We smoked them and everyone came into the beach and we had a lunch of fresh, delicious smoked fish.  After another week of fun and adventure on the boat we had to go home. We packed up the boat, locked the door and drove home. I was sad about going home but relived to get back onto dry land.