Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center

For the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in New Hampshire, see McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center.

The Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center (known as the McAuliffe Space Center or CMSEC), in Pleasant Grove, Utah, teaches school children about space and is visited by students from around the world.^[1] It has a number of flight simulators.

Space Center logo

The center, named for educator Christa McAuliffe, was started in 1990 by Victor Williamson, an educator at Central Elementary School.^[2] It is a 4,000-square-foot (370 m²) building added on to Central Elementary.^[3] It aimed to teach astronomy through the use of simulators; the first, Voyager, proved itself popular. As the years passed, the demand for flights expanded and new ships were commissioned. The space center currently has five simulators in operation at the original location, another at the iWorlds Space Center, one more on the way at the original location, and a new sister space center currently under construction. The simulators have included:

Simulators of the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center

• The Voyager (1990)
• The Odyssey (1995)
• The Galileo (Original Mark-5: 1998, New Mark-6: 2009)
• The Magellan (Original Space Station: 1998, Renovated: 2006, Starship: 2011)
• The Falcon (2000) (Decommissioned)
• The Phoenix (2005)
• The Pathfinder (Working Name. Actual name pending) (2012) (planned 8 person simulator due to the Space Center being removed from Alpine School District's bond for a new building)

Simulators not part of the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center

• The Valiant (2011) (Opened at Thanksgiving Point for iWorlds with heavy contribution the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center.)
• The Apollo (2012) (New 17 person simulator for the new sister space-center to the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center, currently under construction...)

The center, and its founder were honored in a ceremony in its 15th year by many individuals, including Gary Herbert, the Lieutenant Governor of Utah. At that time, with its five spaceship simulators, it was educating 16,000 students a year.^[4]

The center's mission statement is A learning community practicing the discipline of wonder!

Teaching method

The Space Center uses it simulators in order to create interactive stories, usually applicable to historical events, in which the students are involved. Debriefings at the end of each mission allow students to share thoughts about their performance as a team, and lessons gained for the future.

Students also learn and apply different aspects of astronomy and science in missions. They get the chance to learn about black holes, nebulae, asteroids, planets, planetary systems, moons, and a variety of other phenomena.^[5]

Students who attended the Space Center 15 years ago are now pursuing fields in science, technology, space exploration, programming, and electrical engineering.^[6] Students at the local Brigham Young University have the opportunity to develop consoles and equipment for the Space Center; gadgets such as Tricorders, touch panel equipment, fiber optics systems, ships, and digital/analog control interfaces all help to give a more realistic effect to the experience.

The center's staff hopes that its visitors are tomorrow's scientists.^[7][8][9]

Technology

The Space Center employs technologies and equipment to achieve its simulations. In each ship, there is a powerful sound system (including a powerful bass response to simulate the feeling of the reactor core) hooked up to an industry standard mixing board which combines input from a combination of sound sources heard through the main speakers, such as, sound effects computers, music computers, DVD players, CD players, microphones, and voice distorters.

The video system is just as complex. Each mission available has a story DVD with clips compiled for scenes in a story. The video switcher has two sets of buttons on it; one set controls what video is displayed on the main view, the other set allows the control room of the simulator to preview different video inputs without the bridge seeing a change in video. All of the mission DVDs are made by local volunteers who regularly staff missions at the Space Center. In addition to movie clips, the Space Center also makes its own tactical screens. Tactical screens are in essence complex power points that include information about things related to the current story such as ship systems while others may be maps or other mission information. Various programs have been used to create these screens including HyperCard and Runtime Revolution.

Each simulator is also equipped with a lighting system allowing both red and white lights to be displayed; red during alerts and white during normal alert levels. Each set of lights is attached to a dimmer in the control room allowing the lights to manually fluctuate in different events during a mission, such as a torpedo impact or power failure. The most advanced set of lights at the Space Center is installed in the Phoenix. It has the standard set of controls for dimming each set of lights as well as controls for flashing strobe lights when the ship is impacted.

In order to ensure that campers are safe, a network of closed circuit cameras is also installed at key points on the set to monitor their positions. Each simulator has part of the bridge and connected areas of the set monitored at all times.

The most complex part of each simulator is the computer systems. Each ship has several computers installed. The smallest set, the Galileo, has seven, while the largest set, the Magellan, has 40. Each one of these computers (excluding sound effect computers and tactical [main viewer] computers) is connected to a network allowing communication between computers. In this way, the programs on each of the computers are also able to communicate with each other, allowing the control room to monitor the simulation and for computers on the bridge to update each other with information sent from the control room. The programming on each of the computers used to be programmed in HyperCard, which is still currently in use on the USS Voyager. Later however, the Space Center switched to Revolution Dreamcard by Runtime Revolution. The latest generation of programs at the Space Center are being programmed in Cocoa, Apple Inc's own programming language for their Macintosh computer platform.^[10] All of the computer programs in use at the Space Center are designed, programmed, and maintained by a crew of volunteer students known as the Programmers Guild. A new guild called the Animation Guild is in charge of maintaining and producing all of the mission tapes and DVDs described above as well as the Tactical Screens.

Private donations paid for the simulators, while the school district pays the salary of director Williamson. 181 volunteers and part-timers help to operate the simulators.^[11]

Programs and Camps

The Space Center offers a variety of programs that provide varying mission lengths and experiences. Continuing the educational aim of the Space Center, there are programs for school classes that provide education about science, space and teamwork/leadership. These programs also offer educational experience missions on the simulators. For the general public, there are also private missions, overnight camps, "Super Saturdays" and summer camps. Private missions are available to be reserved in 3 lengths: 2 hour, 2.5 hour and 5 hour missions.^[12] These time blocks include time for briefing and training in preparation for the actual mission on the simulator. Overnight camps start on Friday nights and end on the following morning: all missions are 'paused' for the night, campers sleep at the Space Center overnight, and then missions are resumed in the morning. Super Saturday camps provide the same missions as overnight camps, but occur during the day on Saturdays. These camps are only offered from August to May. The most recent camp to be added at the Space Center is the Galaxy Camp. These camps offer the same mission as the overnight camps, but they take place all in one day. These camps are offered in the summer. The Leadership Camp is made for an older audience of ages 15–17. It differs from the other summer camps in the way that the whole camp is a campaign and every mission is part of a bigger picture. Summer camps usually happen over 3 days with campers sleeping at the Space Center both nights. ^[13] These are the longest available camps. The Space Center provides further information on their website.

References

1. ^ "Christa McAliffe Space Education Center - About". http://www.spacecamputah.org/about.html. Retrieved 2010-01-29. 
2. ^ Milken Family Foundation. "Milken Educator Awards. 1998 Award Winner, Victor Williamson". http://www.mff.org/mea/mea.taf?page=recipient&meaID=1315. Retrieved 2008-03-20. 
3. ^ "The Christa McAuliffe Center". http://ofcn.org/cyber.serv/academy/mcauliffe/ut.html. Retrieved 2007-04-05. 
4. ^ Jeremy Twitchell (2006-07-11). "Space center is shining star. Popular program at school in Pl. Grove marks its 15th year.". DeseretNews.com. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,640193889,00.html. Retrieved 2007-03-26. 
5. ^ "Volunteers for Space". http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,660212375,00.html. Retrieved 2007-04-19. 
6. ^ "American Fork 'Super Teens' get national plaudits". http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695262475,00.html?linkTrack=rotator:cvr&promoID=1719. Retrieved 2008-03-18. 
7. ^ "Utah County children get space experience". http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/185660/. Retrieved 2006-07-10. 
8. ^ "Rocky Mountain fifth-graders blast off for annual space trip". http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/220404/. Retrieved 2007-05-03. 
9. ^ "School kids navigate through space". http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/156334/. Retrieved 2005-07-25. 
10. ^ "Apple Developer Connection - Cocoa". Apple Developer Connection. http://developer.apple.com/cocoa/. Retrieved 2010-01-29. 
11. ^ Sharon Haddock (2005-05-12). "Phoenix shuttlecraft ready to take flight.". Deseret News. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20050512/ai_n14624291. Retrieved 2007-03-23. 
12. ^ "Private Missions.". http://www.spacecamputah.org/pflights.html. Retrieved 2010-01-29. 
13. ^ "Camps.". http://www.spacecamputah.org/edventures.html. Retrieved 2010-01-29. 

External links

• Official website
• Official Space Center blog