Kentucky Space: Creating "Playground Events"

[KySat Space readers: this is the final post from my live notes from the Kentucky Space Conference '08 session held last Wednesday in Lexington.]

Dr. Janet Lumpp, KySat faculty advisor from the University of Kentucky, is now up discussing student talent development - it's a issue critical to the success of Kentucky Space and has already come up in discussion a couple of times during the day.

Displaying a well-known quote from NASA administrator Mike Griffin, she says that the vision for space exploration will be carried out by kids in elementary and middle school now.

We're behind. Awarded engineering degrees have flat-lined. They're not keeping pace with population growth.

She points out that our kids are keeping up with the rest of the world through the fourth grade, but fall behind in science, engineering and math after that.

They must be reached at an early age in order to grab their attention before it drifts into other fields. For example, she wonders if the "CSI effect" might be attracting kids to forensics. Kentucky Space needs to fire kids imagination similarly.

She describes some principles for such a long term effort:

The first point is that Ky Space will be multi-generational effort.

It should inject enthusiasm by doing launch events - whether it's high altitude balloon events or doing suborbital launches. Bring students figuratively and literally as close to launches as possible.

She suggests that Kentucky Space can create "playground events" using handheld radios and antennas. She holds an antenna to demonstrate. Kids could submit cube commands that could be executed during playground fly-overs to deliver pictures and audio.

Dr. Lumpp points out that Prof. Bob Twiggs has created "PearlSats," which are strands of ping pong balls filled with candy, for example, that can be hoisted to a high altitude by balloon and "tested" afterward.

Perhaps those balls might be filled with seeds.

Displaying a picture of model rockets launching from a Crayola crayon box, she says that events might also be arranged that capture kids' imaginations using model rockets.

Or CanSats might be flown.

Continuing, she wonders if Kentucky Space might host design competitions. Balloons, sob-orbital and orbital mission design concepts could be solicited. Perhaps at this event in a year or two, a poster session could be held featuring mission concepts from elementary and middle schoolers.

All of these activities can help fill the talent pipeline.

Dr. Lumpp also describes the possibility of doing a standardized KY Space curricula. Much like the CATS testing done statewide, this curricula can also be used to assess progress in the space sciences. That curricula can used, for example, by schools or offered at the local YMCA. And of course, money is needed!

She pulls out some scale models that might be used to illustrate distances for a fifth grade curricula, and discusses how the concept of the extraordinary distances in space might be taught by walking a small foam ball across the stage to approximately thirty feet from a globe. That's the distance of the moon from the Earth.

For High Schools, the Doppler shift that can be taught using Kentucky Space CubeSats. Similarly, Energy Transfer/Transformation can be taught using space systems being used in orbit.

In all those cases, Dr. Lumpp discusses how that knowledge might be applied on a standard basis as part of a statewide space sciences curricula.

For impromptu educational events, she invites people to contact her. As Kris points out in response to a question, it's early - 90 percent of resources so far have been spent on the satellite. But clearly the educational goals of Kentucky Space participants, including the corporate partners, include developing space talent in the commonwealth of Kentucky.

Given a couple of elementary school children of my own, this was my favorite session of the conference.

Wayne