A Chinese astronaut, Zhai Zhigang, walked in space today and not as a tourist on the International Space Station, but for the first time as a Chinese astronaut, in a Chinese craft. This NPR report sounds like a rerun of a scene from the US space race days.

“The children are extremely excited, some of them even wear homemade astronauts’ costumes, all of them clutch Chinese flags as they wait.

“Jiayou! Jiayou!” they shout, encouraging the astronaut who’s opened the airlock and is about to venture outside.

To a huge cheer from the crowd, 42-year-old Zhai Zhigang emerges from the hatch. The students jump to their feet, waving their flags. His first movement: a wave to the cameras.

“I feel fine,” he says in Chinese. “Greetings to the people of the motherland! Greetings to the people of the world!” “

The Chinese are moving at an incredible rate, whatever the cost, and have plans to put their own space station into orbit. They’re not apart of the ISS partnership, something that needs to be rethought; the ISS is an incredible drain on funding, it would be a nice diplomatic and financial boon to have then join the ISS instead of running a competing program. The same goes for India. They haven’t put a man in orbit yet, but their space program is a serious effort that will bear fruit.

We can’t afford another space race just now.

Curricular ideas:

• Economics, Mathematics.
  • The growth of the Chinese economy and comparisons to our own. Are there parallels? What does a space program cost? Where does the money come from? What about private space ventures?
• History, Political Science.
  • The Space race and the huge roll of politics. Compare and contrast US and Chinese space program history.
• Technology,Science.
  • Micro-gravity, the ISS, Orbital Mechanics, humans in space (Nasa eClips lesson plan), etc…

I haven’t heard of this program being extended to New York City, but last summer I worked with a technology teacher,Steve May, who was able to participate in something similar at Brooklyn Tech. He turned that 2 week experience into the Young Engineers School, a summer program for middle school students. We spent the month of July helping kids build and launch bottle rockets, build and calibrate a breaking system for model cars, build and test tower structures. The program was enormously successful and easily attract funding to make it a regular part of the curriculum, thanks largely to Steve’s management.

This program was designed for middle school children, but the science and engineering design elements can be scaled to meet the grade level objectives for any age group and a quick search on the internet will reveal an almost limitless number of possible projects. My experience with the program has inspired me and I’m brainstorming several ideas cross curriculum projects both for the science classroom and after school academies. None of them will cost $12.5 million to develop or use. You’ll see them take shape here in the near future.

I have meet students looking for work in a physics lab, who didn’t know what that a nut is also a part of a fastening device; I tutored a student for the LAST who didn’t know what a tide was, let alone why it happened. Both had degrees and new their subject, but that isn’t enough. The teaching of science, and particularly physics, has to lose its ivory tower status. To have a literate population, Science must scratch out a living in the everyday world. I believe there is great potential in interdisciplinary work, particularly with math and technology, but also in ELA and Social Studies.
We have to be able to do it all folks.