It's Spring Break! Dream Flight Adventures Announces Mission Ops. The Imaginarium.

Hello Troops,
     It's Spring Vacation!!!  Renaissance Academy's moment of liberation came at 12:15 P.M. That dismissal bell was music to our ears.  The students were excited, the teachers were excited and the custodian was overheard commenting on how nice it was going to be having the school all to himself for one week.  
     My condolences to all those non-school employees who must work while we convalesce and recharge.  We need the break so we can be physically and mentally prepared for the grueling last prep for the new SAGE state test.  

I'm as happy as a tornado in a trailer park!

Mr. W. 

Dream Flight Adventures Announces a New Educational Initiative

Announcing Mission Ops by Admiral Starblayze Today we're pleased to unveil yet another exciting development from the Dream Flight labs. Ever since we launched our first simulator, which seats 16 students at a time, we wanted to create a companion experience for the other half of a typical class of students.  We set the bar high:  the experience had to complement the curriculum of our simulator missions—that was the easy part—but it also had to maintain our magical blend of interactive story-telling and high stakes adventures—that was the hard part.  And as icing on the cake, we wanted the experience to have lower technical requirements so it could be as accessible as possible in a wide variety of classroom settings. After many long months and repeated visits back to the drawing board, we're pleased to launch Mission Ops as this awesome sister product to accompany our full immersion simulators. In Mission Ops, students become Agents in an Infinity Knight’s Command Center where they apply their knowledge to guide operatives through challenging missions.  Mission Ops uses the same winning combination of story-driven high stakes collaborative learning but follows a different format that emphasizes hands-on projects in small teams and can be deployed in a wide variety of environments.  It was designed from the ground up to integrate into any existing or new STEAM learning environment.  When students embark on a Mission Ops adventure, they forget that they are students in a normal classroom and become absorbed in the epic challenge at hand. Head on over to our Mission Ops page for more details.

  
The Imaginarium 
Start your Spring Vacation with a Burst of Imagination!

Must be where all those things go that disappear around your house.

Would you have taken the first bite?

When you get it....

A New Pale Blue Dot. 50 Years Ago Today in Space. The Imaginarium.

A New Version of The Pale Blue Dot

50 Years Ago: Lunar Module Design Reaches Milestone

By Mark Daymont

Farpoint Educator

Spacerubble.blogspot.com

Mock-up of Apollo Program LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) at Grumman.

To meet the goal originally set by President Kennedy, of landing a man on the Moon and safely returning him to the Earth by the end of the decade, NASA and its contractors had a tremendous pressure to use every available moment to prepare for that event. There comes a point where decisions have to be made to stop designing and start manufacturing. So it was with the LEM in the last week of March, 1964. Officials from the NASA Manned Space Center arrived at Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation for a three day inspection of the current design of the LEM. The goal was to arrive at a "freeze" of the main design elements of the lunar module, so that manufacturing could begin shortly. Once the engineers had decided the final design acceptance or directions, the press was allowed to enter the building and get a look at the future of manned lunar landers. For those of you familiar with the final appearance of the LEM, you can see there are still some design elements to adjust, but the major components and functions have been determined at that point.

Now let's take a look back to some interesting phases of the LEM design, using models for the previous years.

Lunar capsule concept, 1961. The multiple leg concept is well established.

Lunar Excursion Module design, 1963. There's too much heavy window in the design, which needs reduction in weight.The hatch will not permit a spacesuited astronaut with a big pack to get through.

LEM design, 1964 before final redesign. It's almost there, but the Hatch still needs to conform to allow the passage of a spacesuit with a large square backpack. The windows are in final mode.

The Imaginarium

Just a spoonful of Imagination is all that is needed to sweeten any day.