Our FIRST Lego League teams are looking for experts to help with this year’s
challenge, “Identify a physical or social problem faced by humans during long
duration space exploration.” We’d love to have experts visit in person or chat with students via conference call, Skype or Face Time. If this is your field of expertise please PM me. Also, please feel free to share with colleagues.
In Los Angels, you’re very close to Aerospace companies. If you can’t find a personal connection, a cold call is worth a shot.
Interesting map on this page:
Best of luck and see you at the QTs!
Thank you, we’ve tried that. I was hoping Chief Delphi might have a few employees of those companies (and others) that might be willing to help out.
Sent you a PM.
It is intended that teams start with “Identify a physical or social problem faced by humans during long duration space exploration” and brainstorm to identify some possible problems. Then the team can brainstorm where they can find experts in those fields to help them. The themes are deliberately broad and vague to allow teams a lot of latitude in choosing a problem to solve. This also helps give more variety to the problems the various teams solve rather than having them all solve the same problem. One year, working as a Project Judge, 5 of the 8 teams I interviewed did projects on pill sorters for seniors. It became very difficult to tell them apart.
It may help your team to identify possible problems if they imagine what would need to happen in a long duration expedition in space. Once they have that “story”, they can go back and look for possible problems. Pages 7 and 8 of the Challenge Guide gives a non-exhaustive list of questions your team can think about to help them identify a problem to solve.
I typically advise the teams I mentor to choose problems where the experts are likely to be easily accessible. For instance, a problem relating to the Russian or Chinese space programs will make it much more difficult to find experts in the field. I have also steered the teams I mentor away from problems requiring them to contact Johnson Space Center and be more imaginative when choosing their experts. My understanding is that JSC was warned and has prepared for a deluge of students calling to ask for help.
The aerospace companies in the LA area may be helpful to you if the people working there are working on space flight and they are not prevented from speaking about their work by security restrictions. The “physical problem” does not have to be constrained to the spacecraft. It can be a problem related to the human body too. Local universities are likely to have departments doing research in areas relating to the spacecraft as well as human physiology and psychology (social problems). Even if the researcher is not specifically working on problems relating to space flight, many of them are working on problems that have a direct impact on someone on a long journey through space.
FIRST intends that the teams find actual experts in a particular field and correspond with those experts as part of their research. This program is not meant to be a test of one’s Google-Fu. The contact with the experts does not have to be face to face. It is also expected that the teams present their solutions to someone, preferably someone who could benefit from hearing about their solution. It is acceptable to present the solution to the experts contacted for the research.
When your team goes to the competitions, I would suggest they seek the teams that have done well in the Research Project, Robot Game and Robot Design and ask them what they did. Most teams are very willing to share. That is how my son’s team learned a lot of what they knew.
Best of luck and remember that you all should be having fun (students and adults).