The main thing is people

Would you believe if you heard that there is a space school for children in your city? I am unlikely. Such skepticism is natural, based on the usual “who needs this?”, “Who will spend their time on this?”. The longer I lifted my jaw from the floor when I ended up in such a school. But first things first:

Randomness

The end of September 2014. The festive date is approaching - the launch of the first satellite, and the Ufa planetarium announces a space week - lectures, film screenings and similar events. This schedule is sent to me by Alexander Shaenko with the question - will I participate there? Ufa has an excellent planetarium, one of the few that show full-dome programs, spend evenings on sidewalk astronomy and other interesting things. I thought it was easier to lecturein anticafe, and in planetarium events, I was expected to be maximum by the viewer. Nevertheless, in a good way, the restless Alexander contacted someone there and told someone there about me. After a couple of days, a man calls me, introducing himself as Alexei, and suggests meeting. It's a good thing, space geeks should know about each other, so I agree.

Space basement

In principle, already a first look at the situation shows that they have been working here for a long time and fruitfully:



Further conversation (and my interlocutor turned out to be Alexey Allikas, an excellent student in the national education of the Republic of Bashkortostan, “Person of the Year 2005” according to the TV company “All Ufa” and many others awards ) was filled with a really good surprise. Because the school "Big space travel" has been working for twenty years. Two study groups with a total number of 10-15 people are trained in a full-fledged curriculum of three stages:

1. Introduction
2. Design.
3. Flight.

Students choose to specialize in parallel with the overall program. Someone teaches the theory and makes calculations:



Some people are interested in working with their hands, and the racks show the results of their work:







And for someone, virtual flights in the simulator are most interesting:





Orbiter is used as a simulator (it's nice that a series of my publications turned out to be useful to them too ) Pay attention to the seriousness of the approach - the work is divided between the virtual “ship” and the “flight control center”, a previously developed and calculated project is used as a model of the ship. The book "Manned Flight to Mars"under the editorship of A.S. Koroteeva is actually a desktop. And the room of the virtual ship is very atmospheric decorated. Even markers hang on flypapers that did not fly away in "weightlessness".

Past, Present, and Future

Growing up, children can change, young astronauts can go to the Indians, knights or begin to reconstruct the period of the Great Patriotic War, and this is normal. In the club "Rosstan" is the neighboring rooms of one basement. But there are those who retain a children's passion for astronautics. The Big Space Travel School boasts about a couple of dozens of graduates currently working in the space industry.
The quality of training is confirmed by repeated victories at the Olympiads and awards at competitions. For example, in 2013, three students became winners of the Star Relay children's contest. Representatives of the IMBP RAS seriously proposed the algorithm: “after school, we sign a contract for the targeted recruitment to the university, then to the cosmonaut corps and forth to conduct an adult version of this experiment on the ISS.”

Pupils visited the CPC:



Mars-Tefo Interactorium:



Ufa Airport simulators:



There is even a summer space camp .

The future of the school also looks good. The idea of ​​a children's space center has found support in the government of Bashkortostan, and currently the work is at the stage of a competition of architectural projects. In a few years, the Big Space Travel school will be able to move from the basement to a new, large and well-equipped building.

Conclusion

At the beginning of the twentieth century, astronautics were driven by dreamers. People who “got sick” with the topic wrote and published books, delivered lectures, worked hard and made hundreds and thousands of people interested in the cosmonautics who became workers, engineers, designers, and scientists. Who knows, maybe thanks to people like Aleksey, the process of crystallization of a new round of space development will begin?

Photos taken from the archives of the school "Big space travel" or are their own work.