On A Bad Day, Try SpaceX Patience

"(W)e want to make sure that if this is their worst day...it's not their last day." Elon Musk's private SpaceX company and tax-payer-funded NASA use this saying to motivate the preparations for sending astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station and for bringing them home safely one to four months later.

     In these troubled times, like astronauts, we all need a motivating motto and an escape plan to avoid things like viruses, food shortages and excessive government control over our religious and gender preferences.

      To protect astronauts, there is now an abort system that enables sensors to detect rocket malfunctions, to separate the capsule carrying the astronauts from the rocket and to parachute the capsule down into the ocean. Consequently, preparations for launching the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket require precise calculations of ocean water temperature and wave velocity and height over a vast area anywhere a team may have to rescue the downed astronauts near Cape Canaveral or on their route to Newfoundland, over the Atlantic Ocean and on to Ireland.

     Although the SpaceX launch is scheduled for May 27, 2020 at 4:33 p.m. EDT, a delay due to rough seas should be expected. For astronauts, as well as each of us, taking time to correct problems may be the surest path to survival.

     After a three day delay, SpaceX took off on Saturday, May 30, and docked safely with the International Space Station on May 31, 2020.

The astronauts returned safely with a successful splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, August 2, 2020.      

Out-of-this-world App Helps Kids Behave

Shortly after reading about three factors that contribute to a kid's bad behavior, mentioned in The Good News About Bad Behavior by Katherine Reynolds Lewis, I learned about the Space Nation Navigator smartphone app. The book and app go together. Lewis claims a child's bad behavior is related to:

• less play time,
• more social media exposure,
• fewer confidence-boosting real world connections, including household chores.

Finnish-based Space Nation (spacenation.org), a space tourism startup, collaborated with NASA to develop a real life astronaut training app for smartphones. Before downloading Space Nation Navigator, you can preview some of the activities at spacenationnavigator.com. To help develop astronaut skills, new missions and minigames are updated daily. Quizzes help kids discover the science that enables astronauts to travel in space, and physical challenges prepare students to endure space travel.

     Space Nation participants enter a global competition to earn badges and prizes, including the grand prize: a trip for four to the moonlike scenery in Iceland, where Apollo astronauts trained. Eventually, the Space Nation Astronaut Program aims to launch one candidate into space every year.

     For other space-related activities for kids, see the earlier post, "Space Explorers."