I am the new Heinlein Prize Trust spokesperson and leader of the Have Spacesuit Will Travel program (HSSWT). The idea is to inspire young people to be interested in space exploration. Robert Heinlein wrote a series of stories for young people. The quintessential story is called Have Spacesuit Will Travel. It is about a young man who enters a contest and wins an old spacesuit. He fixes it up and embarks on an accidental series of adventures. It is a wonderful story and remarkable, because Heinlein got most of the spacesuit technical features essentially correct many years before the first spacesuit was made!
We plan to create a lesson plan of sorts for school kids and have them read the book. Following a learning activity, they will be rewarded with a Sokol pressure suit in their school for two weeks. They will be allowed to touch the suit and try on the gloves.
What do you think? Please let me know your suggestions on how to make this program a success!
Thanks,
Leroy Chiao
2 comments:
This sounds great! I think I'll go read the book too. I'd love to see essays written by the students as to what they would go do if they had a spacesuit. Would they want to go to the Moon? Mars? Somewhere more exotic? Would they want to play games in space?
This is a great idea. Our 4th grade boys book club will be reading Have Spacesuit for their December meeting. Have you developed a lesson plan yet? I think the boys will attach to it even more if we tie it in with astronauts. I would appreciate any creative help you can provide.
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