Guest: Lynn Baroff. Topics: Space education in public school, human-robotic systems integration, Mars, space policy. Lynn Baroff was the guest for this Space Show program. We started Segment one with a discussion of the upcoming NASA Lunar Lander Challenge to be held this year at NASA Ames the weekend of October 17-18. The public is welcome. Mr. Baroff is the leading judge for the event and my having been to the event last year, I know that this year's program will be even better. Mr. Baroff said there were 21 contestants this year, he described the rules of the Challenge and we also talked about the simulated regolith material. Several questions came in about the recent NASA announcement of lunar water and if this development would impact or add to the importance of this year's contest. This led us to a discussion about the lunar water announcement, the Augustine Commission, the U.S. Congress, and our plans to return to the Moon. Do not miss this discussion. During this first segment, Mr. Baroff stressed the need for there to be an international effort in space development to reduce costs. We also started the discussion regarding the California Space Education and Workforce Institute and public education in California and elsewhere re STEM, social studies and related space educational issues. In Segment two, we discussed education, students, parents, and teachers. We talked about the problem of teaching to the test and the fact that there are no tests for the science and space topics so they are not as heavily taught in the schools as those subjects used in the test, basic reading and math. Lynn spoke about the need for educational standards enforcement. Listeners asked about apprenticeship programs and Andrew in Tucson even suggested a novel video/YouTube type of program to assist parents in helping their kids with math and science homework. Again, don't miss this discussion and the listener questions. In Segment three, Mr. Baroff was asked about the new badge security system at JPL for the Mars Rovers. As we learned, this was a NASA and actually a government wide security change that many people do not like. We also talked about how the media portrays technical experts on TV and in the movies, as nerds, socially maladjusted, and anything but a popular outgoing man or woman. Lynn suggested that this is a negative influence on school kids and may play a part in many turning away from the STEM subjects. He suggested a more positive portrayal of the technical experts across all media to change what has become a negative in our culture. In this segment, we started talking about the human-robotic interface and that for long duration missions or settlement, we would need to be able to trust and place significantly more reliability in our robotics and computers than we do now. It was said that everyone wanted a Hal 2000 but without all the problems and negatives. In Segment 4, I brought up the Dr. Spudis editorial on using space as economic infrastructure and the fact that it does not need to be in our consciousness. Dr. Spudis equated space development to the railroads. If you want to read the Spudis essay, you can find it here: www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1349. During the last part of this final segment, we talked about some of the major human factors needed for a human to Mars mission and why we are not yet ready to undertake such a mission. This is definitely a discussion you will want to hear. If you have comments or questions for Lynn Baroff, visit his website at www.csewi.org. You can email your comments or questions to him at info@csewi.org. Make sure to reference both his name and The Space Show in the email subject line.
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