Version 1.2 13 Feb 2003 by Philip A Turek
Describe an educational project you would like to do as an Educator Astronaut.
For years I have created student aerospace design teams for an annual international space settlement design competition. (I have also served as a judge, CEO, and trainer in these competitions.) As an Educator Astronaut, I would work to establish a similar annual competition based on CataMitt Recycler (CMR) technology. CataMitt Recyclers are a promising new space transportation system predicated on conservation of orbital energy and momentum. One CMR station is intended to showcase all the major concepts covered in a full year high school physics course. As a competition reward the winning high school team would be assigned to a NASA center or participating aerospace company to spend part of a summer working with an engineering design team to generate a publishable proposal for their CMR station.
More ambitiously, I want to create an Earth Mars Ambassadors program - an educational pipeline that leads from kindergarten through graduate school to NASA. Hopefully, this program would produce students striving to become astronauts, Mars colonists, conservators, and ultimately ambassadors both to and from the new world to be built on Mars. Students at each grade level form teams to be dispatched by their teacher to explore increasingly larger areas on Earth, keeping journals of their observations and impressions. These journals allow us the follow each astronaut's growth. Experienced, highly successful teams would cycle through simulated Mars bases such as those operated by The Mars Society. This program would include scholarships for students exiting graduate school based on an annual Preliminary Candidacy Exam. The top seven graduate students would be awarded scholarships to earn two additional master's degrees in two additional subjects as an educational preparation for becoming Mars astronauts. NASA could offer employment to some of the top scorers who fail to win a scholarship, enticing more graduate students to take the exam.
Copyright © 2003 Philip A Turek. Used by permission.