A dad surprised his four-year-old son by presenting him an exciting NASA Spaceship simulator in his room.
The spaceship looked quite realistic with switches, controls, sound effects, LED readouts, a robot arm and many more. The sounds and lights of the engine as well as thrusters are controlled by joysticks.
A payload bay with motorised hatch and a robot arm can be remotely operated over video feeds to deploy the toy satellite. The mission control and the spacecraft are in two different rooms but the kid can collaborate with the help of a headphone.
"I enjoy inventing new and fun gadgets. I pick projects that are challenging, fun, and educational," said Highsmith in Makezine. "The ship is a collection of various simple things I assembled and integrated to provide a cohesive and fun experience," he added.
Here is the video published on YouTube on 26 June, which has been posted as "Making Fun: Kid's Room Spaceship," which has received more than 275,376 views.
"After I got the idea for the Mission Control Desk, it almost immediately occurred to me that we should have a spaceship of some kind to go with it. My son really did need a desk for school, though, and I had to finish that before starting on the spaceship," said the amazing father Jeff Highsmith in his website.
He has also mentioned that the project was his favourite. "Not only was it challenging and educational for me, it will be great fun for the boys, while also encouraging them to work a lot of teamwork into their play," he said.
The spacecraft has a sub-woofer that simulates the feeling of a 'take off' of the shuttle. In order to obtain all the sounds for the control panel, Highsmith scoured NASA's own comprehensive sound archive, especially the Appollo 11 Flight Journal. He has used audio editing software to trim, combine and edit the sounds.
