Farpoint Academy. Post 2. The Crew Prepares for Their Mission Briefing.

Hello Troops,

What would a Space Education Center school be like if one were built as part of a new Space Center?  What is the school's curriculum?  How would simulation (both starship and classroom simulations) tie into the curriculum and the day to day operations of the school?  What grades would the school service? 

What would I build if I could build my dream Space Center School? 

I'll let you in on my thought processes.  I pull from the right side of my brain and imagine the school in my mind.  I walk in while it is in session.  I go to the cafeteria, find an empty table, and sit back and watch the teachers, students and staff in action.  I listen to what they are saying.  I look at their textbooks.  I carefully observe.  If I see something in my imaginings that doesn't work,  I grab a mental eraser, erase the scene and imagine another; and another if necessary, and then another and another until the scene blends well and works with everything around it. 

This is the second post to the story of the students and staff at Farpoint Academy.

Mr. W

Farpoint Academy  
Post 2

The 13:00 bell rang. The Voyager crew sat waiting in Farpoint Academy's Briefing Room 4. Each crewmember wore their ship's red tunics. The top of each tunic, from the collar bone up, was colored differently based on your department. Connor's medical team wore blue and red. Amanda's engineers wore dark yellow and red. Philip Simon's science team wore evergreen and red. Maggie Dearborn's languages and humanities department wore black and red. Tanner Edwards and his security team wore gray and red. The command officers wore light yellow and red.  

Captain Strong stood just outside the room and out of sight from the rest of their crew with First Officer Miranda Philips at his side.  

"Are you ready?" Miranda brushed a bit of lint off her captain's tunic. "The troops are waiting."  

Ian straightened his back and put out his chest. "Let's do this. The first Level Two of the year."  

Miranda paused for a moment to look for a sign of nerves in her captain's light blue eyes.

"Well?" Ian questioned the delay. Miranda smiled, then turned and walked into the Briefing Room.

"Attention," she shouted. Everyone in the room jumped to a somewhat perfect attention. Every eye stared straight ahead at the white board at the front of the Briefing Room.  Ian entered into the room and walked to the podium.  

"At ease, you may sit." He looked around the room at his crew of 50. Many of them were good friends from his neighborhood. He'd gone to school with them his whole life. Others he met for the first time when they were assigned to the Voyager at the start of the year. His crew ranged in age from 11 to 18. The youngest were 6th grade ensigns. The older crew called them rookies. The mission experience was foreign to the rookies. They were the cause of most of the team's Level 1 demerits. Most of the crew's Level 2 demerits would come from them as well over the next 3 months.

Ian began his prepared speech. "Troops, the reason the Voyager crew was chosen to get the school's first Level 2 mission was because of our performance on the Level 1 mission. We got high score, so we earned this." 

The room erupted into applause and cheering. Ian held both fists high over his head. He was their Caesar. They trusted him completely.  

Ian waited for the celebration to quiet down before continuing. "Admiral Schuler is about to come through that door and give us our mission briefing," Ian pointed to the door he had just come out of to the left of the podium. "You know what he's like. I don't want us to get our first demerit today - got it rookies?" Everyone stared at the nearest rookie to where they were sitting. A few rookies got a friendly nudge. Others got a tap on the top of the head. Two sitting in aisle seats found themselves on the floor.  

"First level 1 mission demerit right here!" Security Chief Tanner Edwards stood and pointed down to one of the two rookie security officers assigned to his department for that school year. Bradyn Gillies stood and bowed to the boos and jeers.

"OK, so I got the first demerit on the last mission. How was I suppose to know a slime devil could spit across a room?" Bradyn was the crew's joker. He hoped his jovial nature would bring him a bit of sympathy. It didn't.

"I swear I'll trade you for a Phoenix rookie if you get the first demerit on this mission." Tanner smacked him lightly alongside the head before sitting down. The crew laughed. The Phoenix crew got the lowest score on their Level 1 mission.

"I won't," Bradyn replied while looking at the face of Toby Vercellino framed in the Briefing Room door's window. "Toby will."

The door to the Briefing Room opened slightly. In crept Toby Vercellino, a rookie assigned to the Voyager's medical department.

"Ensign, why are you late?" Ian asked. Toby had the room's attention. It wasn't good to be late for a mission briefing. A tardy was an automatic demerit if caught by one of the school's flight directors.  

"Attention!" The first officer's voice cut off Toby's stuttering excuse. Admiral Schuler was standing in the doorway looking at the Voyager crew. It was the quintessential Admiral Schuler, complete with immaculately pressed uniform and condescending sneer. 

"One demerit. Ensign Vercellino," Admiral Schuler's voice rang throughout the hushed room.  

"One demerit, Ensign Vercellino," the computer spoke to register the demerit against the crew's score.  A chime rang out of the room's comm link telling everyone a demerit had been recorded.  

The Admiral stood in the doorway for what seemed like hours. His modus operandi was to tear his crews down before building them up. He moved toward the podium only after seeing one of the rookies teeter back and forth. The ensign had locked her knees and looked like she was about to have an unpleasant encounter with the twirling floor.  

"At ease." The Admiral spoke with authority. The crew sat, most at the edge of their chair. Their fate for the next three months rested in the words he was about to speak.

Two New Simulator Building Ideas. Your Comments.

Hello Troops,
A cold front has moved in from the north.  It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.  I'm looking out my front window at the valley below.  There is a wall of white snow working its way across American Fork heading straight for Pleasant Grove. 

We had an interesting Space Center Committee meeting at Thanksgiving Point Thursday afternoon.  Thanksgiving Point management gave us a short presentation on their new museum currently under construction.  The Museum of Natural Curiosity opens in one year.  It will house several hands on science displays; making it similar in scope and sequence to San Fransisco's Exploratorium.  

Thanksgiving Point's management expressed an interest in working with the school district to provide a new home for the Space Center near the new museum.  The committee was excited about the proposal, but remember, the devil is in the details.  The district's people will get together with Thanksgiving Point's people to explore the business end of a possible partnership.  The school board will make the final decision based on their findings and the committee's recommendations.

The interest wasn't there for an Alpine District school at Thanksgiving Point at the present time.  Everyone agreed it would be a perfect site for a school, but the funding isn't there.  I've got a few ideas and haven't given up on the dream of a Space Center school (Farpoint Academy from last Saturday's post).  

It appears we will have a few ships up and running at Central School by the middle of January.

That pretty much sums up the latest news.  

Mr. W.

Your Comments     

Miranda Wrote:

Quick comment concerning laser tag vests: I believe they are too impractical and time different for our purposes. We try to pull ourselves out into the future as much as we can with the current technology available to us. The complete immersion isn't as effective without campers putting in a little acting themselves. When one plays laser tag and is "tagged" or "Down" in our case and their laser gun stops working for "x" amount of time, you lose your immersion in what you're doing.  

Playing dead on the other hand, if you're willing to believe (Just like if you're willing to believe in magic of Christmas) the experience becomes 10 times the better of what it can be seen as.  

Quick Comment on Farpoint: Please write more. The student life sounded pretty cool; however, I'm very intrigued as to how staff life would be different working for a school space center instead of just the space center. For instance, would all Flight Directors have to be teaching certified? To what degree? Would we still run private missions? What would happen/would we need a volunteer force, and who would that force consist of? 

 Thanks for brightening our day with futures soon to come (at least one can hope within the century.) 

Isaac O wrote

I HAD THE BEST IDEA EVER ON THE BUS HOME TODAY!!! Escape Pods!!! That would be SO COOL!!! if the crew has to escape or leave the ship, they jump into the escape pods (like shuttles) and then they can still use the computers and stuff! 

Anonymous wrote

First- I don't like the idea of a magnet school at all- at least not right away. It would take funds away from making the new space center a true "dream center."  

Second- With the closing of the Voyager and the destruction of the Odyssey, what will happen to the pins that were in progress? I, among others, was a 5 hr or two away from receiving my second voyager pass, consequentially giving me Voyager pin. Will all of that work have to go down the drain? 

Volunteers will no longer need Odyssey or Voyager pins to advance.  

JM wrote

Thanks for the explanation, Alex! It's nice to know your thoughts behind the design. It made me really excited for the day construction on the new CMSEC building will begin! Whenever that is, of course. 

1. Is it a dumb idea to put the Galileo outside? I don't know how weather resistant it is, but you could put it to the side of the Assembly room with a door leading directly to it. It would double as sort of an outdoor decoration/advertisement for theCMSEC and a real simulator. I also don't know how that would work with the staff trying to run missions- would you need to run wires to the Galileo (meaning the control room would have to be outside too) or can you do everything wirelessly (meaning the control room can take a corner of the Assembly room maybe)?2. I like Anonymous' idea to move the doors to the engineering sections to face the bridge. And I concur that the idea to make safety lights double as set lights is a great one! 

Oh, another thing I REALLY liked was Alex's suggestions for how to incorporate real scientific tests and principles. SO COOL! You could easily include astronomy as well by having a situation where you're lost in space and have to determine where you are based on nearby constellations or something else. Give the science officer a star chart to reference and let them put that planetarium time to good use! 

P.S. Mr. Williamson, your Farpoint Academy sounds like my childhood dream school. And I really like your writing. You should write more "Enemy from the Dark" when you have time. 

Name Classified wrote;

First of all; it looks like this is sort-of in the design already but I want to clarify. It looks to me that there is at least a small ramp in the large simulators to go to a higher bridge (half-quarter floor higher), if this isn't the case I would highly recommend it 

Second: I have an idea for the engineering problem, if I'm being able to tell what is on the bridge. It looks like you might be able to put the engineer in the corner (like on the Voyager) and have a door behind them that opens out into the engineering room, while having it lock from the bridge side. (with the other door on the design where it is) And it could be a rule to always lock it, and then make that rule important in certain missions where when the ship is invaded an intruder try's to get in that way. And if the door is unlocked you get knocked a point down because that is a less defensible area, and the ship gets invaded because the other intruders are coming the other way and nobody notices the one intruder until it's too late 

Sorry for the long comment, I hope that I made enough sense to be understood!
I keep hoping for the best future for the Center! 

Two Simulator Floor plans Submitted by Our Readers

Connor P sent the floor plan and email below.  Feel free to comment.

Mr. Williamson,
This is my concept of what the "ideal" space center would be like. Notice I didn't use the word "dream" as was used in the first design submitted by Alex, because I could dream a lot more than this. Rather than being beyond my wildest dreams, this is the general layout that I think could work for the space center. As it stands, however, it is probably a fair bit beyond the current budget.
Before I explain, I have a couple of disclaimers: One, these rooms are not even close to drawn to scale. (In other words, I don't think that the classrooms should be the same size as two bathrooms.) Two, I had a lot of extra space that I didn't know what to do with after I placed my initial ideas. Based on the feedback that Alex gave about the comments from everybody, I think I will rework this design to better fit reality and remove the "extra" stuff.
Now, for the explanation. I divided my concept into "zones" in the second picture. I will start with explaining a little bit about that.

1. Welcome/Business Zone (green): The experience should begin with everything the students/campers and their parents need before the actual mission. This includes payment and questions in the office, storage for overnighters, and bathrooms for beforehand. I even provided for the possibility of a museum that Mr. Williamson talked about; display cabinets or other information about the space center's history could be put in the foyer.

1. Simulation Zone (red): Once you enter this zone, I believe the simulation "experience" should begin, and should only be interrupted for very rare circumstances. This goes along with my previous comments about how to make the hallways futuristic to fit in more with this experience (see this post, just before the imaginarium). This would only need to be done in the hallways in the Simulation Zone. As I will explain more when I get to the Staff Zone, staff and volunteers will be able to access these areas through other hallways if necessary. This zone includes space for away missions.

1. Education Zone (orange): This zone is for the education part of the space center (Note: in my next version of my design, I probably will combine this zone with the Overnight Needs Zone. As Alex said, the planetarium could be put inside the assembly hall). This is probably my area of least expertise, so I will defer to the comments of others. I do believe that education can and should be a larger focus of the new center.

1. Overnight Needs Zone (yellow): Not much comment is needed here, but I have an idea I may comment on later for a separate sleeping area that avoids some of the issues that stop the center from doing that now. It would be nice to have one specific area for campers to have everything they need at night for an overnighter.

1. Staff Zone (blue): This zone doesn't really need to be this big, but I think it is wise to have a separate space for the staff and volunteers, especially if we don't have Discovery anymore. Notice that every one of the control rooms is accessible from the main hallways. It will be sad not to have the central office for the entrance to three of the simulators and their control rooms, but I think this option will ultimately be better. This way, staff can quickly get to where they need to, including the away mission areas, other control rooms, and anywhere else in the center for supplies. It may still be worthwhile to make a way for the staff to get to their respective control rooms from the "transporter room", but you get the idea. There is also space for the programming guild and a room for laundry and maintenance, but I think in my revised design these will have to be combined with the staff room.

Anyway, that is my design. I hope you get what I am going for. My next idea I will talk about in the future is how the control rooms themselves can be made just a little bit more efficient and effective.
Connor P's floorplan:

Nathan Winters sent the floor plan below.  Please feel free to comment.

My Old Space Center Rituals and The Imaginarium.

Hello Troops,

Its hard to shake a routine once it gets stuck into the fiber of your being.  One such routine was my Friday morning ritual of going Space Center Overnight Camp grocery shopping.  

For 22 years,  I use to go shopping early Friday morning to pick up the food and supplies for that weekend's Overnight Camp.  I shopped at American Fork's Albertsons when the Space Center first opened.  Pleasant Grove's Smiths was the next business blessed to have Space Center trade and Lindon's Walmart was the last.

My Space Center routines were embedded with other routines.

Friday Space Center Shopping Routine:

1.  Arrive at Walmart at 7:10 A.M.
2.  Get a shopping cart, hoping it wasn't one with a gimpy wheel.  Walmart likes 
     to file a flat spot onto one wheel of many of their shopping carts.  They do it to
     discourage the homeless from stealing carts and turning them into permanent
     transportable storage containers. 80% of the time I'd get the crippled cart,
     making me easily found anywhere in the grocery lanes.
3.  First stop, fruit.  Bananas, clementines and apples.
4.  Second stop, doughnuts and cookies.  I'd order seven dozen for
     Saturday morning's breakfast.  I also picked up four dozen cookies to add to
     the evening's snack. 
5.  Third stop, ice cream sandwiches.  MeadowGold were the best.
6.  Fourth Stop, paper towels,napkins and 9oz cups.
     The Great Values brand towels divided into half lengths are the best.  9 oz
     plastic cups are preferred.  It takes less juice to fill them - hence lowering
     the cost of your liquids.  Remember, a few pennies saved here and there will
     eventually lead up to a new simulator (over a very very very very long period
     of time of course).
7.  Fifth stop, Dairy.  Gogurts, Sunny Delight, milk and chocolate milk are a must
     for a well balanced Space Center breakfast.
8.  Final stop, Day Old Rack.  You'd be surprised what you find on the Bakery's
     Day Old Rack (kept inconveniently at the back of the store in the Dairy
     Section).  All Staff and Volunteer snacks were found on the Day Old Rack.
     They knew to ignore the yellow sticker and be thankful for small blessings.

My routine included checking out with my favorite cashiers (if their lines were reasonably short).  My Walmart friends and I would catch up on the week's news as they scanned my purchases.  Every shopping trip ended with a friendly, "See ya next week."  

I've kept that Friday morning Walmart routine despite the Space Center's closure.   I do it because it gives me a sense of normalcy in uncertain times.  It also lets me keep in touch with the friends I've made over the years.

This morning I walked into the store and said "hello," to the usual, somewhat friendly, door greeter

"How's the Space Center doing?" she asked with a quick salute.

"Down, but not out," I answered.

"That's good," she replied.

I bypassed the shopping carts and went straight to the candy isle to pick up a bag of Tootsie Rolls (bribes for my math students).  Before checking out, I picked up a package of Jack Link's Premium Cuts Jalapeno Carne Seca Beef Jerky and a Diet Mr. Dew for myself.

I scanned the checkout stands looking for a short line with a familiar face.

"Mr. Williamson, I'm open," I heard one of the cashiers say.  I looked down two registers and saw a cashier friend I hadn't seen for quite awhile.

A year ago this cashier told me she had breast cancer.  She said she would be going on an extended sick leave for treatment.   She explained the chemo treatment and its side effects.  She expressed her worries about the medical bills.  She tried to keep things positive, but her eyes said differently.

That was one year ago.  Today I found her back at work, manning her till.  She looked tired.  Her hair was growing back and her smile and laugh were just as I had remembered.  We only spoke for a moment; others were waiting in line.  She said her treatment was successful.  She was cancer free. 

"How has surviving cancer affected you?" I asked.  I wondered if the question was too personal right after I had asked it.  I didn't want to pry. 

She thought for a moment.  I could tell it was a questioned she wasn't asked often.
"I've learned to appreciate each day and take them as they come," She replied as she handed me my receipt.  "Things don't get me down as much as they use to."

"Its something we all need to learn," I replied.  "I'll see you next week.  Take care."

"Have a great day," she answered.

That brief conversation with my cashier friend put things into context.  I realized I had to learn not to stress over things out of my control.  I had to learn not to dwell on the bad, because things could either get better or worse.  I had to learn to count my blessings and enjoy each day.  I needed to stop and notice the small and simple things in life.

 It was a lesson I needed.  Thank you my friend. 
 

  And Now, the Imaginarium 

A poor man's four wheeler.

What a view from that swingset

A waterpark:  Imagination A.

Perfect Christmas Gifts.

Ingenuity:  A

Two true random acts of holiday kindness.

Do a random act of kindness for someone this holiday season.

The Formula for Hate.

Creativity: A

A Map of Wonderland.

Where would you make your home?

Something for your baby this holiday season.

Worthy of a holiday smile or two.

Old School.

Awesome.

My membership application is in the mail.

A software company's Christmas Tree

I'll buy season tickets to this theater.