The Craft Academy's first Annual Go for Launch residential camp, officially kicked off last night, July 24th. After they moved in and attended orientation with their parents, they said good bye to their family and set off for a campus tour after having dinner. The tour ended back at Grote-Thompson Hall and the campers spent the rest of the night playing games and getting to know each other better.
In the morning, after breakfast, all the campers walked together to the Button Drill Room for today's curriculum. Once there, they listened to a short introduction from Michelle Lucas, founder of Higher Orbits who has worked with mission control for NASA, and Jennifer Carter, camp director. They went over general expectations for the group and then introduce Don Thomas, a retired astronaut who would later be speaking to the group about life in space. They all stressed the importance of staying engaged throughout the week and asking questions to get the fullest experience possible.
Michelle then led the campers in an icebreaker, where they could all continue to learn each other's names and also share an interesting fact about themselves ( which ranged from hobbies and sports they enjoyed to academic interests such as engineering and biology). From there, the campers were told to form teams of 4 or 5 and form a group name. These will be the teams that they will compete with for the chance to send an experiment into space.
Once everybody was in a group, it was time to put their teamwork and problem-solving skills to the test for the first time. They were provided with nothing but painters tape and paper and given the instructions to build a structure that was strong enough to support the tennis and durable enough to withstand an "earth quake" and a gust of " wind". The team with the tallest tower that met all the criteria would win the first award of the camp.
After a short break, the entire group came back together to listen to Don Thomas speak. He shared his personal experience of becoming an astronaut, and it was easy to see that a major theme was perseverance. Before he ever got close to a space ship, he was rejected from NASA's astronaut program 3 times. However, he never gave up his dream of going into space and after working hard to create the best application possible, he was accepted. He flew on 4 missions, the most recent one being 20 years ago, and had many anecdotes to discuss what it was like to live on a shuttle. He also discussed various kinds of experiments that had been sent to the International Space Station.
The campers then ate lunch before being introduced to Twyman Clements, the president, and CEO of Space Tango. He gave the campers a better idea of what they can and can not use for their experiments as well as examples of other Go for Launch experience that have been or will be launched into space. This led to the campers being excited to brainstorm with the rest of their team and begin a basic game plan for their project.
The next task, was for each team to design a mission patch that would represent their group and experiment. Don and Michelle gave a presentation on different examples of mission patches from various famous expeditions and Don's own shuttle flights. Then, the campers had the chance to create their own, these patches were very important because if they won, their patch would be made into a physical patch that they would get to keep.
Afterward, they moved to the auditorium to listen to Dr. Malphrus give a presentation on Morehead State University's space science program and the small satellites that university students work on. He talked about the Lunar Ice Cube project that will land on the moon's surface and do research on frozen water.
Finally, to end the day's curriculum awards were given to two teams of students. Team Solstice won the award for building the tallest tower in the paper tower activity. Team Solstice is made up of campers Sydney Gordon, Rachel Toll, Callie Mullins, JuLeah Edie, Veronica Kruth. There was also a campers choice award for best team name, which went the Galactic Game. The members of the Galactic Gang are Tesla Malphrus, Canyon Thomas, Alex Masterson.
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