Do You Have an Idea for the New Space Center? Sunday's Imaginarium.

Hello Troops,

I had a meeting yesterday with several Space Center staff and volunteers who've been meeting on their own to mull over possible plans for our new Space Center.  They want to contribute to the process of recreating the success of the old Space Center in the new Center being envisioned by the District's Space Center Committee.

Alex Debirk was on hand to offer expert advice on their building ideas.  Alex is a former Space Center flight director and designer of the new Galileo.  Alex still contributes to the Space Center by creating computer special effects for our missions.  Alex graduates in three weeks with a Masters degree in structural engineering from Berkeley.  Buildings are his speciality.

BJ Warner, Stacy Carrell, Skyler Paxman, Jon Parker, and Ben Murdock presented their vision for a new Space Center building.  Their building design included several starship simulators, classrooms, briefing rooms, dorms,  etc.  A planetarium, offices, and gift shop were also part of their dream building.   I was impressed with their work.

Community citizenship and a true spirit of volunteerism is the foundation of the Space Center.  This spirit is evident in our volunteers and staff who continue to meet on their own, without pay (despite the Space Center's closure) to work toward the continued success of this happy place we call The Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center.   Their work is just one example of the success that comes when an educational institution joins forces with its community and business partners to create a learning center unique to the world.

Alex Debirk took the ideas discusses in our meeting yesterday, drew them up in a preliminary sketch and emailed them to me for consideration.  I'd like to show you the initial sketches.  Remember, this is a very rough design for the 'dream' Space Center.  

Remember, this is a suggested design imagined by a committee of Space Center volunteers and staff.  It is a proposal they will be debating and altering over the next few weeks.  The plans above are for a much larger Center than the 2.5 million dollar Center currently being discussed.  This is the dream Center.  The cost for the Center above would be roughly $5,000,000.  We start with a dream, then work to achieve it. 

Please remember, the new Space Center may not offer overnight camps.  This is a decision to be made by the district's committee.  The school district's Space Center Committee has been designated to make official recommendations to the school board.   

The Space Center is here today because of people like you who have supported us for twenty-two years.  Your support gives you a voice,  a voice I'd like to hear.  All readers of The Troubadour are welcome to comment on this design.  What do you like?  What would you change?  What did the volunteer committee forget to include?  Do you have another idea you'd like to share?  This is your opportunity.  Please send a jpeg of your own design along with comments and suggestions.  Its speak now or forever hold your peace.  

All ideas and drawings will be posted on the blog for everyone's consideration.  Let your creative juices flow.  It is time to Imagine!  What would your dream center include?  How many ships?  Would you include a school as part of the new Center?  If so, what grades?  What would the school's emphasis be?   How could more math and science be integrated into future Space Center missions?  Besides simulators, what else could a new Space Center have to make it more field trip friendly to grades 1 to 4 and grades 7 to 12?    

The district's Space Center Committee will be discussing the new building at an upcoming meeting.  It would be good to have your ideas and suggestions to take with me into the discussion.  

Mr. Williamson

Space Science Lesson for the Day.

The Imaginarium

We haven't made a trip into the Imaginarium for quite a while.  Let's take a break and see creativity and imagination in action.

     Money is made when a person find's a need and fills it.

This is how a successful business works.

Creativity: A

A backpack with hood.

It fills a need

A good thing to remember

I post this as a reference to see beyond our five senses.

Just because we can't see it, feel it, hear it, or smell it doesn't mean it isn't real.

There are other dimensions of space time we can't sense in our 3 dimensional world.

Someone living in a 2D world wouldn't perceive us because we exist in 3 dimensions -

except for the exact place our finger intersects the plane of their 2D universe.

Are there signs out there of intersections from other dimensions of space time in our 

universe?  Something to ponder.

A pretzel bakery's Thanksgiving Offering.

Creativity: A

A unique calendar.

A careful balancing act.

These are popping up everywhere.

A need filled.  Take one, donate one.

Imagination: A

Humor: A

Making something special out of an ordinary everyday object like this trash can.

A special Christmas something for your door.

Creativity: A

His faith is being tested.

Haven't we all contributed a chapter to this book?

You have to give him credit for trying

Be nice to the people who serve you.

Brilliant design and very creative!

A unique bunk bed.

Take the ordinary and make it extraordinary.

This is going up in my classroom.

It made you stop and think, didn't it?

Brilliant advertising

Creativity: A

I'd buy several of these a year, check the appropriate box and give it as a humorous gift.

Find a need and fill it.

A clever way to include something common place into something imaginative.

I don't get this and I never will.

What are these two thinking?

I'm glad the world has people like this.  I'm not one of them.

Some people live outside the box.

They will always push the boundary.

You know you're approaching self actualization with you really don't care

what people think.

A clever doorstop.

Creativity: A 

Guilty as charged.

I've got a prison full of these in my kitchen.

Impossible in my opinion without the Force.

A creative teacher with a sense of play and humor.

A creative use of 20 ounce soda and water bottles.

Amen.

I rarely would consider posting a photo of a toilet but this one begged to be shared.

Reading materials not needed in this restroom.

This boy has the right idea when out Christmas shopping with his mom.

Remember, there is always something to be found worthy of mention.

Imagination: A

Brilliant holiday decoration idea.

I'll be nobody in your neighborhood has thought of this yet.

Be the first.

So that's why?

I get it now.

The real Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

A light saber across your car's grill, your punishment will be.

You'd be surprised how many businesses and organizations treat their employees this way.

Something you'd never find at the Space Center.

We welcome and require ideas and suggestions.

Which are you?

Why do we still cling to the old ways?

A Thanksgiving Pizza.

Creativity: A

I badly want.

Steve Martin's business cards.

Take an ordinary thing and make it extraordinary.

Sometimes security cameras catch people showing us that there are plenty of good people left in this world.  

From the Daily Herald. Possibilities for the Space Center's Future

Hello Troops,

This article appeared in today's edition of the Provo Daily Herald.  It covers several items discussed in our last Space Center Committee meeting and comments made to the reporter during the last board meeting.  My comments are added in blue.  This article was written by Caleb Warnock, a reporter for the Daily Herald.   Mr. W.

 PLEASANT GROVE -- Alpine School District's condemned space center might find a second life as a magnet school.

I'm glad to see my suggestion has some support.  Magnet schools are fairly common in school districts nationwide.  I see a Space Center magnet school focusing on blending math, science and technology with the humanities.  For ten years the heading of our blog has said "The Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center; A Utah Arts, Sciences, Math, Technology Initiative".  This school would be open to students district wide.  Can you imagine the public's interest in such a school?  Imagine going to a school anchored by futuristic starship simulators.   The demand to get into such a school would be overwhelming.

The Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center was closed a month ago over safety concerns. In a recent board meeting, district officials and board members said they are mulling this opportunity to create something much larger out of the space center program.

"Maybe the space center is more than what it currently does," assistant superintendent Rob Smith said. "Maybe there could be a zero gravity room. Maybe a 100-seat theater."

We can't switch off gravity.  I believe he may have meant a display that simulates alternate gravities.  Clark Planetarium once had a device which simulated the moon's gravity.  The moon's gravity is 1/6  that of Earths.  You were strapped in this device which counter balanced away 5/6th of your weight. Such a device would be an excellent addition to the new Center.   

A robotics and math program, sponsored by IM Flash Technologies, could be part of the new plan, he said. There is a great new for space for students to focus on match competitions, robotics and technology classes.
"It would take it from a fourth- to sixth-grade program to a secondary program, a magnet for the whole district," board member JoDee Sundberg said.

The elementary grade program would not be eliminated.  It is intended the new Center would continue to use simulators.  These other programs would be offered for junior and senior high school students.  The Space Center would be a field trip site for most grades. 

"I think it has some great possibilities," Smith said.

Property was purchased four or five years ago to build a new space center, but the public, in hearings before the last bond, told board members they did not want the district spending money on a space center redo.

"It was the intent of the board to have it on the bond, and it was not received by the public," Sundberg said. "I think that has to be remembered. It was always the intent of the board to do something about it."

We didn't have an organized effort to advocate for the Space Center on the bond.  I asked our supporters not to rally for the Space Center believing there was enough money in the bond to meet all the District's needs, including a new Space Center.  I wasn't concerned after the Space Center was taken off the bond.  The District put out a statement saying a new Space Center would be built with capital money towards the latter part of this decade.    

Since the center was closed, however, public sentiment has shifted toward the nostalgic in a big way.
"People have been emailing me by the kazillion," board member Paula Hill said. "We recognize the community attachment and we are doing everything we can to facilitate it."

"Absolutely, we recognize the attachment and the community value," Superintendent Vern Henshaw said.

North of Central Elementary in Pleasant Grove, the district purchased and razed an old church with the intention of building a space center on the property when funds became available. But when voters did not want the space center on the bond, work had to be delayed.  Now, the district has formed a committee to explore options for the space center, with a report due in February or March.

We meet again on November 28.

Originally the district sought to budget $1.5 million for the rebuild, but has now raised that to $2.5 million, which does not include the price of property.

"We upped it because we are looking at other possibilities," Smith said. "We are asking ourselves, is it adequate? Is there anything we should add to it? We turn a lot of kids away at the space center" because of space limitations.

A new facility with four large simulators will allow the Space Center to take four classes a day on field trips.  This will double the number of students we currently take.

"We are just simply exploring all options," Henshaw said. "It isn't necessarily that it has to be on that property. The scope of it might be larger than what that is."
The property could be used to expand Central Elementary instead, and the district could purchase a larger property for the space center.

It would be sad to leave Central School.  

The center, named after the teacher who died on the space shuttle Challenger, began as a classroom experiment by Victor Williamson, who teaches at Central Elementary School in Pleasant Grove. Starting with nothing more than an overhead projector, Williamson took his students on a simulated space journey and found that they not only enjoyed the learning experience, but retained information better than they did when taught conventionally.

I did my first classroom space simulation in the spring of 1984.  I still have the original scripts and plastic overlays for the overhead projector.  Someone once told me, "Be careful what you wish for, it may come true."  Look how this simple classroom experiment has evolved. 

Through grants and donations, Williamson was able to build a more advanced and larger scale program at the school until year by year the space center became known statewide and then nationally as a space education center. At its annual scheduled maintenance check in August, however, the local fire marshal discovered several electrical issues that needed to be resolved. There were other issues with simulators that had to be changed and updated to meet city and state codes, so the district shuttered it for the time.

A Collection of Memories. Happy Thanksgiving and Mrs. Houston's Photographs

Hello Troops,
Happy Thanksgiving to our Space Center staff, volunteers and fans!

Today I'm thankful for family and friends.  I'm thankful for the twenty-two years I spent with outstanding dedicated staff and volunteers in a happy place we call 'The Space Center'.  I'm thankful for the 310,000 people who came through our doors on voyages of imagination.  I'm grateful for the tremendous outpouring of support this program has received over the past several weeks.  Your support has played, and will continue to play, an important role as we consider the Space Center's future.  There are many decisions to be made.  How much of the old will stay as we envision the new?  What direction do we take as we chart a course into unknown territory?  I'll rely on your input as we forge ahead.  The school district's Space Center committee meets in full on November 28.

The Williamson's will be converging on my sister's home in Pleasant Grove.  Family has come from near and far for the event.

You never know what you'll get at a Williamson holiday gathering.  In the best of times,  the event could pass peacefully with little to report other than Great Grandma Luella managing to keep a portion of her meal on her plate and off her blouse and the children survive with little or no blood loss.

In the worst of times, there could be fireworks if family members aren't strategically positioned around the Thanksgiving table.  I'm hoping my sister remembers to seat our family's few remaining independents between the rabid Republics and the Peace, Land and Bread Democrats.  Great Grandma Luella has already been chastised by my sister Lisa for attempting to covert my twelve year old niece to socialism.  Great Grandma has been brushing up for this holiday reunion by watching hundreds of hours of PBS and CSPAN.

We sometimes have a problem with religion.  Not only must my sister separate family members with strong political views, she must also take into consideration the family's diverse religious beliefs as she sets out the name places around the table.  Those who favor reincarnation are generally tolerated by the liberals.  They will be sat at the end of the table.  Our Mormon majority are too numerous to separate so they must be sub categorized by conviction.  Forgiving, back of the chapel Mormons, are good to mix with the minority agnostics.  Front row, hymn singing Mormons are good to sit near the old people's section at the front of the table.  It makes it easy for calling on someone to offer the Thanksgiving blessing on the food.

One of my jobs at all holiday reunions is to monitor the gathering and inject myself into any conversation or situation that appears to be approaching the boiling point.  My 30 years in the classroom uniquely qualifies me for the task.  I know the family very well, having been a part of it  for 54 years, and can generally detect the raising of voices quickly enough to bolt across the room, squeeze inbetween the combatants and turn a phrase fast enough to cool the waters and redirect the conversation's flow.  I've been brushing up on anecdotes and feel confident I can keep things civil and peaceful until everyone goes home to debate whether or not they'll ever go to another gathering again.
 I have the nuclear option if my efforts to keep the peace fail.  I walk over to Great Grandpa Charlie, pull him away from the poor soul he's trapped in a conversation for 30 minutes, and tell him that So and So had a question on the how to prepare for the fast approaching apocalypse.

"You've come to the right person," he'll say as he hobbles across the crowded room to find his new prey.

Great Grandpa Charlie believes the world will end by the end of the year.  He has believed the world will end at the end of every year since 1968, which is why he purchased six acres of farmland in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

"We won't starve if I keep the land," he answers proudly whenever asked why he doesn't sell the land and pocket the profit.  His survival plans unravel when we press him for details on how we are suppose to get to South Dakota if things suddenly head south and starving mobs ravage neighborhoods.  

Anyway.......  I'm hoping you and yours have a very enjoyable day.   

And now, a few pictures from Mrs. Houston's Space Center photo album.

      

Mrs. Houston teaching the field trip class in 1995.  

The Odyssey's entrance is at the back of the room.  We didn't have the Discovery Room or the Phoenix Simulator back then.  The class session was held in Mr. Williamson's office.  Teaching was difficult because of the simulator noises coming from the Odyssey and Voyager.  Notice the old 1956 light fixtures in the ceiling.  Once we had a boy tell us how cool and futuristic they were.  I suppose anything could be futuristic if you've never seen it before. 

 Summer Camp 2001

The campers are on the playground mapping the distances of the planets from the sun and each other.

Launching rockets with Mrs. Remy during summer camp.  2001

The Falcon Team from the summer of 2001.

The Falcon is gone, replaced by the Phoenix.  The Falcon sat inside 

one of the Starlab bubbles.  It was run by Mr. Schuler, Mrs. Houston, Stacy Carrel, 

and Joshua Babb.  It was a real hassle.  The Falcon had to be assembled every Friday afternoon as soon as school let out, then taken apart and put away after every overnight camp. 

Mr. Daymont with another crew of the Falcon.  The campers were from Astrocamp, our sister center in Ogden.  Summer 2001 

Summer Camp 2001

Mr. Daymont with our campers at Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City

Two volunteers dressed in our new Greenpeace costumes designed and sewn by Mrs. Houston

2000

Two volunteers in newly sewn alien costumes.

1998

Mrs. Clegg, the Space Center's curriculum specialist in the Discovery Room setting up

for a field trip lesson.

Randy Jepperson catching a few zzzz's in the newly opened Discovery Room.

I'm striking a happy pose outside the newly installed Odyssey dark room door.

 Some have their security blanket.  I have my Diet Coke.  I can't go anywhere without one.

 

Here I am on the Voyager Bridge waxing poetic before the start of a field trip mission.

2001

Here I am again teaching my pre-algebra class in 1999.

My assignment was to direct the Space Center when the Center first opened in 1990.  

I volunteered to teach the math class to help the school's sixth grade.  I'm still teaching the class every morning from 9:00 to 10:30 A.M.

I taught the class in my office before the Phoenix was built.  The class moved to the Discovery Room after the Phoenix opened.

One of the Space Center's Honor's Nights.

I'm presenting the Silver Chalice of Zod to Kirby Glad, a great Space Center supporter.

The Silver Chalice of Zod was named after the Chalice Dr. Marcus brags about in every Supernova Mission on the Voyager or Phoenix.

 Another Honor's Night in the Magellan

Pillowcases are being awarded to volunteers who reached the 500 hour volunteer level.

This was taken shortly after the Magellan opened.  This was before we had the Discovery Room.  The door behind me led directly to the Control Room.  Notice the old computers and the very old main view screen.

A later Honor's Night in the Discovery Room.  Pillowcases are being awarded.

The volunteers came up with this strange tradition of covering their heads for the picture. 

Fun for them, impossible to tell who they are for posterity.

 A photograph of me and a few very old staff from our 15th anniversary celebration in 2005

Russell Smith, Tony Grover, Jake Mattson, Kyle Sanderson and Clint Sanderson.

Two Space Center legends, David Merrill and Tony Grover