On recent evidence at least, Space Camp, an all-American rite of passage for generations of young maths wizards, science geeks and wannabe astronauts, ought to have disappeared into a black hole.
Nasa no longer launches people into orbit, the US government’s investment in its space agency is as low as it has ever been, and the last rocket sent from Cape Canaveral with supplies for the International Space Station exploded last month seconds after lift-off. On the face of it, there doesn’t seem to be much for the next wave of explorers and adventurers to get excited about.
Yet for the thousand or so children who will attend the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida this summer, and the many more at the US Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, their dream burns as brightly as a supernova.
Despite what industry analysts and former astronauts acknowledge is a low point in America’s space history, Nasa has big plans. And the children at the camp – who are interested more in stunning close-ups of Pluto and last week’s discovery of a distant “cousin” planet to Earth than by political wrangles in Congress over the space agency’s budget – are keen to be part of them. “I want to see Mars; I don’t want to hear somebody else’s description of it,” said 11-year-old Haley Smith, whose goal is to be among the first crew to set foot on it.
“I’m going to be a computer engineer, helping to launch rockets to go deeper into space,” said Colin Cox who, with his 11-year-old twin brother Cameron, is enthralled by the Florida camp they are attending on the recommendation of a classmate who went last year.
“Our future is in space. This stuff never gets old,” agreed Michael Hancock, 13, who hopes his passion for biomechanical engineering and software development will earn him a career in the industry when he leaves school.
To Kerri Lubeski, chief educator of Camp KSC, it is not enough to give the children a cool experience during their summer holidays. It’s about allowing their natural curiosity to run its course, inspiring them to reach their potential in whatever field they wish to pursue and, in many cases, sowing the seeds that might eventually lead them into space.
From constructing and launching model rockets made of paper tubes and PVC pipes, to experiencing the pull of a microgravity simulator and planning and executing a mission on board a full-size space shuttle mock-up, each activity is planned to bring out team-building and problem-solving skills.
“The kids coming here, their dream is very much alive, whether it’s something of who they are or something their family and school helped bring out,” Lubeski said. “They believe they can be the next person in that spacecraft. We may not be launching people now, but by the time they’ve finished school we’ll be there.”
She said it was important to keep the programme current as US operations in space shift to the private sector. Contractors such as SpaceX and Boeing have taken over the ferrying of astronauts and supplies to the space station while Nasa concentrates on the development of the Space Launch System.
The SLS, which will give Nasa its first deep-space capability in four decades, will be the largest rocket built, with the aim of a manned mission to Mars by the 2030s. Its first unmanned test flight is set for no later than November 2018.
“We try to focus on what Nasa’s doing – Mars, the New Horizons with Pluto, giving an idea of the past, the present and the future,” Lubeski said. “We have a slingshot activity where the kids design a capsule that can go beyond Earth’s orbit. Then there’s the things that are cool no matter what – building and launching rockets. Everybody loves that.”
Of last week’s class of 170 adventurers, aged seven to 16, more than half were girls. Tattiana Selbach, 11, from Cumming, Georgia, was impressed with the space shuttle Atlantis, which carried the last astronauts from US soil in 2011 and is now a museum piece at the KSC visitor centre. To her, however, it is a relic. “The future is on Mars, and I want to be the first person on the spaceship to go there,” she said. “I’m really into space and exploring and it’s something I can’t wait to be doing.”
Retired Nasa astronaut Fred Gregory, a veteran of three shuttle missions who was also the agency’s deputy administrator a decade ago, handed out graduation certificates to campers on Friday and was encouraged by what he saw.
“We’ve become risk averse, very conservative [in space],” he said. “What we need is a new group of people out there who are not burdened and shackled with this tradition and with this legacy.
“Kids today are much more informed than their parents. When I was a kid, we didn’t have astronauts; we had Buck Rogers. But it wasn’t reality – it was science-fiction. Now we’re looking at Mars, Pluto, the Kuiper Belt … This isn’t science fiction for these kids, but another step down the road. They know that this will eventually happen: people will be on Mars, and then it’s, ‘Where do we go next?’ That’s what I like about this.”
He said space camp can have a significant influence on young people’s dreams. “When I was young, my parents realised that you learn so much in school, but those summer journeys, those explorations and adventures you take, are just as important, and perhaps even more important than what you learn in school.
“Each generation has more knowledge than the older generations and that is fantastic. It means that, intellectually, we are becoming smarter and smarter and gaining even greater wisdom.”
For Lubeski and her team of 20 teachers and camp staff, a successful summer will be the children returning to their schools with their thirst for knowledge invigorated. Among them, she hopes, will be someone who will one day take their passion for space and learning into the first capsule to Mars.
“We tell our kids: if you reach Mars, make sure you look out of the window and wave down to us,” she said. “Let us know you made it.”