It was a busy day at Ground Control today, with Man a Man a Mwnci visiting in the morning, Connecting Communities team in the afternoon, and a lot people dropping in during the day to see how the space preparations are going. Word is clearly getting out that Pontardawe is at the hub of Wales’ first lunar landing 😉
It was great to welcome Man a Man a Mwnci to The Space (my new name for the gallery) as they are a really impressive social enterprise within Canolfan y Gors school. They are addressing issues of climate change and producing a beautifully illustrated book called “The Bear from Where?”
The special technical advisor, Violet, arrived in the afternoon, checked over the capsule and declared the outer shell structurally sound and ‘safe to travel into space’ … that was after she had painted the floor.
We spent a lot of the day working on the controls for the capsule and thinking about what kind of controls I’m going to need in a sustainable space capsule, in the fight against climate change.
This one is a time-dial and shows the time we have left to avoid mass extinction.
Others will monitor my heart rate and how much physical exercise I’m doing. Another has a movable lever and a push button to start the capsule.
On Greg’s control panel there is a red button which I mustn’t press… unless things get really bad.
He won’t say what happens if I press it, but I think it might be Gin.
There’s a communication panel for me to talk to my family, two monitoring sea level rise and flooding, and one with a screen to show me nearby stars and planets. I’m starting to look forward to moving in!
I’m really enjoying this project. The act of creating something with other people is very bonding. I love that moment when someone gets an idea, begins to create and then they delve into somewhere deep inside to feed that spark. I like seeing people’s faces when they come up expecting to see pictures on the walls and they’re faced with a giant papier mache space capsule. One man came in today holding two astronomy books. He’d gone to the library to pick up his Astronomy 101, and on the way back saw a banner saying Today: Artist on the Moon.