The main thing is people

Would you believe if you heard that there is a children's space school in your city? I - hardly. Natural such skepticism, based on the usual “who needs it?”, “Who will waste their time on it?”. The longer I lifted my jaw from the floor when I was in such a school. But first things first:

Randomness

The end of September 2014. Festive date is approaching - the launch of the first satellite, and the Ufa planetarium announces space week - lectures, film shows and similar events. This schedule is sent to me by Alexander Shaenko with a question - will I participate there? In Ufa there is an excellent planetarium, one of the few showing full-domed programs, conducting pavement astronomy evenings and other interesting things. It seemed to me easier to lecture in the anti-cafe, and in the events of the planetarium I was expected to a maximum by the audience. However, in a reckless way Alexander was contacted by someone and told someone there. A couple of days later a man calls me in, introducing himself as Alexey, and offering to meet. It's a good thing, space geeks should know about each other, so I agree.

Space Basement

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


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

1. Introduction
2. Design.
3. Flight.

Pupils choose specialization parallel to the general program. Someone teaches theory and makes calculations:



Someone is interested in working with hands, and the racks show the results of their work:







And someone is most interesting virtual flights in the simulator:





Orbiter is used as a simulator (it is nice that a series of my publications turned out to be useful for them). 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 the ship model. The book "Piloted flight to Mars" ed. A.S. Koroteeva is actually a desktop. And the virtual ship room is very atmospheric. Even the markers hang on stickies, so as not to 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 “Rosstan” club these are the next rooms of one basement. But there are those who retain children's passion for space exploration. The Big Space Journey school boasts about a couple of dozen graduates currently working in the space industry.
The quality of training is confirmed by repeated victories at olympiads and awards at competitions. For example, in 2013, three students became winners of the children's competition "Star Relay" . Representatives of the IMBP of the Russian Academy of Sciences seriously suggested an algorithm: “after school we sign a contract on the target set to the university, then to the cosmonaut team and go ahead - to conduct an adult version of this experiment on the ISS”.

Pupils attended CPC:



Interactorium Mars-Tefo:



Simulators of the Ufa airport:



There is even a summer space camp .

The future of the school also looks good. The idea of ​​a children's space center found support in the government of Bashkortostan, and at present the works are 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. The people who "got sick" with the topic wrote and published books, gave lectures, worked with all their might and made hundreds and thousands of people interested in astronautics becoming workers, engineers, designers, and scientists. Who knows, maybe thanks to people like Alexey, the process of crystallization of a new round of cosmonautics will begin?

The photos are taken from the archives of the school "Big Space Travel" or are their own work.