The First Day of Summer? News from the Logan Space Education Center. The Imaginarium

 

 The Way I Live My Life.

Truths can survive even the harshest of criticism and examination.

Hello Troops,

Is it summer already?  What happened to spring?  What's up with this 92 degree day?  These temperatures make my Shelley Elementary afternoon parking lot duties much more difficult.  My problem is finding adequate shade, and the only shade available at Shelley Elementary is the flagpole and flag.  The sliver of flagpole shade is hardly worth fighting the kids for, so I concentrate on the shadow cast by the waving flag.  Tracking the flag's moving shade is also good for exercise.  I'm sure many of the waiting parents think I either slightly autistic or someone who likes to dance a solo waltz.

"It's too hot..... I'm going to boil!" one young first grader complained as he staggered back and forth down the sidewalk, feigning exhaustion and early onset delirium.   He was joined by a chorus of supporters who followed his lead.  Soon I had a sidewalk seething with discomfort and heat exhaustion.  

"What's wrong with kids these days?" I mumbled as I shifted back and forth and side to side, wishing the flag would just make up its mind and wave properly. 

I got an email from James Porter this morning.  James is one of the founding members of the Cache County (Logan Utah) Space Education Center.  He and his partners are in the process of raising funds to build a space center in the Logan, Utah area.  This space center is separate from the CMSEC and Discovery Space Center in Pleasant Grove.  

I KNOW.... I KNOW..... you're confused aren't you?  Too many space centers and not enough available mental memory to  keep them separate in your mind.  Well, let me help. 

The CMSEC.  The Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center is my first space center located at Central School in the Alpine District.  This is the space center most people think of when they say or hear "Space Center".  The CMSEC is owned and operated by the Alpine School District.  

The Discovery Space Center.  The DSC is located at the Stone Gate Center for the Arts in Pleasant Grove and owned by the Bott family.  Discoveryspacecenter.com

Farpoint Station.  Farpoint is my newest, soon to be built space center.  It will be the space center for the NOW generation.  Farpoint will be built next year at Renaissance Academy, a charter school in Lehi, Utah,  and expected to open in the fall of 2014. Farpoint currently offers classes and Simlabs.  Learn more about Farpoint and GET INVOLVED.  Farpointinstitute.org  

The Space Education Center, Logan Utah.  This is the center run by James Porter - discussed in one of the paragraphs above and below

These four centers are separate, run by their own foundations and boards.  Does that help you understand?  If not, contact me by email and I'll do my best to explain again.  

Now, back to the email I received from The Space Education Center in Logan, Utah with their latest news. 




News from the Cache County Space Education Center.  Logan, Utah

By David Sidwell
Executive Director

  

Dear Friends,
Thanks for your support in our exciting endeavor to provide exciting, educational experiences to kids and even to adults

We have a lot to catch you up on, and many outstanding things have been happening. I'm not sure which is the most important of our various new items, so I'll start with the one that is perhaps the most timely: money, of course! We are trying to raise a quick $500, and for good purposes. There are two:

1.

We have completed the paperwork to apply for 501c3 status, but they require $850 for our application--we are nearly there. 501c3 is the designation by the IRS for nonprofit organizations. Once we get our nonprofit status in about 3-4 months (that's about how long it usually takes the IRS to process paperwork and get back with us), then when we ask for donations from people it will be tax deductible for them (this includes all previous donations as well). We will also have the ability to apply for grants and many other resource raising activities.

2. 

We are negotiation with iWorlds in the Utah County area to get their trailer up here to use for the Summer. We are negotiating a rental fee and such, but there is a potential arrangement that might have us using it for free! This is super news, since the trailer we will procure will have all we need to help folks have fun in a Starship Simulation this summer. Summer camps equals money in the bank for us so we can afford to do things this coming school year. We have calculated the cost of retrieving the trailer at about $200.

                     

(Photos: iWorlds Trailer, most likely available to us this summer!)

I'm hoping the iWorld's simulator will be put to good use in Logan.  I believe it is just what the program needs to get off its feet.  

We are wishing our Logan friends all the luck in the world as they do everything they can to bring a space center experience to the people of northern Utah.  

Mr. Williamson

The Imaginarium

Yes, we are the ones who preach over and over again that life is for making the ordinary, extraordinary. 

People are uncomfortable with "I don't know" or believing in a system that is "currently the best fit, which might or might not change in the future".

Folks like their concrete, which explains why so many people refuse to accept new ideas or change their point of views, regardless of how much evidence is presented. They've invested a lot, emotionally, in whatever they choose to believe.

The Entrance to the National History Muesum.  London. 

Troops, I propose that Farpoint's entrance look something like this.  

Any one want to second that motion?

Yes, the winding key turns when the car is in motion.

There is always a way

I Wonder how many fell for this?

A Flying Horse

Happy Mother's Day

Challenge, Not Accepted.

A German Library

Questions and Comments on this and other posts should be directed to
Spacecamputah@gmail.com

I'm a Renaissance Man. Farpoint's First Class. Flight Director Training. News. The Imaginarium

 Farpoint's First Class Session, Almost Without a Hitch

Our first of four web design classes was held today at Renaissance Academy in Lehi.  I arrived at 9:30 for the 10:00 A.M. class,  wanting to be absolutely sure Fortuna hadn't jinxed things up during the night (refer to yesterday's Troubadour post).  Danny Shields was waiting, along with Shelley Ellington from the Space EdVentures Foundation Board.  We approached the front door together.  I had the school's key the director had given me the night before.

"Brent and I were here last night to make sure everything would go smoothly," I told them as I inserted the key into the front door.  The key slipped smoothly into the lock, but turn - it would not.  "Fortuna!" I mumbled with contempt. Right then and there I realized I had made a mistake when I included her in my Friday night Troubadour post.  Our mischievous Olympian almost always strikes with a vengeance when I post something about her in this blog.   

I had Shelley try the lock.  It still wouldn't turn.  I jiggled the key.  It still wouldn't turn.  Shelley stopped me from kicking the door (the next thing I was planning on doing as I worked down my checklist on getting a key to open a locked door).  "Let's call Mark [Renaissance's Director]," she suggested. 

"I don't have his number," I replied as I prepared to kick the door, thinking the sudden jolt would free up a stuck tumbler or something.

"Let me check."  Shelley checked her phone.  She didn't have his number.

I knew Kyle had Mark's number.  Kyle has everyone's number.  I went back to the Battlestar and retrieved my antique rotary dial flip phone and called Kyle Herring.  I was right - he had the Director's number.  We waited for Kyle to call us back with Mark's solution.  It was 9:45 A.M.  The class was suppose to start at 10:00 A.M.  I wasn't panicking because I still hadn't tried kicking the door.   My phone rang.

Kyle's seemed amused.  "Does the keyring Mark gave you have a red plastic thing on it?"

"Yes," I replied. 

"That red thing is a computer chip?  You hold it in front of the reader near the front door and it will let you in."

"You mean that thing that looks like a doorbell?"

"That must be it."

"I thought that was a doorbell.  I pushed it a few times because there's another car here in the parking lot, so someone else must be in the building." 

I held the small disc up to the "door bell", a green light flashed and the door unlocked. 

NOW, how cool is that?  Imagine working at a school with a keyless entry.  Right then and there I knew I'd made the right decision to become a Renaissance man.

I wondered what other types of entertainment Fortuna had planned for us that morning.   Brent and Danny quickly found out.  The program they needed for the class only loaded on one computer.  The other 11 students had to do a "work around" (I'm thinking that's tech talk for a quick and dirty fix).  One of the students showed Brent a faster way to do the 'work around'.  Brent said the teen was definitely in the wrong class (yes Troops, Brent got schooled by a youngster).

Brent and Danny were impressed with our first 11 student programmers.  If the 11 stick with it, our Farpoint Station Programming Department will be off to a great start.  

The class will be taught again in the Fall for those who couldn't attend.

Mr. W

Discovery Space Center Holds Flight Director Training

Flight Directors, did you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand on end around 10:45 this morning?  If so, then know that we were talking about you during Discovery Space Center's Flight Director Training.  I couldn't use the flight directors present at the training as examples of what not to do as a simulator flight director, so I had to use the one's who DIDN'T come to the training as examples.  Let that be a lesson to you - attend the trainings when they are offered, because if you don't.........

Fearless Leader 

Fearless Leader Casey Voeks, General Secretary of the Utah County Republican Party, Director of Discovery Space Center, Former Substitute Teacher and Movie Ticket Taker arrived late so we had to stop talking about him.  Lucky for him - I had just gotten started  :)

Mr. W. 

Space and Science News

Emergency Spacewalk Repairs for International Space Station
 

 

 

Astronauts Marshburn and Cassidy  worked outside the ISS this morning.

Now see, when NASA needs to get something done, they just do it. This morning at 6:44 am MDT astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy opened the hatch to space and went for a little repair EVA on the outside of the station. During the 5 1/2 hour EVA, they removed a damaged coolant pump and replaced it with a spare that had been previously brought up to the station and temporarily placed nearby, ready for eventual use.  Read More

  

Read More on each topic below

▶ Reversing Heart Aging: http://is.gd/iL0bQM
▶ Injectable Oxygen: http://is.gd/YT3P73
▶ Bone Substitutes: http://is.gd/23efGs
▶ Brain Implant: http://is.gd/tEa3Lq
▶ Mars Colonists: http://is.gd/s3i1HM
▶ Clouded Leopards: http://is.gd/ocIa1A

Links and graphic by Hashem AL-ghaili

The Imaginarium

Will you stop making excuses for accepting ordinary, when only extraordinary will do?

Old School Spy Devices from the Cold War Era 

A creative solution to an emergency bathroom problem

 

The Future of Food?

 

Something tells me this isn't going to go well.

 

Life is like this sometimes.

 

So this is where it is