Modernized Space Camp Allows Kids To Simulate Frustration Over Lack Of Funding

[mvpel]

Modernized Space Camp Allows Kids To Simulate Frustration Over Lack Of Funding



HUNTSVILLE, AL—Aiming to provide attendees with an authentic glimpse into the nation’s space program, representatives for the U.S. Space & Rocket Center announced Thursday that its newly updated Space Camp will allow children to simulate the anger and mounting frustration experienced by NASA personnel over a continual lack of funding.

Camp organizers explained that the redesigned education program will offer kids the unique opportunity to contend with all of the budgetary restrictions and bureaucratic red tape impeding the progress of actual astronauts and researchers, allowing children from grades four to six to immerse themselves in a true-to-life NASA environment in which financial shortfalls and endless procedural delays plague them at every turn.

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[p51]

Funny stuff. 
Last Fall when I was at Space Camp (adult program) in MOCR as CAPCOM for the first mission, I made the comment that, "If this was an accurate mission sim, they find some minor glitch in a computer program and this launch would be scrubbed until after we've left." The people around me didn't get the joke but I'm positive I heard the trainers trying to choke back some laughter.
Also reminds me a large WW2 re-enactment I went to in the 90s. Everyone was griping about how long it was taking for us to be moved out to the battlefield site (in deep winter in PA, all waiting for busses as the field was way far from the barracks area). I turned around and yelled out, "Let's see, you've been standing around for at least an hour, well before the first vehicle rolled. You have no idea what's going on and you're at the mercy of others to get where you wanna be. Seems to me that this is an accurate depitction of military life!" I heard several people yell out, "amen" in response, I'm sure all of them had served in real life...

[mheney]

My boss sent me a copy of this earlier today.  We're contractors at a major U.S. space agency ....

[Heinrich]

Is this the way to get kids interested in STEM / the space industry??
Realistic? yes. Good idea? I don't know...

[Ben the Space Brit]

@Heinrich,

It's an article from The Onion, the US's premier political parody publication. So, there is no truth in it beyond the underlying political fact highlighted - that NASA is in budgetary terms a shadow of its self in its heyday.

[RocketEconomist327]

More incentive to privatize as much as possible so we can settle the final frontier... not just explore.  The more people who do not need Uncle Sam's help getting to LEO the better.

VR
RE327

[su27k]

Not funny really, NASA's budget is not a shadow of itself, the huge budget increase in the 1960s are an anomaly, it should not be used as a basis for comparison. Today's NASA's budget is much higher than the 1970s and comparable to the other time periods. NASA doesn't have a budget problem, it needs to use the budget it has more efficiently.

So the camp should probably divide the kids into 2 groups, one group called "old" will have kids that kiss up to the teachers and has no imagination, the other group called "new" will have kids that are innovative and does not defer to authority. Let the "new" kids design fancy plans but don't give them any resources to execute these plans, instead teacher will give all the resources to "old" kids who will just squander them. Now just add some nasty kids who have accomplished something and let them laugh at the 2 groups' inability to come up with anything useful, preferably with a trampoline joke, the picture would be complete.

[RanulfC]

I turned around and yelled out, "Let's see, you've been standing around for at least an hour, well before the first vehicle rolled. You have no idea what's going on and you're at the mercy of others to get where you wanna be. Seems to me that this is an accurate depitction of military life!" I heard several people yell out, "amen" in response, I'm sure all of them had served in real life...

Wait? You were "standing-around" for at least an hour? Where were the people acting as mid-grade NCOs and new-minted officers? Shouldn't they have had everyone doing "something"? You know like painting rocks, (yes in the winter! It's not like anyone is USING them right now right?) or mowing the snow or something like that? Definately a "missed" opportunity to add realism to the scenerio...

Randy

[p51]

Wait? You were "standing-around" for at least an hour? Where were the people acting as mid-grade NCOs and new-minted officers? Shouldn't they have had everyone doing "something"? You know like painting rocks, (yes in the winter! It's not like anyone is USING them right now right?) or mowing the snow or something like that? Definately a "missed" opportunity to add realism to the scenerio...

Good point. Should have them doing 'training' where a SGT goes over MOPP suits or something everyone already knows, without anything to train with (my favorite was NBC training where we used sticks as atropine injectors as we never had the training versions). The 'LTs' should have been standing around talking to each other, acting like the hunior NCOs and privates couldn't see them doing so...
Nothing is more dangerous than an enlisted solider with nothing to do, that's what they told me when later I became a real-life Army officer. Oddly, I never did another re-enactment again, I only do display events now. Go figure!

[GalacticIntruder]

That is funny parody. But it has been a state of affairs so far.

Here is a more accurate picture of US Space Camp, Huntsville, not NASA in general.

"It will allow me to move Space Camp into the next generation," Barnhart said. "We still have shuttle vehicles. And no one we train today is ever going to fly a shuttle. So it's incumbent on me to move that entire training scenario forward into the future. That scenario is NASA and commercial and international. It's not just us anymore. It's as much a global world and an international space-travel world as it is an American space-travel world.

"I'm going to be upgrading the Space Camp training and simulation areas substantially to match what is in the runway of my Space Camp students. We've already got the Orion capsule and the return to the moon mission. We'll be adding the Mars mission, we'll be adding capturing an asteroid activities. We will add (SpaceX) Dragon. We will add (SNC) Dream Chaser. We will be adding all the commercial and next generation NASA vehicles and mission scenarios to the Space Camp training curriculum. It's not going to be the same ol' fly-the-shuttle anymore."

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2014/05/us_space_rocket_center_set_to.html