Gallery • 7 Photos

Donated by: Mu Alpha Theta

PPCHS students… prepare for landing.

The Kennedy Space Center has friends and family traversing through the chilling rooms with artifacts of space armory and discovering the interiors of the rocket ships which carry astronauts to a sparkly scenery. PPCHS students settled into a tour-bus as they conversed and listened to their tourists as they brought them through a starry experience. Coordinated by Mu Alpha Theta, their hard work throughout the first semester became a memorable experience for all its contributors.

Planning began in September, where senior Nathan Pothuganti, the President of Mu Alpha Delta, “got the support of Mrs. Guzman to have the field trip”. Nathan, along with the board, later reached out to Mrs. Battle to converse about the NASA trip, and even contacted them for costs and additional information to land PPCHS students into space. “We get an estimate of how many people wanted to go on the trip,” to then gather additional estimates considering bus expenses, and overall estimated pricings. 

Keeping the turbulence away, their Historian, junior Kiahna Roberts, stated how multiple meetings with the board helped in keeping the moon rocks away from forming obstacles for their NASA trip. However, their date was re-formatted since it “conflicted with the midterm schedule. Knowing that it would be near impossible to continue with the original date, we had to change it” states Kiahna. 

Originally, it was designed specifically for the Mu Alpha Theta club, but the continuous changes to the scheduling ended up “weakening the expected turnout of the field trip” Kiahna mentions, which brought them to countering the setback by “opening the field trip to the entire school”. Nathan shows how the greater number of participation “would keep cost-per-person down… we saw we needed more people to remain at this lower cost. So, we opened it up to everyone”. In total, they had 50 students along with 5 chaperones (teachers) participating in the Kennedy Space Center Trip.

From all their choices of potential field trips, the Kennedy Space Center became the spotlight of attention as a lot of people Nathan discussed it with were enthusiastic about the adventure, wanting “to experience and learn about the awesome space advances here with classmates before [leaving] for college”. Reliving a distant memory, as most hadn’t been on this trip since their years in elementary school: “The choice to go to Kennedy Space Center was made to give people a chance to relive a field trip we’ve all been on,” Kiahna describes. 

As their adventure met its ending call, the students had experienced some of their favorite moments alongside classmates. Messing around with friends, and a favorite of many, including Nathan’s, being the “The Shuttle Launch Experience, which puts you in a simulated, thrilling shuttle launch!”. In addition, Kiahna’s favorite event consisted of “the bus tour that took us around the entire center”. The Kennedy Space Center has always been a distinctive feature through Florida’s tourist destinations, and its turnout was successful: truthfully, it was an out-of-this-world experience.