Outreach Plan

I emailed Doug Goforth at NASA to discuss some of the concerns he had about our outreach plan. I will post his reply when I receive it, but here is what we're looking at right now:

We are now planning to set up a competition among area schools to fly a small, automated experiment along with ours. We will have to take measures to ensure the safety of their design (we will likely require that it be self-contained, within a certain weight limit, etc.). We plan to have only 1 ground crew member (Gary), so we can allow 3-student teams plus a teacher, which is within the 5-member GC limit. This will be a little more meaningful than just a random drawing after our presentations.

They may only need to be there on one flight day. Travel arrangements can be made with Lamar to use a school van to bring them to Ellington that day. The students will be responsible for designing, building, transporting, and possibly loading their experiment. We should be able to easily create a slot/space within the framework of our own experiment into which theirs can fit.

One question I had for Doug Goforth is if we could allow two separate HS teams (one for each flight day) to participate? There wouldn't be more than 5 GC members at one time, but this would allow more students to be involved. I'm not sure if having two teams is wise, due to the time involved in making sure their design is safe, etc., but I just wanted to know if this was an option. I also asked if they would be required to attend the first day or if they could just come for the one flight day?

I feel that this is a viable outreach program, and aside from a few administrative concerns, Doug Goforth seemed to think it was workable. Since we are so close to Houston, travel is not an issue. This would also introduce high school students to the RGSFOP and the design/proposal process, which will hopefully encourage them to participate at the college level.

One question for the high school teachers is if this could fit well with the high school curriculum, especially in the AP and advanced science courses?

Let me know if you have any ideas or concerns.