Starting off in Florida

This Wednesday I finished my final University exam and less than 24 hours later, I was on a plane to Orlando Florida.

I've just started the 'Space Studies Program', an annual summer course hosted in different locations each year and organised by the International Space University (ISU, Greatest named University ever?). This program brings together approximately 100 space-enthusiasts from all over the world (There are people from over 30 different countries this year) for a pretty intensive 9-weeks of study. The ISU gathers together hundreds of academics and industry leaders to host lectures, workshops and projects on a wide range of subjects that impact space science.

This year, the program is being co-hosted by the NASA Kennedy Space Centre and the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT).

Without boring you too much with the details of the course; the basic structure of the program consists of three sections. The first few weeks comprise of a 'core lecture' series covering anything from Orbital dynamics to 'The Brain in Space' to Governance of Space Settlements. After this, participants get to choose 1 of 7 departments to specialise in – this could be anything from Physical Sciences to Law and Policy of Space. Finally, the program culminates in large team projects wherein the teams have to produce an approximately 100 page report on their assigned topic.

(If you want to find out some more about the International Space University or the Space Studies program, have a look here)

So, time to catch you up on whats been happening. The program officially started last Saturday (June 2^nd) but unfortunately I was still doing my University exams so I had to postpone my start date until my final exam was over and done with. I flew into Orlando on Thursday afternoon and made my way to a town on the coast called Melbourne, home of FIT, whose student dorms are where all of the participants are living for the duration of the course.

It was a little heartbreaking to see all the other participants leaving on NASA buses to a nearby planetarium as I arrived at the University campus; but at least it gave me some free time to unpack and settle in before meeting new people.

I was rather anxious about arriving late because all of the other participants would have had almost a week of socialising to get to know each other, would I just end up a bit left out? Fortunately, being the 'new guy' has its perks and people have been constantly introducing themselves to me, although I'm still playing catch-up with names.

These last two days have been incredibly hectic, with constant activities. Yesterday I had a morning of lectures followed by an afternoon of workshops with my assigned team project group. Usually participants are able to select their team project, but as I arrived late I had to be assigned one. Fortunately, everything worked out well and I have been assigned to a team working on the concept of 'Next Generation Space Stations'. Although most of the team project will be done in the final weeks of the course, we have already been put into groups so that we can attend some preliminary workshops on key concepts.

Today we visited the Kennedy Space Centre visitor centre. The purpose of the trip was to attend our NASA 'badges' so that we had access to other NASA facilities for the rest of the program. However, the badging office was apparently having some trouble, so we just spent the day exploring the tourist attractions of the visitor centre. The centre is mainly orientated towards kids (which is definitely a good thing to be doing) but there is still plenty to do for people of all ages (especially space enthusiasts!); The Shuttle Launch Experience, The IMAX cinema and the Rocket garden are all awesome.

The Rocket Garden at the Kennedy Space Centre, Visitor Centre

This is me (for those who don't know) in front of the ORION Crew Capsule

This evening I've been working with a small team of participants on a task that has been put forward. The task involves designing a Rube Goldberg machine, which is essentially a machine that is unnecessarily complicated to perform a very simple task. All of the participants have been split into 8 groups and we all have to design our own Rube Goldberg machine. However, there is a twist, all of the machines will be placed in series (the order of which is unknown until the last minute) and will have to function as one continuous machine. The task that our machines has to perform is simply receiving a steel ball at the start and outputting a ball at the end (so a simple version of this machine would simply be a sloped track to transport the ball). We get points for added complexity and 'flashiness' or 'bling'. My team has a couple of ideas knocking around, considering ideas such as incorporating a Newtons Cradle, involving a rocket launch and some collapsing dominoes. I'll be sure to upload a video of our machine when (if) we get it working.

Tomorrow is technically a day off, so I'll probably go down to one of the local beaches (Cocoa beach is meant to be particularly beautiful. I think I went there when I was 7 or 8 years old?). I should probably work in some time to catch up on the 4 days of lectures that I missed too...

One quick note before I sign off; the food here is great! The cafeteria is essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet with many types of food and drink. The main trouble is going to be staying healthy with all of this food on offer! Especially when they offer things such as Macaroni and cheese pizza...

I apologise about the length of this blog, I've ranted on a little bit... This really should have been in a couple of parts, but I've been too swamped with exams and the start of this program to post anything before this. Also, you may well have guessed that this is my first time keeping a blog, so if you have any feedback or suggestions, I'd love to hear it.