The Farpoint Jumpship Discovery Launches at American Heritage School in American Fork. What a Great Addition to the School's Curriculum. See the First Students to Fly and the Ship's Cool New Equipment

        The Farpoint Jumpship Discovery launched and completed its space trials during the first week of January.  The Discovery is the American Heritage Space Center's flagship at their American Fork campus.  Alex DeBirk, a long time volunteer and staff member of the Christa McAuliffe Space Center and the Starship Voyager at Renaissance Academy, is the director.  He has been working late into the night and weekends for the past few months in preparation for the launch.  And while the Discovery isn't completely finish (no simulator ever is no matter how long it has been open) it was certified space worthy.  The following are photos of the jumpship's first crews. 

The Discovery's Logo

The Discovery's Warp Core

     The Discovery has a small sick bay just off to the left of the Bridge.  Attached to the sick bay is a small warp core access room called "Bridge Engineering".  The jaw dropping prop in the room is the warp core engineered by Alex DeBirk.  The warp core has diffused led lights capable of doing patterns. The software to create the pulsing pattern was written by one of the school's parents. 

Alex DeBirk and the parent who programmed the warp core and is currently working on a new method of distributing power within Thorium

The Discovery's new power distribution program to be

incorporated within Thorium.  It take power distribution to then next level by adding some realism to the process and a whole bunch of animated coolness

The Cool Everything Box in the Discovery's Control Room

The Everything Box in the Discovery's Control Room. It does everything from

control the lights to play sound effects to run video plus more. It is amazing and each button is a monitor so you can change the name of the button using software.

The Discovery's Sick Bay

The Discovery has a small sick bay off to the left of the bridge.  The sick bay took an idea from the original Starship Voyager at the CMSC and has a three level bunk bed.  The area under the bottom bunk is a crawl space with a secret access hatch to the hallway separating the Discovery from the Galileo.  The sick bay is lined in FRP panelling - a tribute to the original Phoenix. 

The FRP panelling

     I stopped by to offer Alex some help organizing the school's Young Astronaut Club last Friday.  All American Heritage School students from grade 5 to 12 will take an inhouse field trip during the school year. They spend half the school day in science and engineering classes correlated to the mission and the other half of the day in the simulator.  Alex and I worked through multiple break out sessions to strengthen the curriculum of the mission and to properly tie the mission's theme to the classroom presentation.  

     Alex has done a tremendous job creating the space center at American Heritage.  It will bring engaging missions and lessons to the school's students for decades to come.  His work will also benefit the other Farpoint space centers (Telos University and The Space Place at Renaissance Academy). I look forward to conducting joint missions and possible competitions between the Young Astronauts at Renaissance Academy and American Heritage. 

Mr. Williamson