Space Academy may be the next best thing to actually launching into space and walking on Mars.
Brain Miller, a Boyertown resident and math teacher at Reading’s Northeast Middle School, was recently selected to take part in the Honeywell Educators at Space Academy at the United States Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Miller, a 1979 graduate of Boyertown Area Senior High, was among 200 teachers from around the world accepted into the Space Academy for 2017.
“The whole focus is to give some ideas that you could use to get different things into your classroom, mainly geared toward things that would go with the space program,” said Miller.
This was his first time at the space camp.
“I would go back if I had the opportunity. It was exciting. A lot interesting people I met from all over the world. We did a couple different simulated missions. One was a shuttle mission”
For the shuttle mission, he said he appointed the flight controller which was the guy in control of everything
“It was interesting – trying to keep everything in front of you on the computer and watching it, getting an appreciation for what they actually went through on the Apollo missions and stuff.”
Born in 1961, Miller said while he doesn’t remember all of the Apollo missions, he does remember some of them and the folks behind the scenes making it happen. It was something he enjoyed.
As a part of Space Camp, the teachers took part in a simulated mission to mars. They got suited up and explored the ‘Mars’ surface. “I was in the capsule that ‘went to Mars’ and we got out and did some stuff.”
He also enjoyed the interaction with teachers from other parts of the country and around the world. In groups, they built model rockets and used a Raspberry Pi computer.
“It records the velocity and distance that the rocket traveled. I was thinking, I could use this in my math class, we do mean, medium, and mode.” Miller said by doing that, the kids can do their own calculations and they whole class would be involved. “To sit there and think, how could I get this into the class? Maybe they were trying to show us this with it, but I could take that and use it.”
On departure back home, the space camp attendees were able to take with them their blue flight suits. Miller says he’ll probably hang his suit up in his seventh-grade classroom.
“I’ll tell [the students] about [the academy] and maybe get them interested in a career that they have not thought of before.”
Another real-life application he spoke about was origami and the folding techniques involved.
“You think origami – what’s origami got to do with space travel? You never thought, you seem them – the satellite goes up and the solar panels unfold. Well they have to be folded the right way or they’re not going to unfold the right way.”
During the week-long camp, Miller explained how the teachers were broken into groups to work on team challenges and team building exercises. They also had the opportunity to meet Homer H. Hickam, whose story was the basis for the 1999 film “October Sky.”
Miller said he would highly recommend Space Camp to other teachers and looks forward to discussing the experiences with his students in the fall.