Today, as we celebrate Mother’s Day, we want to take a moment to look beyond the control rooms and starship simulators to recognize a vital part of our volunteer program: the mothers of our 7th-12th-grade volunteers.
The Space Center has always thrived as a community effort. Being a part of the Alpine School District means we are more than just an educational facility; we are a collective of families dedicated to inspiring the next generation to look up and dream big. While our students in grades 7 through 12 are the ones donning the uniforms and costumes, and running the controls (and scaring the younglings at times), they wouldn't be in those seats without the dedicated support system at home.
The True "Logistics Officers"
At a time when gas prices are on the way into orbit, the commitment it takes to drive back and forth to the Center for volunteering shifts is immense. To the moms who navigate traffic, manage busy carpool schedules, and wait patiently in the parking lot: we see you.
Your role is a "volunteer" position in its own right. By providing the transportation and encouragement your children need to participate, you are directly sustaining our programs. Without this steady stream of dedicated young volunteers, our starships wouldn't fly, and our missions wouldn't have the same magic.
Why Your Support Matters
Fueling Passion: Your support enables these students to explore leadership and teamwork in ways textbooks simply can't replicate.
Building Community: You are the backbone of the "community effort" that has defined the Space Center since the beginning.
Ensuring Excellence: Our programs rely on the reliability of our staff and volunteers. Because you get them here on time and ready to work, our simulations remain world-class.
To all the moms who act as logistics officers, recruiters, and cheerleaders for our young Voyagers: Thank you. We hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day, knowing that you are an essential part of our journey to creating a space-faring civilization.
“Imagine, Believe, Learn, and Do” — a philosophy made possible by the families who support us every day.
An Update from the Lion's Gate Space Center at Lakeview Academy, Saratoga Springs
By Jonathan EdenHowdy everyone! Things have been pretty chaotic around here at Lion's Gate. We’re running 20+ missions a week, and planning out future developments on top of that. I had hoped to share more info about the new simulators today, but we aren’t quite ready to go public with that yet, so y’all will have to wait a little longer. All I can do for now is show a picture of the building's exterior. The future of our program is on the other side of that wall… We hope to show you the inside sooner rather than later.
To fill the gap until then, I thought I’d share some behind-the-scenes of the educational missions we do here!
We do a lot of away missions to give kids a change of scenery during a mission. This allows us to do a lot of cool scenarios, and our surface pros help a lot in that. Sometimes they are control panels that need a specific sequence of numbers (found by solving math problems) to unlock, or they are used for interactive games related to the mission. The pictured game has them searching for a crashed probe containing top-secret information. All of this stuff is programmed in-house by Dan & Melissa (The same two working on a new control set for our center)
Both of these props were used in recent missions. (First for 6th grade, Second for Kindergarten) The first was a set of engravings they found on the surface of a subspace conduit. They were searching for a way to stabilize the conduit, and it seems someone wrote the instructions on it. Too bad it wasn't in English, and they had to decode it… Kindergarten’s last mission this year had them searching for an Earth-Like planet to one day colonize. They tested the planets by getting samples from the planets they visited. As you can see, alien planets can have some pretty crazy stuff on them.
One of our favorite missions has our 7th graders on board a ship from the pre-FTL era of our universe. The crew was doing a gravity assist around Jupiter and built structures to protect themselves from the radiation belts the ship was passing through. It may not look like it, but there are 10 kids under that structure. As you can imagine, they absolutely loved it. :)
This work of ours takes a lot of effort to pull off. (Not unlike any other Space Center) So we sometimes find creative ways to de-stress outside of flights. So, to close out this update, here is a meme going around in our team and a video of us messing around in Dream Flight Adventures. (The one cackling in the video is me, btw.)
Fly Safe Out There!
- Jonathan
The Week's Best Videos From Around the World, Edited for a Gentler Audience
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