The labour dispute between Ontario teachers’ unions and the provincial government has put Lisgar Collegiate’s prestigious Spacesim program – the Ottawa-Carleton Educational Space Simulation – on indefinite hold.
A post on the Spacesim website revealed that a work session in mid-December was cancelled due to a lack of available teachers, forcing the student-run group to seek out adult volunteers.
The Dec. 14 post, apparently written by teacher-supervisor Jim Magwood, stated: “I am very sorry that our teacher labour action is interrupting our program. It is not something that I am happy with, but we will try to get a team of volunteers ready for 2013 so that we can have our normal set of work sessions.”A week later, a second post indicated that work sessions were, in fact, continuing.
However, Lisgar principal David McMahon told Centretown News in a Feb. 14 email message that the 2013 mission “is currently postponed.”
He added: “We are patiently waiting to see if things will change in the labour front and remain optimistic that there will be a space mission this year.”
Spacesim runs a variety of educational programs, such as “planetarium presentations” that are delivered to elementary and high school students on subjects such as astronomy.
The group’s planetarium is an inflatable tent equipped with an interior projector that can replicate any constellation in the northern hemisphere.
However, the main part of the program is the simulated space mission Lisgar students carry out, and which has attracted considerable attention over the years.
Using facilities and equipment at the Ottawa Technical High School on Albert Street, the students actually build a replica interior of a space shuttle and set up a landscape mimicking the planet they’ve chosen to explore.
Stefan De Young is an alumnus of Spacesim, and he says the simulation is similar to role-playing games such as ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ and is all about embracing the fantasy of the experience while learning about space travel.
He said that during the missions, certain students take the role of "simulators" and act as "dungeon masters" by actively recreating the experience for their peers.
“If we’re struck by a little meteorite and it takes out the engines, (the simulators) are able to go into our software and disable the engines,” he said. “At the same time, they dispatch someone to actually knock a hole through the wall (of the space shuttle replica) with a hammer.”
To make things even more realistic, De Young says students who take the role of the astronauts during the simulation will actually stay inside the model space shuttle overnight for up to five days.
Every effort is made to ensure the missions are as convincing as possible, and students learn valuable skills along the way.
Grade 10 “Simmie” Patrick Melanson, the deputy mission commander of the postponed 2013 mission, says the program has taught him a variety of skills.
“I‘m currently working on rewriting the spaceflight simulation software…and am learning plenty about programming, physics, and simulation techniques all at the same time,” he said in an email.
For De Young, his involvement in Spacesim was about more than just the educational side.
Spacesim “gave me a place to be, it gave me people to interact with, people who shared my interests,” he said. “It was a very welcoming environment for me and I appreciated that.”
It also helped him figure out his professional aspirations. De Young went on to study astrophysics at the University of Waterloo and is now working on his graduate degree in aerospace engineering at Carleton University.
“Spacesim really confirmed for me,” he said, that “I wanted to be involved in some way in space exploration – being an astronaut would be the ideal.”
Simmies are anxiously awaiting the verdict on whether this year’s mission will be relaunched, while also preparing – ironically given the postponement – for the program's 25th anniversary celebration, tentatively scheduled for June 29.