The Troubadour: Day One. The Imagineering of a New Starship Simulator. A 13 Year Old Attends Hackschool. SpaceGlasses are the Future

Hello Troops,
Welcome to the world of building a state of the art starship simulator on a limited budget.
Over the next several months, The Troubadour will bring you several exclusive, behind the scenes, exhaustingly accurate and throughly detailed reports, on the design and construction of a new Space EdVentures simulator, the Vanguard. The Vanguard will be Farpoint Station's first simulator located at Renaissance Academy, a K-9 charter school, in Lehi. The "If I had one wish, that wish would be" opening date would be June 1. The realistic opening date would be September 1.
The process started this morning at Renaissance Academy with a meeting of the minds to lay out the Vanguard's initial floor plan.

The imagineering of a starship simulator starts with chairs and tables in a large room. The room above is the Vanguard's future home. Using chairs and tables, I spent over one hour trying out different combinations as I searched for a design needing to serve dual purposes: A Farpoint Station simulator and a new school computer lab.
The Vanguard and the Space Center's Magellan simulator will be cousins - both working as school computer labs during the school day and as simulators after school, weekends and summers. Farpoint Stations other ships, slated to be built when Renaissance Academy builds it new middle school building during the 2014-2015 school year, will not be dual purpose ships.
The Vanguard will have 26 computers on the bridge. Each crewman will be responsible for two computers during a mission. The stations will all face a large main viewer.
I liked the design above, but after a bit more tinkering, changed the ship's layout to what you see in the next photo.

Kyle Herring is commenting on the new layout. Renaissance Academy's director, Mark Ursic, is sitting in the background.

This new proposal has the command crew seated at the front of the bridge around a table top computer / command station.

An example of a command table top station

The two side by side tables represent steps leading up to the bridge stations.

Mr. Ursic checked the for additional space between the ceiling tiles and the room's actual ceiling. We need all the additional room height we can get for the Vanguard's raised platforms.

Brent Anderson, Space EdVentures Foundation board member and Farpoint cadet programming instructor, tries out a new app to measure the room's dimensions.

Kyle Herring, Space EdVentures Foundation board member and Vanguard project manager, looks over the room's blueprints with school director, Mark Ursic.

The Vanguard's layout changed several times throughout the morning as our team of experts pondered the simulator's dual purpose: simulator and computer lab. We also needed to find room for an engineering section, sick bay and brig - all absolutely necessary for good missions with large crews.

The imagineering session ended shortly before 1:00 P.M. The design team has a lot to consider before meeting again next Saturday to finalize the Vanguard's bridge design.

I'm grateful for this opportunity to build a new 21st century Space Center at a school which places great value on experiential education. I'm also fortunate to have the support of so many of you long time Space Center fans.

Thank you.

Hackschooling. Watch as this 13 Year Old Boy Talks About his Non Traditional School. It has our Space EdVentures Philosophy WrittenAll Over It.