Have you ever thought about flying to Mars? Well, 93 Washington Aerospace Scholars who could help make that happen gathered at the Museum of Flight in Seattle this summer for week-long residency sessions.
Their assignment: Plan a mission to Mars.
“Theirs is the generation that will make the vision of human space exploration a reality,” said Melissa Edwards, director of Washington Aerospace Scholars. The program, divided into three week-long sessions, aims to inspire incoming high school seniors to better understand the jobs of engineers and scientists.
One of those students was my 17-year-old niece from Olympia, Rose McDonald, who sat in the room the first day when a young man entered and asked, “Is this nerd camp?”
Another was Nate Birchard, 17, son of Dr. Keith and Cecilia Birchard, of Chehalis, who participated during the residency’s second week (only four days after a three-week trip to Europe with 36 other W.F. West High School students and 10 adult chaperones).
“My favorite part was the engineering challenges,” he said. Every evening, the teams tackled challenges, such as creating and launching a rocket and building remote-controlled rovers.
Students who applied for the program last fall enrolled in a 12-week course through the Museum of Flight and University of Washington, for which they could receive five college credits.
In addition to their regular schoolwork, they completed reading assignments and submitted homework every two weeks, which high school teachers who serve as chaperones during the residency graded. Those who completed the course participated in the residency.
Planning their mission to Mars, students were randomly divided into four teams:
Gray focused on integrating all parts of the mission, including crew selection.
Red researched how to propel the spacecraft to Mars and back to Earth.
White developed plans for living habitats to sustain the crew.
Blue investigated how the crew could work on Mars.
Nate served on the red team; Rose on the blue. Both said they enjoyed meeting new people.
“We left the hotel at 7:30 each morning and were not back till 9:45 or 10,” Nate said. “It was a busy week but lots of fun.”
In addition to conducting research, the students toured Boeing Co.’s plant at Everett and Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, which developed the propulsion system that sent a spacecraft to Pluto nine years ago.
Adult mentors from Boeing worked with each team, and scientists and engineers spoke to the students throughout the week. The final luncheon speaker for Nate’s session was Dorothy Marie “Dottie” Metcalf-Lindenburger, a teacher and former astronaut who flew missions to the International Space Station.
“I’d love to work for NASA someday on programs like their upcoming mission to Mars, or at Boeing,” Nate said. “This program was a real neat opportunity to look inside how both those operations work.”
On Friday, I attended a luncheon with my sister, Rose’s mom, where speakers included Roger Myers, executive director of Advanced In-Space Programs at Aerojet Rocketdyne. He outlined three phases of upcoming space development: redirecting an asteroid to orbit the moon to prove long-term crew survival in space, establishing crew habitats on the Martian moon Phobos and landing on the surface of Mars.
“I’m not sure if I want to go there,” Nate said, “but it would be neat to help people get there.”
Since the program started in 2006, more than 2,100 students have participated in the online distance learning and 1,260 completed the summer residency. For information, see the website at http://www.museumofflight.org/was. The flight museum’s science, technology, engineering and math programs are likely to increase with Thursday’s announcement of a $30 million donation from the family of the late Bill Boeing Jr., half of which will create the Boeing Academy for STEM Learning.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
