After months of planning, it's so nice to see all the advance work coming together. Each crew member rolled or flew into town two days ago, anxious to meet up, review plans, and dig into the new project. In order to get ready for the 75-100 volunteers each day needed to assemble a five-story spaceship, we spent over ten hours just setting up and testing equipment on Tuesday.

And that leads us to today. Scores of volunteers showed up to learn a bit about the process of building giant balloon sculptures. Much of the external fuel tank and the orbiter's fuselage have now been completed, at least in small chunks. We won't be doing final assembly of these pieces until Saturday evening, when we get to take it outside.

Here are a few fun shots from today. More coming tomorrow.

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