How to Become an Astronaut - Psychology Today

When astronauts floating successful abstraction look down connected satellite Earth, they reported experiencing a feeling that has often been described arsenic the Overview Effect. This sensation tin champion beryllium defined arsenic a feeling of awe, a claustrophobic feeling accompanied by the consciousness that if we messiness up that bluish marble down determination successful the vastness of space, that is it. It is each over.

Since 1961, a small implicit 550 radical person seen that bluish marble called satellite Earth from space. Only 24 person seen our satellite from an adjacent larger distance, increasing smaller and smaller successful the vastness. How tin our younger generations acquisition what, truthful far, a selected fewer person experienced? Would it beryllium imaginable to make ambassadors for satellite Earth successful children by having them acquisition the Overview Effect?

That is simply a question the non-profit enactment SpaceBuzz took up.

They wondered however to motorboat a cardinal children crossed the satellite into abstraction and person them acquisition the Overview Effect. The reply they recovered was to physique a custom-made rocket vessel and person classrooms of children beryllium launched into space... successful virtual reality.

This breathtaking acquisition programme consists of a pre-flight, a flight, and a post-flight program. In the pre-flight programme astatine school, children larn however to constitute an exertion missive to go an astronaut. They besides larn however to acquisition gravity by hanging upside down connected a horizontal bar, they enactment unneurotic a puzzle with oven mitts to acquisition what astronauts acquisition erstwhile manipulating objects, and they lick a assortment of elemental math, geography, and connection problems.

Once these children walk the pre-flight astronaut training—and don’t archer the secret, but everybody passes the training—a rocket vessel arrives successful beforehand of their school. The rocket vessel is horizontally mounted connected a truck. There is nary uncertainty it is simply a rocket ship. Its signifier and size marque it obvious. The substance engines are intelligibly visible, the signature from European Space Agency astronaut André Kuipers marks its abstraction status, and the SpaceBuzz unit welcomes the caller astronauts.

Groups of children participate the rocket vessel and beryllium down successful the specially designed astronaut seats. They enactment connected their abstraction virtual world headset, enactment connected their headphones, and hole for launch. Two-time International Space Station astronaut Kuipers volition usher them connected their travel arsenic the skipper of the spaceship.

The countdown starts, the engines crook on, and the young astronauts consciousness their seats determination for launch. After the excitement of the launch, they participate into an orbit astir the Earth. The sound and fumes from the motorboat person go the soundlessness and clarity of space.

To marque viewing much comfortable, the chairs determination again, and the young astronauts spot satellite Earth, their home. Kuipers tells them astir the wonders of the Earth, the oceans, the Northern lights, and the Amazon rainforest portion they ellipse the planet. Once their travel comes to an end, the doors adjacent again, and they marque themselves acceptable to onshore and safely get backmost home.

The SpaceBuzz programme is not lone an exhilarating acquisition for immoderate kid (and teacher and parent), but it besides offers endless opportunities for probe successful the cognitive sciences. Do children really acquisition the Overview Effect, and however would we measurement this? And fixed the acquisition quality of the SpaceBuzz program, does the virtual world simulation output learning gains?

My probe squad has started the technological travel to reply these questions.

For instance, successful 1 experiment, we tested immoderate 100 children connected a scope of measures, including whether they experienced awe, the Overview Effect, and learning gains. For starters, we utilized questionnaires, adjacent though we are presently conducting neurophysiological studies, to find whether we tin replicate the findings online.

The findings showed large promise. First of all, we recovered grounds for learning gains successful children by comparing results from a trial anterior to the motorboat and aft the landing. But a alleged “structural equation model” that represented however awe, the Overview Effect, and learning gains were thought to beryllium causally structurally related to 1 different demonstrated more. Because of the acquisition of an awe effect, children experienced the Overview Effect, and due to the fact that they experienced the Overview Effect, they experienced learning gains. And remainder assured, not the different mode around. Apparently, if learners are successful awe of the content, they learn.

Now, if the SpaceBuzz programme shows learning gains, it offers large committedness not lone for young abstraction travelers successful virtual world but besides for the aboriginal of education. Think astir it. The virtual world simulation could go adaptive to the learner, problem-solving could instrumentality spot successful virtual world simulations, and pressures successful the existent schoolroom tin beryllium relieved by these complementary technologies.

But for now, SpaceBuzz is traveling the world. Having visited the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Hungary, we person reached immoderate 50,000 children already and are inactive counting. Counting the caller ambassadors for satellite Earth!

References