On Tuesday, August 21, NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill spoke to the MaTHRobotics group, along with other robotics members from the Houston area.
Mr. Woodfill has been at NASA since the early days of space flight, and was the Warning System Engineer, monitoring the caution and warning system, when Apollo 13 exploded. His system first alerted Mission Control during that eventful day, and the event was depicted in Tom Hanks' movie Apollo 13. His inspiration for joining the space program was none other than President John F. Kennedy, who spoke at Houston's Rice University on September 12,1962, when Mr. Woodfill was enrolled as a student there.
Mr. Woodfill gave us an emotional rendition of Kennedy's speech, and also gave a talk explaining other resources at NASA, including the Space Educator'sHandbook, which he authored as part of his position at NASA-JSC.
In addition, as an outreach to the Christian community, Woodfill maintains a personal site entitled SpaceActs.com, which details some of the more spiritual and unpublicized aspects of space flight events.
He also let us know about the usefulness of DUCT TAPE! :)
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Writing and Teamwork Meeting
During this meeting we discussed some of the problems that the Apollo 13 team faced, and worked in teams to try and pick up marbles, using a teamwork activity we found on the NASA web site. We used marbles, spoons, knives, forks, dowel rods, and DUCT TAPE!!! Who can forget the DUCT TAPE?!?!?!?
We explored creating strategies in challenging situations, working alone and working in teams. We did a few exercises to help us learn to work together instead of competing against each other, something that is important in BEST Robotics.
We explored creating strategies in challenging situations, working alone and working in teams. We did a few exercises to help us learn to work together instead of competing against each other, something that is important in BEST Robotics.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Former Apollo 13 Mission Controller to Speak
We will soon have a speaker from Apollo 13 coming to speak to our group! Here is the press release:
The Magnolia and Tomball Homeschoolers (MaTH) Robotics Team, in conjunction with The Woodlands Homeschoolers Robotics Team, is proud to host a special presentation by former Apollo 13 Mission Controller Jerry Woodfill.
For 42 years, Woodfill has been employed by NASA in Houston. He holds BAEE and BSEE degrees from Rice University which he attended on a basketball scholarship. At the onset of the lunar landing program, he managed the spacecraft warning systems so that he was monitoring spacecraft Eagle's descent when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon.
Likewise, on April 13, 1970, Woodfill was monitoring Apollo 13's warning system when the vehicle exploded. His system was the first alert of the life-threatening malfunction depicted in the Tom Hanks-Ron Howard movie Apollo 13. In 2002, Universal Studios designated Woodfill as a spokesman to the national media for the release of Apollo 13 as an IMAX film. For his role in the rescue of Apollo 13, he shared the Presidential Medal of Freedom as a member of the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team.
Woodfill often shares historic talks concerning the space race and the rescue of Apollo 13 from his perspective as a participant. Especially well received is his recreation of President John Kennedy¹s Rice Stadium Moon Race Speech. Present as a student, Woodfill was inspired to the extent that it led to his employment at the Manned Spacecraft Center in 1965.
Woodfill is the technical manager's representative for NASA JSC's Automation, Robotics, and Simulation Division. He has conducted Space Robotic Educators' Workshops at several colleges, done summer camp robotic demonstrations, and created robotic models and animations for NASA robotic projects.
A $5 cover per family will be taken at the door to defray expenses for equipment and facility use. Mr. Woodfill donates his time and effort on behalf of educational outreach. He will be giving out complimentary CDs, so please RSVP to info@math-robotics.org.
The Magnolia and Tomball Homeschoolers (MaTH) Robotics Team, in conjunction with The Woodlands Homeschoolers Robotics Team, is proud to host a special presentation by former Apollo 13 Mission Controller Jerry Woodfill.
For 42 years, Woodfill has been employed by NASA in Houston. He holds BAEE and BSEE degrees from Rice University which he attended on a basketball scholarship. At the onset of the lunar landing program, he managed the spacecraft warning systems so that he was monitoring spacecraft Eagle's descent when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon.
Likewise, on April 13, 1970, Woodfill was monitoring Apollo 13's warning system when the vehicle exploded. His system was the first alert of the life-threatening malfunction depicted in the Tom Hanks-Ron Howard movie Apollo 13. In 2002, Universal Studios designated Woodfill as a spokesman to the national media for the release of Apollo 13 as an IMAX film. For his role in the rescue of Apollo 13, he shared the Presidential Medal of Freedom as a member of the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team.
Woodfill often shares historic talks concerning the space race and the rescue of Apollo 13 from his perspective as a participant. Especially well received is his recreation of President John Kennedy¹s Rice Stadium Moon Race Speech. Present as a student, Woodfill was inspired to the extent that it led to his employment at the Manned Spacecraft Center in 1965.
Woodfill is the technical manager's representative for NASA JSC's Automation, Robotics, and Simulation Division. He has conducted Space Robotic Educators' Workshops at several colleges, done summer camp robotic demonstrations, and created robotic models and animations for NASA robotic projects.
A $5 cover per family will be taken at the door to defray expenses for equipment and facility use. Mr. Woodfill donates his time and effort on behalf of educational outreach. He will be giving out complimentary CDs, so please RSVP to info@math-robotics.org.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Movie Day - Watching Apollo 13
The MaTH-Robotics Team met on Friday, August 10, to watch the movie Apollo 13. Three families showed up to participate - the Abbotts, the McDonald family, and the Woelfel family. This movie is a precursor to the BEST activity at Tuesday's meeting, and also to the speaking engagement by Mr. Jerry Woodfill, who was one of the Apollo 13 mission controllers. The coaches of the team strongly encourage all parents to watch this movie with their children before the next meeting.
Plot summary from IMDB
It had been less than a year since man first walked on the Moon, but as far as the American public was concerned, Apollo 13 was just another "routine" space flight--until these words pierced the immense void of space: "Houston, we have a problem." Stranded 205,000 miles from Earth in a crippled spacecraft, astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert fight a desperate battle to survive. Meanwhile, at Mission Control, astronaut Ken Mattingly, flight director Gene Kranz and a heroic ground crew race against time--and the odds--to bring them home.
From Wikipedia:
As the spacecraft was on its way to the Moon, at a distance of 321,860 kilometers (199,990 mi) from Earth, the number two oxygen tank, exploded. Mission Control had requested that the crew stir the oxygen tanks. The Teflon-insulated wires that provided electricity to the stirrer motor were damaged, causing a large fire when electricity was passed through them. The fire heated the surrounding oxygen, increasing the pressure inside the tank above its nominal limit, and causing the tank to explode. The cause of the explosion was unknown at the time, however, and the crew and Houston conjectured that a meteoroid had struck the SM or even the Lunar Module (LM).
This explosion caused damage to other parts of the Service Module, including, critically, the number one oxygen tank. Because the Command/Service Module (CSM) relied on the oxygen tanks to generate electricity, damage to number one tank meant that very little power was available for the spacecraft. The Command Module (CM) contained batteries for use during re-entry, after the SM was jettisoned, but these would only last about ten hours. Because this power needed to be saved for re-entry, the crew survived by using the LM, still attached to the CSM, as a "lifeboat". The LM "lifeboat" procedure had actually been created during a training simulation (in the simulator) not long before the flight of Apollo 13.[8](Lovell and Kluger 83-87)
The damage done to the CSM meant that the planned Moon-landing at the Fra Mauro Highlands had to be scrubbed. To return the crew to Earth as quickly and safely as possible, only a single pass around the Moon was made, in what is called a free return trajectory, which uses the Moon's gravity to "slingshot" the spacecraft back to Earth. To enter this trajectory, a significant course correction was required. This would normally have been a simple procedure, using the SM propulsion engine, but the flight controllers did not know exactly how much damage the service module had taken, and did not want to risk firing the main engine. Therefore the course correction was performed by firing the LM's descent engine, an option settled upon after extensive discussion among the engineers on the ground. The initial maneuver to change to a free return trajectory was made within hours of the accident. After passage around the Moon, the descent engine was fired again for a PC+2 burn (PeriCynthion + 2 hours) in order to accelerate the spacecraft's return to Earth. Afterwards, only one more descent engine burn was required, for a minor course correction.
This is the part that is like Robotics:
Considerable ingenuity under extreme pressure was required from both the crew and the flight controllers to work out how to jury rig the craft for the crew's safe return, with much of the world watching the developing drama on television. (Because of the severe electrical power limitations following the explosion, no live TV broadcasts were made from the craft for the remainder of the mission; network commentators used models and animated footage to illustrate their coverage).
A major challenge in keeping the crew alive was that the LM "lifeboat" was only equipped to sustain two people for two days, but had to sustain three people for four days. The lithium hydroxide canisters available for the LM's carbon dioxide scrubbers would not last for all four days. The CM had an adequate supply of replacement canisters, but they were the wrong shape to fit the LM's receptacle. An adapter then had to be fabricated from materials in the spacecraft. The astronauts called it the "mailbox."[9]
As the time for re-entry into Earth's atmosphere approached, NASA took the unusual step of jettisoning the Service Module before the Lunar Module, so pictures of the SM could be taken for later analysis. When the crew saw the damaged service module, they reported that the access panel covering the oxygen tanks and fuel cells, which extended the entire length of the Module's body, had been blown off.
Due to reduced temperatures on the return leg of the mission, there was extensive water condensation in the CM. There was some fear that this condensation could seriously damage the electronics of the Command Module by causing a short circuit. Until the electronics were activated, it was impossible to know whether this would occur. The equipment worked normally when activated, however, partly due to the extensive design modifications made to the CM after the fire aboard Apollo 1.
Plot summary from IMDB
It had been less than a year since man first walked on the Moon, but as far as the American public was concerned, Apollo 13 was just another "routine" space flight--until these words pierced the immense void of space: "Houston, we have a problem." Stranded 205,000 miles from Earth in a crippled spacecraft, astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert fight a desperate battle to survive. Meanwhile, at Mission Control, astronaut Ken Mattingly, flight director Gene Kranz and a heroic ground crew race against time--and the odds--to bring them home.
From Wikipedia:
As the spacecraft was on its way to the Moon, at a distance of 321,860 kilometers (199,990 mi) from Earth, the number two oxygen tank, exploded. Mission Control had requested that the crew stir the oxygen tanks. The Teflon-insulated wires that provided electricity to the stirrer motor were damaged, causing a large fire when electricity was passed through them. The fire heated the surrounding oxygen, increasing the pressure inside the tank above its nominal limit, and causing the tank to explode. The cause of the explosion was unknown at the time, however, and the crew and Houston conjectured that a meteoroid had struck the SM or even the Lunar Module (LM).
This explosion caused damage to other parts of the Service Module, including, critically, the number one oxygen tank. Because the Command/Service Module (CSM) relied on the oxygen tanks to generate electricity, damage to number one tank meant that very little power was available for the spacecraft. The Command Module (CM) contained batteries for use during re-entry, after the SM was jettisoned, but these would only last about ten hours. Because this power needed to be saved for re-entry, the crew survived by using the LM, still attached to the CSM, as a "lifeboat". The LM "lifeboat" procedure had actually been created during a training simulation (in the simulator) not long before the flight of Apollo 13.[8](Lovell and Kluger 83-87)
The damage done to the CSM meant that the planned Moon-landing at the Fra Mauro Highlands had to be scrubbed. To return the crew to Earth as quickly and safely as possible, only a single pass around the Moon was made, in what is called a free return trajectory, which uses the Moon's gravity to "slingshot" the spacecraft back to Earth. To enter this trajectory, a significant course correction was required. This would normally have been a simple procedure, using the SM propulsion engine, but the flight controllers did not know exactly how much damage the service module had taken, and did not want to risk firing the main engine. Therefore the course correction was performed by firing the LM's descent engine, an option settled upon after extensive discussion among the engineers on the ground. The initial maneuver to change to a free return trajectory was made within hours of the accident. After passage around the Moon, the descent engine was fired again for a PC+2 burn (PeriCynthion + 2 hours) in order to accelerate the spacecraft's return to Earth. Afterwards, only one more descent engine burn was required, for a minor course correction.
This is the part that is like Robotics:
Considerable ingenuity under extreme pressure was required from both the crew and the flight controllers to work out how to jury rig the craft for the crew's safe return, with much of the world watching the developing drama on television. (Because of the severe electrical power limitations following the explosion, no live TV broadcasts were made from the craft for the remainder of the mission; network commentators used models and animated footage to illustrate their coverage).
A major challenge in keeping the crew alive was that the LM "lifeboat" was only equipped to sustain two people for two days, but had to sustain three people for four days. The lithium hydroxide canisters available for the LM's carbon dioxide scrubbers would not last for all four days. The CM had an adequate supply of replacement canisters, but they were the wrong shape to fit the LM's receptacle. An adapter then had to be fabricated from materials in the spacecraft. The astronauts called it the "mailbox."[9]
As the time for re-entry into Earth's atmosphere approached, NASA took the unusual step of jettisoning the Service Module before the Lunar Module, so pictures of the SM could be taken for later analysis. When the crew saw the damaged service module, they reported that the access panel covering the oxygen tanks and fuel cells, which extended the entire length of the Module's body, had been blown off.
Due to reduced temperatures on the return leg of the mission, there was extensive water condensation in the CM. There was some fear that this condensation could seriously damage the electronics of the Command Module by causing a short circuit. Until the electronics were activated, it was impossible to know whether this would occur. The equipment worked normally when activated, however, partly due to the extensive design modifications made to the CM after the fire aboard Apollo 1.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Robot Tool and Safety Meeting
It was hot, but we had fun! At the robot meeting held on August 7, new members showed up at the meeting for the first time. It was a good time to get acquainted with other team members.The meeting tonight focused on the use of tools, and even more, the SAFE use of tools. Robot Advisor Mr. Abbott went through a list of rules, safetyprocedures, and tools that will be used to build the robot after competition.
The list of rules, the presentation given concerning safety, and other materials will be uploaded by Coach Abbott to the Files area.
Rules concerning safety include:
No horseplay will be tolerated.
Wear safety glasses at all times.
No loose-fitting clothing or open-toed shoes.
Unplug power tools when not in use, and don't plug them in without permission.
Afterwards, the students started constructing either a sword or a dagger from wood, using written plans and templates.
Mr. Abbott stressed the importance of making clearly labeled drawings and accurate instructions before constructing the swords and daggers.
The coaches would like to thank the dads who participated and helped the student familiarize themselves with the tools.
Parents were reminded to please bring their own lawn chairs on garage nights, since there are no extra chairs at the meeting.
In addition, Technical Notebook Coach Mrs. McDonald stressed that in order to participate in the robot meetings, students must first turn in their writing homework via the internet. Writing is important! Planning is important!!!
Scrapbook pages were distributed by Coach Abbott, and each student was asked to create a page and return it by the next meeting time on Friday. Color this time - Purple!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Technical Writing Meeting
The technical writing meeting was held at the library.
During this meeting, we learned how to write an expository presentation, which is the way you write how to do something.
The team picked topics out of magazines that Mrs. McDonald provided.
We divided into three teams, and the topics we chose were how to catch a fish, how to catch a shark, and how to make a chocolate pizza pie. I'm hoping that we get a recipe for that last one!
Other ways of writing a presentation are descriptive, analytical and narrative, but we only focused on how to do something which is known as expository writing.
When the time was up, each group gave a presentation for the other students. One student used notecards and presented the topic from the notecards, another student drew a poster board for that topic, and the rest of the students demonstrated while the presenter spoke. We need a little work on how to demonstrate things!
After all were done, we discussed what could have been done differently in our presentations. I think we need some work to present our topics at the Robotics competition!
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Get To Know You Meeting
This meeting was mainly a meeting so the students 
could get to know one another. Attendance was light, compared to last year's meetings, which was disappointing to the members involved with last year's charter group.
The two charter members introduced themselves and showed the remains of last year's robot. Our coach Mrs. Abbott discussed Robotics and our assistant coach Mrs. McDonald discussed BEST activities.
Mrs. Abbott facilitated a few games, including one where the kids went around and told something about themselves based on how many Skittles they took out of a bag. Some of them had to come up with quite a few descriptions! Afterwards, they ate all the
Skittles. They also played a few other games.
could get to know one another. Attendance was light, compared to last year's meetings, which was disappointing to the members involved with last year's charter group.The two charter members introduced themselves and showed the remains of last year's robot. Our coach Mrs. Abbott discussed Robotics and our assistant coach Mrs. McDonald discussed BEST activities.
Mrs. Abbott facilitated a few games, including one where the kids went around and told something about themselves based on how many Skittles they took out of a bag. Some of them had to come up with quite a few descriptions! Afterwards, they ate all the
Skittles. They also played a few other games.
Mr. Abbott discussed building, tools, and safety at the conclusion of the meeting.
After the meeting, all the kids went outside and threw water
balloons at each other, and squirted each other with water guns. On a few occasions, the parents got a little wet, but not much. Some of the kids soaked each other with buckets. All in all, it was a good meeting, with more new faces than old ones.
After the meeting, all the kids went outside and threw water
balloons at each other, and squirted each other with water guns. On a few occasions, the parents got a little wet, but not much. Some of the kids soaked each other with buckets. All in all, it was a good meeting, with more new faces than old ones.
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