66 — Even NASA Engineers Needed to Develop Building Experience
2016-04-03. By Kelly.
Fig. 1. As this sequence of photos demonstrates, the launch of ST-5 on SO June 1961 went well; however, a failure of the rocket's third stage doomed the payload. http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4308/ch7.htm
Last week, my students and I finished up the grant for the drone project. It took about three months for the students to research how to make a drone, complete a parts list, and write the grant. This was all done during 30 minutes of free time at lunch and at home during the weekends. Most of the time was used just evaluating drone projects and then coming up with a plan for their own. The team of students consists of two girls and one boy. I have been impressed on how they work as a team and each student has lead the team in some of the decision making. Sometimes I had to negotiate norms for the group but these students have worked very hard to make this a group project and avoid the one man "person" show. So when I was about to post the project through Donors Choose, I was shocked when one students said maybe we shouldn't post the project. Instead of talking to her right then I told her to wait and we could discuss it as a group the next day. I needed time to think about my response. The next day, I talked to the team about posting the project and brought up the concern. After mentioning the concern in our group discussion, I talked about the early rocket testing at NASA being a disaster before they put a man in space. I added that the purpose of the project was to gain building experience and develop computer programming skills. I felt very strongly that our donors would understand that the projects intention was to build a drone but more importantly was funding an opportunity for student to go through the engineering process.