Mar 29 2014 at 4:00 AM

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Do you get sick? asks the boiler-suited boffin strapping me into what looks like a high-tech human hamster ball. As all good astronauts would concur, theres only one way to find out.

Sitting in a metal seat with my wrists strapped down and a five point harness sucking all the air out of my lungs, I am about to be put through the kind of training Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins experienced before their Apollo mission to the moon.

As the motors whirr, I tip slowly backwards, a gentle introduction to what would soon be a wild ride.

The multi-axis trainer quickly gets going, and my body is spinning faster and faster, my eyes starting to lose focus as the NASA sign attached to the frame flies past my face at what seems like the 100th different angle. How are you feeling? I hear the controller shout, the direction of his voice lost in a blur. Yeah, pretty good, I lie.

Great. Well take it up another notch then. Ugh. Really? After five minutes that seem like five hours, the human gyroscope coasts to a halt. My eye balls settle. I am, I think, back up the right way.

OK, calls the boffin. Time to go walk on the moon. Huntsville, Alabama, has near legendary status in Americas space story. Here, at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Centre, engineers designed and built the rockets for the Apollo program in the 1960s and 70s, and it is now the place from which the US manages all the activities of the astronauts on the International Space Station. It is also home to Space Camp, a training centre for aspiring astronauts, both young and old.

The buzz begins on arrival, when visitors are welcomed by a 36-storey Saturn rocket model that towers over the interstate highway at the entrance. A fully assembled Space Shuttle launch craft sits beside the car park and thats just the start.

The US Space and Rocket Centre Museum is NASAs original visitor centre and still its most impressive, with more than 1500 items of space memorabilia.

The rest is here:

USA space camp: Beam me up, Scotty