I've been trying to write this first blog entry for the last three nights and been too busy with everything that has been happening. Just to give a quick review - Saturday and Sunday were welcomes and orientations, Monday was the program outlining and a pretty cool opening ceremony, and on Tuesday (yesterday) all hell broke loose. We straight away started with the very ideas and concepts of space - what drove man kind to space, the astronauts physiological living environment (from a MD astronaut), space futures (plural) studies, a (whole class, mandatory speaking) debate on manned spaceflight and picking our team projects (and more).
This is about to be an quite an experience...
So as I mentioned, my mind is at the state of being blown at the moment, but I feel that by postponing this (first) blog any more would make writing it even more difficult. So, here are some points I've got so far -
Some of the program's demographics - Aerospace engineer, Aerospace engineer, Aerospace engineer, Electric engineer, Political studies person, Aerospace engineer, Aerospace engineer, Aerospace engineer, physicist, Architect, Aerospace engineer, Aerospace engineer, Aerospace engineer, Doctor, Business major, and so on. We are around 125 people, about 30 from China, 25 from Canada, 15 US, 8 India, 5 Israelis, 1 Maltasian and many more (mostly Europeans). Everyone has a BA, most a MA, some a PhD and almost all have interesting experience in space work (NASA\ESA\CSA\CNSA folks, two MARS1 candidates, Boeing\Airbus\... workers, and a ton of students). And all are very enthusiastic in making space (engineering\science\applications\exploration) an even bigger part of our lives.
I've just finished supper at an Ethiopian restaurant (with the TP team (explanation soon)) sitting with the Kepler space telescope head engineer and talking with him about the new field of Exoplanets and really cool work done with Kepler (and future(s) work to be done with similar tools). And all of the speaker\lecturers and like that, approachable and happy to exchange ideas.
And forget about the speakers, TAs, lecturers and panellists, talking to fellow participants is really interesting and enriching, their perspectives, their understandings, their experience are just amazing.
And speaking of Exoplanets. An Exoplanet is just a planet out of our solar system. A few good thousands have been discovered by Kepler and others and the a lot of new, interesting and theory changing things have been found. I'm in the TP team working on Exoplanets (sadly, not literally on them). TP stands for Team Project, we have 4 for the 125 of us, so its a big team. These TP reports have been known to affect policy makers in the past and I'm very excited on getting in to ours (although I might hate it by the 4th week). So the TPs were selected now, and we going to ease in to them gradually (first once\twice a week and in the end full time). Our more specific subject is getting smaller organisation and smaller countries in Exoplanet research by using smaller satellites, and basically except for this title and the formal things needed we have the freedom to do what we want (in a 30+ person group, this is going to be tough).
Last thing I have in mind is something that I find missing - we've already had the talk about educational inspiration using space icons (both astronaut and engineer achievements), but no discussion is scheduled about the way to use the inspiration for teaching and motivating. Luckily (actually, obviously) we're encouraged to organize our own presentations and discussions, so I'm going to try and make that offer.
I think that's enough for now, here's a picture from the opening ceremony that was held in ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) headquarters that are based in Montreal.
Oh, yah, and I'm really looking forward for the weekend so we can tour the city (and maybe rest a bit)...
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