NASA Seeks Bight Undergraduates To Fly Research In the Vomit Comet

Undergrads, now is your chance to make a splash in the scientific community and do your own research with NASA.

Teams interested in conducting student-driven research should submit a letter of intent by Sept. 14. This step is optional, but serves as an introductory notice that a team plans to submit a proposal for the competition. Proposals for student-driven experiments are due Oct. 26, and selected teams will be announced Dec. 7. The actual flight experience will take place in June 2012.

This opportunity will set you up for a career in space, so what are you waiting for, my permission. Get a team together and start designing.

SPC #12: Involving Students in Engineering the Infrastructure of a Space-Based Economy

Welcome to the Sunday Paper Club. (Almost) Every Sunday, this blog will offer analysis of a paper on space habitation and other related topics. These are my opinions on a weekly scientific paper; basically I read the paper and write down my thoughts are I read it. They are subject to my perspectives and believes. I am open to debate, so if any reader believes I have misinterpreted something in a paper, please point it out. I'm only a student and I'm still learning how to read these papers and interpret them. All quotes are from the paper unless otherwise noted. All papers I review are available for free online.

This week we are reviewing the paper Involving Students in Engineering the Infrastructure of a Space-Based Economy.

The space industry is in trouble. Its workers are not getting any younger and there are less and less people entering the field. So the industry needs to attract and keep students interested. However, it is hard to keep students interested while they go through the 2 years of undergraduate training before they get into space related classes in their late college years. How can the space industry keep students motivated and use them as a resource to further the space community's goals?

The first suggestion the paper has is to inject space into lower classman, undergraduate engineering classes. The paper uses a lesson on Newton's Laws of Motion applied to a spaceship launch. as an example. The project would include research into spaceships to find the data needed to make calculations. Students, according to this paper's plan, will then explore space related sites after their project is done out of passion for space. The only problem I see with this plan is that Facebook > any space website in the eyes of most college students. So, I think most students will stop doing research on space when their project is done and go back to poking people. But the paper noted that the class seemed interested in the project.

There where also parts of the assignment I liked because it got college students to think on a multigenerational level. Giving students this perspective will increase support for space habitation, which is a long term plan. We need to move people away from their short term focus to make any plan for space a reality. I also like this plan because it meets the  space community's need to train it's youngest members very well; the space community's need ensure that every member can argue for space activities effectively.

Reactions

-How can the space community motivate its students?

In Case You Skimmed

-Undergrads can loss interest in space as they go through their engineering classes without doing much space related work, so we need more space related work in classes.

Class of 2009, Impossibilities Accomplished by our Class

While at my graduating ceremony on Monday, I thought back to my last Sunday Paper Club post and felt I was a little too harsh. I didn't know why I had this feeling, we are a very dark class, but while looking up at an airplane which happened to be flying many feet above us, I knew I needed to revisit the character of my class.

 
Photo by yui.kubo

A graduation is a reflection of the class; everything that the class as a whole holds dearly is presenting during this ceremony. We had speeches which consisted of the message of honesty and relaxation, but it is this song that was sung at my graduation which makes me believe my class could be the one's who leads humanity to all the goals it wants to achieve.

I think this song really reflects my class. The reason my class is so dark is "we've been looking for a song to sing - search for a melody - searched for someone to lead". That's why I think when we get boots on the moon, you'll see this nation's young repay that investment 100 times over. Right now, we don't really have a mission, this generation or this nation.

But, I also think we are at a fork in the road. One of my teachers said that senioritis was inevitable, yet didn't see that. I saw the same, if not better, work out of my classmates. I believe my and my class mates are more self motivated then any other generation. But, we could also complete the same mission by receiving a purpose from a outside force. I also found it interesting that the line "The future started yesterday and we're already late" was in the song. The vision given by futurists should have been accomplished. We are well into the space age and, yet, it still feels like the post-industrial age.

While looking up this song for this blog post, I also read the comments on this youtube video and I found that this song was chosen for many other high school graduations. So, my character of my class is not the character of my class, but the character of my generation. This is why we will be the generation who will have space habitations, who will solve hunger and every other social problem and who will inspire this world.

We're the generation

We can't afford to wait

The future started yesterday and we're already late

This might not be my best post, I'm sure every generation came out of high school like this. But, it's interesting that we selected this song and this song can be applied so well to space habitation. A question to my experienced readership: what was the song at your graduation? Why do you think your generation did not achieve space habitation? 

Space Inspired Eighth Grader to Write an Amazing Essay

This news article blew me away, Chris Besser, an Eight Grade, participated in an essay contest with the following prompt: "What if we had an orbiting space habitat for 500 families as the first in building colonies on the moon or Mars? What if you were one of the students in the 'First Space Generation Middle School' onboard this orbital station?" (Pittsburgh Post Gazette) The result of this prompt was an essay that could compete on the high school level. The clarity of thought that this kid has demonstrated in his essay is far beyond his years. The essay shows a high level of research, addressing all the major concerns of a orbital space habitation. This kid defiantly deserved to win the contest and I highly suggest that you read his essay. This is what the sciences do, the inspire kids to work harder and this is only on example of the many children who are inspired by space to achieve greatness.