SpaceNow, a New Space Education Initiative

Avacar writes "SpaceNow has officially launched their new website. It contains fairly detailed and technical explanations on how standard rocketry works, as well as orbital mechanics for interplanetary travel. They advocate putting fusion engines in space as a clean, cost-effective way to travel between planets. They also have a full curriculum for educating youth about space, and will soon be starting up weekly debates on touchy issues with space travel on their forums."

Comments

For the public good?

[dada21]

I'm going to guess that this will be a failure, just like all "for the public good" projects seem to be. By failure I mean: way more expensive/lower quality/slower than if created by open competition rather than public funding. I'm also guessing that this is not "for the public good" but for the good of some certain individuals. Let's read the article to find out.

Exploration and development of the Moon, both for science and for resources which may better our life on Earth;

Getting back to the Moon sounds great, but I'm not sure what we'll find there. I really feel like the bad guy in Contact when I say this, but there is no reason that science shouldn't find a way to pay for itself. Research and development is important, but all research and no development seems like a complete waste if there isn't an endgame. Sorry, but one country saying "I win! I win! nyah-nyah" isn't enough for me to vote to spend billions on.

The exploration and settlement of Mars, to establish humankind as a multi-planet, spacefaring race;

Settlement of Mars will not create a spacefaring race. Competition will bring those costs down once there is a REASON to settle Mars. I say unlock the regulations and allow multiple businesses to find a reason to get there. If it doesn't have a profit incentive for any reason, there is no reason to go there. When they day comes that a profit incentive is found, I bet we'll see many people trying.

The research and development of Nuclear Fusion, for spaceflight applications and clean alternative energy on Earth;

Why do we need space for this? Realistically, fusion is being sought after by many organizations. The dilemma is that radioactive materials are so closely regulated and guarded, there isn't a lot of room for private individuals and companies to see better solutions.

Promoting research and awareness of the threats posed by Earth-crossing asteroids, as well as their potential resources.

This is one place I can see Constitutional grounds for government to spend money. Defense. As for their resources, I don't see any way that public funds will be able to utilize these resources in the best way possible. Unless Haliburton (who Clinton also supported) can mine those asteroids, right?

If you are interested in ordering a hardcopy of our complete curriculum, or require custom materials developed for your classroom, send an e-mail to: sales@spacenow.ca

A-ha! There's the catch. Classroom textbooks. Profitable. Changed annually. Mandated by law. So this is about making humanity better, right?

I honestly HATE seeing more and more "for the public good" websites that go up, and then find out these organizations have something to sell to a government-funded monopoly. Unless they're offering these curricula for free?

Re:For the public good?

[EccentricAnomaly]

The research and development of Nuclear Fusion, for spaceflight applications and clean alternative energy on Earth;

Why do we need space for this? Realistically, fusion is being sought after by many organizations. The dilemma is that radioactive materials are so closely regulated and guarded, there isn't a lot of room for private individuals and companies to see better solutions.

1) Fusion doesn't require any radioactive materials. 2) Fusion engines are very efficient and would allow not just single stage to orbit vehicles, but single stage to Mars surface and back to Earth without refueling and taking only a couple of months for the round trip.

The technology is very exciting, but it will take a tremendous breakthrough for it to be practical. Even beyond the technology needed for fusion power stations on Earth... you'll need lightweight, compact fusion reactors for space.

Re:For the public good?

[eaolson]

Fusion engines are very efficient

The real downside to fusion engines is that they are also very fictional.

Re:For the public good?

[47F0]

No, all fusion requires is a magic bottle somewhere in Utah.

Hey, I'm all in favor of fusion engines - but they don't exist - unless you count the Mr. Fusion option on my DeLorean. The closest we have to fusion is... zip? In spite of multiple megawatt laser facilities working very hard on the problem.

In the meantime, some very good work has been done on fission engines - work that has been discarded. But if we really want TRUE heavy-lift capability, if we really want TRUE long-distance propulsion, fission seems like a technology we are going to have to get rational about.

The fact is, if we could build workable coal-powered rockets today, we would - in spite of the fact that black-lung disease alone has killed far more people than all of the fission reactor meltdowns in the history of power generation.

Is the potential of a fission accident a factor? You bet. But if the options of serious space utilization are either chemical, which is at it's limits now, or fictional (see Mr. Fusion) then we are going to have to take a long hard rational look at much more proven and feasable technologies.

Sigs? We don't need no steenking sigs!

Universal Warming

[fragmentate]

Thank God it's clean. Last thing we need is Universal Warming. Imagine if the universes Vacuum Layer had a hole in it!

not much content

[Liquid Tip]

I was expecting a lot more from this website. It looks nice you first load it up, but the information content is quite sparce. Not even pretty pictures or informative diagrams to explain concepts. Section 6.2 on aging stars as an example is dismal.

The CASCA Education website is much, much better:

http://www.cascaeducation.ca/files/index.html

Check it out.

Space: it's time to go back and revisit it again.

[Sheetrock]

When I was growing up, astrology was becoming a keen area of study. Theoretical science became applied science as the weapons of war were turned to plowshares of exploration and propelled us into space, to the moon and back to Earth.

Then we stopped.

Some may say that it was a waste of time and money, but a great deal of practical good was done by the space program. Many space-age foods, polymers and foams were created and found to do as much for our planet as they did for those who orbited it. Besides the ocean, it is the last frontier available to us, and unarguably the one whose exploration will do the most for us.

I applaud the concept of bringing these ideas to a new generation who will, hopefully, not forsake them as ours has. I was just thinking about this today during my ruminescing about the crazy and sometimes haphazard ways in which the scientific process is refined -- in it's own way, the question about continuing space exploration is tied in inexorable fashion to the battle against entrenched interests that new theories must undergo before they become the accepted norm.

Take, for example, the struggle of Galileo against the church to permit society to recognize the fact that the world is round. Or perhaps the modern day battleground of evolution against the challenging new scientific theory of intelligent design, which suggests that certain biological features such as the flagellum are irreducibly complex and therefore could not possibly have been developed by increments as evolutionists would have it -- answers and proof to the contrary must be found out there, because like the proverbial blind men describing the elephant we find ourselves struggling with only our piece of the jigsaw puzzle to determine the complete picture.

Astrology?

[Scareduck]

Hey, is that a Virgo rising or are you just happy to see me?

Gasp!

[wangf00]

Could this mean /.ers will actually know what they are talking about in science?

Nah... (bye bye Karma)

How hard is this?

[Nom du Keyboard]

How standard rocketry works:

1: Light fuse.
2: Stand back.

A nice idea, but...

[Pchelka]

I took a look at the "About Us" section of the SpaceNow website. The people who put together the site don't really seem to have a large team behind them. Judging by their photos, they are also pretty young - maybe just out of college or maybe recent Master's graduates.

My own experience has shown it is incredibly difficult for someone in their 20s and 30s to really make a difference in government policies on space exploration. Society now has about 50 years of experience in space exploration, so there are already many groups lobbying in favor of space exploration out there. Most of these groups are lead by established scientists and engineers who have developed relationships with government leaders over many years. Most of these groups would not give younger people a whole lot of power in terms of directing programs for communicating with the public. I don't necessarily think this is a good thing, but unfortunately, it's just the way things are. With all of these other groups out there, I think the people behind SpaceNow are going to have a hard time getting noticed by the powers that be.

One group that has done a lot to support both manned and unmanned space exploration is The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has been around for quite a few years and has many famous and wealthy people supporting its objectives. They also provide educational information similar to what the young men behind SpaceNow are going to provide. There are also tons of other web sites out there where people can learn about the fundamentals of rocketry - such as the Planetary Society again, as well as the Basics of Space Flight web site from JPL. The Challenger Center also is an important space science education group, at least in the United States.

One thing that the SpaceNow people are trying to do that's a bit different is provide a public forum for discussion. However, there are already forums out there. Even though Slashdot isn't devoted exclusively to space exploration, there are quite a few lively discussions about this topic on Slashdot.

I really do wish the creators of SpaceNow the best of luck. But I think they are going to have a difficult time getting noticed with all of the similar groups out there. The groups and web sites that I have mentioned are based in the U.S., so I don't know how many similar groups are in Canada (I assume the .ca domain means they are Canadian). The creators seemed to all be associated with the same university, so if any of them are reading this, I suggest that they concentrate on getting their message out to their local community first. Some ways to do this are through local museums and planetariums, astronomy clubs, and Cafe Scientifique meetings in their area.

coming from a pre-rocket scientist...

[mnemonic_]

The astrodynamics section has no clear intended audience, as they note:

If you're not familiar with calculus, we'll save you most of the headache and just write the final product

...which is still greek to someone who doesn't know calculus. Akin to that they provide "the rocket equation," whose concepts of pressure, m dot notation are foreign to anyone but college students who have already decided to study engineering.

So what's the point of the site? It seems useful as a study guide for an intro astrodynamics or celestial mechanics course, but it explains no better than any textbook I've seen ("Fundamentals of Astrodynamics" is my preference, it's only $10 too). In fact, by avoiding derivations it skips the physical ties that impart a real understanding of the subject. It could be used as a quick equations review, but certainly not for teaching.

The elementary physics of the site (newton, momentum etc.) isn't specific to astronautics. It can be found better explained elsewhere on and offline. So I see there's no real use for that, and it's certainly not a new attempt at "space education" (what ever the heck that is).

The nuclear propulsion section is kind of cool but falls into science fanboy/activ-ism. So is this a site for teaching about space or pushing science fads?

Throwing out equations won't attract anyone to aerospace engineering, astronomy, cosmology or related fields. These pages seem convenient for exam reviews but nothing more. They're passing off a lame study guide as a revolution in astrodynamics teaching, but they avoid any real teaching. Exercises? Team projects? MATLAB coding assignments? There are none, and students learn nothing without practice.

This site will not attract new aerospace engineering majors and addresses absolutely no problems in current teaching methods. They throw out a lot of good information, but it's presented in either standard or inferior ways.

The only people I see benefitting from this site are current or former aero majors who have lost their textbooks and don't know how to use google.

P.S. The site's design is a nasa.gov knock-off, which just bugs me as a web designer.

Team America Rocketry Challenge

[StefanJ]

Yeah, yeah, fusion drives will open up the solar system and mining asteroids will all make us rich.

I've heard it all before, twenty five years ago when SF fans waddled around conventions wearing "L-5 in '95!" and "Lunar Mine in '89!" shirts and buttons reading "The meek will inherit the Earth, I'm going to live in space!"

Actually getting into space turned out to be harder than making better concept drawings of space colonies and coming up with triumphalist slogans for buttons.

You want our civilization to go to the stars? Raise your kids to be engineers! Let them read SF for inspiration, but not so much that they think that ranting about the Statists and Flatlanders and the Moon Treaty will do the trick. Make sure they learn calc and get good study skills and how to work with real-world materials and how to walk on dirt.

Here's a cool place to start:

http://rocketcontest.com/

A contest that requires real-life rocket science! They have a different goal each year. E.g., this year they had to build a rocket that would safely launch and recover a fresh egg in a flight that lasted as close to sixty seconds as possible.

Teams of high school kids from all over the country participate. The best go to a national meet to compete with each other.

Stefan

Re:Space: it's time to go back and revisit it agai

[Moofie]

The question is, is space exploration a good national investment? I happen to think "yes", you think "no".

I'm serious: We're talking about survival of the species here. One big rock, and we're all boned. We need to get off this rock, and we need to not be jacking around. The costs are trivial (relative to, say, farm subsidies, or the defense budget) and the payoffs are, like, uh, big.

Humans are at their best under adverse conditions. Does it make sense to get technological advancement from fighting each other, or fighting the elements on a hostile planet? I vote for #2. Too bad there's nobody I can vote for who agrees with me.

In principle, I agree with you: Private enterprise is the best mechanism to develop and exploit space. However, NASA can and should be developing the raw technologies to enable that to happen.