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Mr. Yager's US History students spent Tuesday December 9, 2003 visiting NASA-Ames Research Center in celebration of 100 years of human flight. This special tour linked the Wright Brothers historic flight on December 17, 1903 to present day cutting edge technology of advanced transportation systems.
The first stop on the tour was at the NASA-Ames Visitor Center where Mike Reeves gave a 20 minute multimedia overview of some of the aerospace research currently underway at this world class facility. In addition Mike presented a graphic presentation and animation revealing our overcrowded airways and how technology is assisting. (As shown below)
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Additional NASA-Ames research is centered on,
Dr. Chris Henze shown below demonstrating the hyperwall.
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The Hyperwall, (shown above) an advanced supercomputing visualization tool was then presented by Dr. Chris Henze in the NAS Supercomputing building, highlighting the mars airplane and the construction of carbon nanotubes. While one half of students stayed with Dr. Henze and Mr. Federighi, Bryan Yager provided a brief walk through of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division in building 258 with stops in the Multi Media lab, the Vis Lab and a view of the latest supercomputing mass storage units, including the world's first 512-processor SGI® Altix™ single-system image (SSI) supercomputer.
The students then moved to Future Flight Central in building 262. Rob Voss presented the full scale tower cab with 360-degree out-of-the-window high fidelity 3D representation of the orbiter landing, typical operations at LAX airport, moving on mars with sojourner and finally a view from the seat of a roller coaster.
Sojourner moving on mars as seen from the FFC pictured below.
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The final destination was a 50 minute multimedia presentation by "Orville and Wilbur Wright" based on how they created and flew the first powered fully controlled airplane in the 201-auditorium.
Victoria Callor of Life Sciences presented each Ralston student with a NASA informational packet prior to leaving the facility. Each packet contained,
The students were well behaved and asked salient questions to all of the principal investigators. This unique tour linked the history of the first powered flight to the cutting edge technology regarding advanced visualization and transportation systems. What incredible achievements from that first flight December 17, 1903 to the present day. Astonishing to think that it took just 66 years from that first flight in Kitty Hawk N.C. to placing men on the moon in July 1969.
A sincere thank you to all principal investigators for making this extraordinary educational experience available to the Ralston students.
Special thanks to
Be watching for the grand opening of NASA-Ames' Mars Center. We will be visiting this unique facility in January.
Bryan Yager
