Today is Space Exploration Day. I thought I’d write about Star Trek and their five years (turned out to be 50 plus years) of space exploration.  Kirk, Scotty, Bones, and of course, Spock, Uhura, Checkov, … Gothos, Haven, Altair III, Amargosa…

But then I heard Ben’s (Content Strategist) story of his love for the skies. I had no idea, so I’m thinking many here also didn’t know about this incredible part of Ben’s life.  This is a short version of Ben’s story.

Knowing Ben’s love for all things space, when he was 12 years old, his Uncle Stephen (now Lt.-Col. Stephen Jodrey, Base Commander at CFB Shilo) got him a special birthday present. It was a 1969 Astron Rocket Starter Kit from Estes, still in the original packaging (it was Stephen’s first rocket kit, too). Ben’s love of space grew three sizes that day!

Fast forward to completing high school. It was obvious to everyone that Ben was going to university to study science. He ended up going to Saint Mary’s University in Halifax and enrolled in the BSc (Physics) majoring in Astronomy. He couldn’t wait to see the SMU telescope. He had been in to see the 0.4-metre Ealing Cassegrain telescope a couple times, but it had since been upgraded to a Planewave 0.6-metre CDK24 telescope.

Soon after starting his studies, however, he started to get homesick. He was so far from Hants County and his family. This should have been his first clue — but no! He arrived back home — his dreams dashed, depressed, and wondering what he was going to do with his life. If he couldn’t go to space, what could he do? He checked around Hants County for any space-related jobs, and in the end he settled for working as a security officer at the Stanfield International Airport.

Still he yearned for space. He watched Star Trek, Star Wars, Event Horizon, Apollo 18, …. (you get the idea). Then everything changed, he got to talking to a guy who was waiting for his flight and it turned out to be Robert Sampson, the Academic Chair for Trades and Technology at the local community college. When Ben mentioned his failed efforts to get into space exploration, Robert told him he had heard that within the next few years they were going to need an HVAC technician to conduct maintenance on the space station. They did not want a repeat of 2010 when one of its two redundant ammonia-fed cooling loops in the Space Station A/C failed when a circuit breaker for its pump tripped.

After his shift, Ben drove to the Institute of Technology campus and signed up (home sickness be darned — he didn’t swear back then). Fast forward two years later and Ben was crossing the stage as a newly minted HVAC technician. The first thing he did was put his application in to the Canadian Space Agency (working with NASA) and then he waited for his letter of acceptance. For six long weeks he waited and waited and waited. Finally, on a particularly gloomy East Hants Day (which didn’t dampen his mood) he got the letter.  He ran to the rocket treehouse he had built in his parents’ back yard and ripped open the letter — ugh, they told him he was too tall to fit in the A/C area on the station.

Now he’s happily working at Velsoft, but I must say I recently saw a newspaper article about the Canso Spaceport under his keyboard. Some dreams never die!

What’s in the Pipeline:

  • Ben is finishing up some external projects and starting some new ones.
  • Carol is editing new courses and writing blogs.
  • Chris is adding text-to-speech audio to our entire course library.
  • Clare is creating pdf course instructor guide samples.
  • Jan is working on CA course components and QAing eLearning.
  • Sydney is working on custom projects and eLearning courses.

Course Count:

Courses released this month:

Here is the official count of courses for both courseware and eLearning, broken down by Computer and SoftSkills.

Computer SoftSkills Total Courses
Courseware 282 171 453
eLearning 910 167 1077

Interesting Facts For Space Exploration Day:

  • Space Exploration Day commemorates the anniversary of humans successfully landing on the moon, which took place on July 20, 1969.
  • Americans astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to step foot on the surface of the moon.
  • While Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon, interestingly Michael Collins made the trip but had to stay in orbit piloting the command module.
  • In total, 12 astronauts have walked on the moon.
  • A Russian Soyuz-TMA spacecraft is docked at the International Space Station as an escape pod.
  • Canada has contributed to space exploration in several ways, including:
    • Astronauts – remember Chris Hadfield, Roberta Bondar?
    • Found evidence of Black Holes from the David Dunlap Observatory in Toronto
    • The Canadarm (used on 90 space missions)
    • Leading the research in hydroponics in space (University of Guelph)