The clamor for more photos from the Odyssey II has reach fever pitch here at the Troubadour's world headquarters in the London Room at Renaissance Academy. The need for more staff to handle the flood of mail, emails and phone calls coming in from all parts of the known galaxy got so dire that management had no choice but to reassign Imaginarium staff to the Troubadour desk.
"I'll die right here at my computer if I don't get to see new Odyssey pictures," one young teen wrote in an email.
"The Odyssey was my favorite ship," another Space EdVentures fan wrote. "I cried for days when I read in the Troubadour that it got tore out over Christmas. I stopped crying when I read that another Odyssey was being built. I need more pictures now!"
To calm the anxious and provide a much needed break to The Troubadour's telephone operators, I decided to leave the London Room early today and cycle as fast as I could to the Space Center to take updated photos. There was a frigid north wind blowing; luckily it was to my back giving me an extra boost up the hills.
Now, without further delay, I present the newest photographs from the 25th ship in the Space EdVentures fleet - the USS Odyssey II (or just Odyssey. The II is added to pay respect to the original Odyssey).
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| I arrived at the Space Center and found the staff hard at work on the Odyssey. Come rain, snow, hail, drought, blizzard, tornado, hurricane or earthquake, the Space Center staff never stop working. They put other government workers to shame. Left to Right: Jon Parker, Nathan Young, Matt Ricks |
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| The Odyssey's Control Room, a masterpiece in the making. |
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| The Troubadour is too cheap to buy me a camera with a flash so I make due with my iPad. The Odyssey Bridge. |
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| Jon sits and contemplates the nature of man in the Odyssey's captain's chair. Pay special consideration to the ceiling decorations. What do you think of the looping electrical conduit? Do you think it looks out of place in such a clean, organized simulator? |
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| The bridge chairs look pretty good considering they come from IKEA! |
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| A design flaw! These are the back two or three stations facing the main viewer. Notice the height of the desk. The desks are too high. Not even adults will be able to see over them. Somebody wasn't thinking. Again, we have the upright piano look. I'm not a fan of the upright piano look. One solution would be stools. |
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| Looking from the back toward the front. There is another problem in the ship seen in this photo. Look above Matt's shoulder. See the hatch opening to the outside? That is where the Odyssey's printer is suppose to go. Unfortunately, it has been covered in black plastic. Oops. Well, you can't win them all. |
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| The right side stations. |
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| The Odyssey's lights are control by these two remotes. |
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| Whoever said building a simulator was tidy? A shot behind the front of the ship. |
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| Jon and Matt cussing away as they work. Remember, the Odyssey will be equipped with the old Voyager and Odyssey technology. Getting everything working will take some time. Luckily, the Odyssey's pit crew are the best in the world at putting a simulator together. |
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| The Discovery is being used as the Odyssey's equipment staging area. The equipment is brought here, laid out, cleaned up, tested and then put in the ship. Yes, putting a simulator together is messy business. |
The Imaginarium
A small one due to the fact that most of the Imaginarium's staff were reassigned to the Troubadour to handle the all incoming Odyssey calls. Still, the ordinary made extraordinary.
