Guest: Janice Dunn. Topics: California Space Center and the California Space Authority (CSA). Janice Dunn of CSA returned for this program with new information on the California Space Center as well as other information pertaining to the California space workforce and upcoming programming for CSA. For more information, please visit the CSA website at www.californiaspaceauthority.org. In our first segment, Janice described the California Space Center project. It will be located on 71 acres in Santa Barbara county on property to be leased from the Air Force at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Vandenberg AFB comprises about 99,000 acres of land in total. It will be modeled to some degree after the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center. To be developed over ten years in phases, it will include museums, a Native American Cultural Center, Launch Viewing Facilities, a conference center and dining room, classrooms, labs, a rocket garden and much more. For more information about the California Space Center (CSC), please visit www.californiaspaceauthority.org/spacecenter/index.html. We talked about the plans for student linkups and the focus on fifth graders from all over the state. Listen to why Janice said their target was the fifth grade as I believe you will find it to be an interesting fact. In addition to discussing the cost of the CSC and fund raising opportunities for large donors, corporations, and individuals, we talked about tourist possibilities given the location on the Central Coast. In response to out of state listener questions, the classrooms and educational facilities will be available to students outside of California and in fact from other countries. In the second segment, we talked about the Native American cultural history with the local Chumash Tribe which has shown continued ownership of the land in this area going back 10,000 years! Janice described their canoe voyages to the Channel Islands using celestial navigation and their relationship to space. Ms. Dunn mentioned the unique advantage California has for the CSC with Hollywood and its participation as well as JPL and the Rovers, the Mars Science Lab, and even the space telescopes with the James Webb Space Telescope. During the third and final segment, listener Barbara David asked Janice about fantasy projects for the CSC once the needed and essential funding for the project was secured. Janice mentioned three such projects including having access to a Zero G plane right at Vandenberg for students and other to experience zero g immediately after learning about it. Another project was dubbed the Space Train. This would be a train that brought students from all over California to the nearby Surf Train Station for their visit to the CSA. Learning would start on board the train. The last fantasy project Janice mentioned was a space camp on the site. Listeners asked about academic credit for the student programs and we discussed curriculum requirements. Toward the end of the program, Janice was asked about the CSA support of SSP and she said they did support it. In response to another question, she said the agency was collaborative with other state space agencies, not always competitive. When asked if CSA was involved in working with developing the Mexican Space Agency, she said no but they were open to it. You can contact Janice Dunn with your comments or questions by emailing her at janice.dunn@californiaspaceauthority.org. The phone number for CSA is 805-349-2633.
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The Space Show
