Can NASA be Entertaining?

For one moment, NASA had the attention of the entire world. That moment was in 1969 when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. Today, space travel to low Earth orbit is relatively routine and NASA finds itself in a confounding Catch-22: if an organization’s goal is to make an activity safe and routine, then the organization will attract the most attention only when there’s a terrible accident.

As of this writing, the Space Shuttle has successfully flown to space 123 times. It has failed twice. Many people can tell you about the failures of the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, but they know little about NASA’s other successful missions. That’s not good when you’re a government agency competing for scarce funding.

Why did space travel capture the imaginations of so many people during the 1960’s, but not in the first decade of the 21st century? What would help?

Many things could help. One example may come from the Mars Society. The society operates two remote locations known as the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) and the Flashline Mars Analog Research Station (FMARS). Each one looks like a space landing vehicle on the barren Mars landscape (actually the Utah desert and Canadian Arctic). Volunteer crews run week-long missions at the stations and do the things that Mars astronauts would do. They even have faux space-suits for extra-vehicular activities (EVA) to explore the landscape around the lander.

They also blog and post videos on YouTube. I found one of these YouTube videos, contacted the author, Ryan Kobrick, who was on a 100 day tour of duty at the FMARS hab in 2007. As the weeks went by, I checked the crew blogs to see what they had been researching, and to see new pictures and videos of their adventure. Occasionally I sent a message or question about the mission to Ryan, and he always responded.

This is Ryan’s video tour of the FMARS habitat:



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Later, the Space Shuttle Endeavor blasted off to complete mission STS 119, and I found myself more interested in the FMARS crew than the real astronauts on the Shuttle and the International Space Station. I felt connected to the FMARS crew because of the two-way communication I had with them.

What if there were more than two Mars analog research stations? What if there were hundreds all over the world and sending kids to Mars camp was as common as summer camp? Imagine the parents attending a mock space launch, and then keeping in touch with their kids via webcam, then attending a simulated landing and graduation. How many people would start to really get interested in NASA? How many voters and legislators would start thinking about NASA again?

~Matt Thomas

Virtual Air Show 2008

The professional air show performers take a break during the winter, and that’s when virtual pilots have a chance to steal the spotlight.

The Virtual Festival of Aerobatic Teams (VFAT) is an air show much like you might see at a military base near your home town, except the airplanes only exist in cyberspace. The air show pilots are seated at their home flight simulators and fly in formation via high-speed internet connections.

At an actual air show, you watch the jets from the ground, but in this simulated world, your vantage point can suspend high in the air as a formation flies past you, or fly along side the planes. The virtual Blue Angels and virtual Thunderbirds closely mimic the maneuvers, choreography, music, and even the announcer’s spiel of their real-world counterparts.

The whole event will broadcast live on the VFAT website throughout December 12, 13 and 14, 2008.


Virtual Festival of Aerobatic Teams 2008 Promo from Nathan Truninger on Vimeo.

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SimHQ recently published an interview with “Rhino” the lead pilot of the Virtual Blue Angels. He describes the team’s rigorous practice schedule. The SimHQ interviewer “20mm” didn’t ask “Rhino” why everyone feels the need to have Top Gun nicknames….sorry callsigns, whatever.


Virtual Blue Angels Rollin' Skyhawks from Bob Tyler on Vimeo.

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A noteworthy point is the international aspect of the show. 28 teams from Europe, North America, Russia/Eastern Europe, South America and Asia will participate in the 2008 event. The teams vary in their skill levels and quality of performance. These are video clips from the 2007 event. The website seems to currently work better with the Mozilla Firefox browser. Internet Explorer users will need to scroll around to find the links.

Parts of the show may seem a bit laborious compared to TV sporting events, but keep in mind much of the commercial entertainment we enjoy today has been perfected for decades. Who knows how virtual aviation entertainment will mature in the future. The VFAT forum reports there were 4000 spectators watching the online air show last year, and they expect 10,000 spectators this year. If the virtual pilots can capture the attention of that volume of people, I think there’s some real potential and momentum there.

BONUS: No Bette Midler songs during the show (sorry Oshkosh)


Thanks to Aaron Florkowski for his contributions to this article.

Civil Air Patrol Aviation Business Academy

CAP and Evergreen teamed up recently and launched the first annual Capt. Michael King Smith Evergreen Aviation Business Academy held at the amazing Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

Well that’s superb, and rare that youth have an opportunity to learn about aviation entrepreneurship in this way. Innovation is closely related to entrepreneurship and a way to eventually improve the aviation industry.

Parts of the aviation industry tend to treat their machines better than their customers. Customer service at the airlines is awful, but not because the pilots or management (or the TSA) lack a certain technical knowledge. Likewise, in General Aviation it’s hard to find and retain a good Flight Instructor. Again, not because the CFI’s lack a technical knowledge, but many lack a focus on the customer.

On the other hand, many Air Charter operators seem to be experts in meeting and exceeding customer expectations. These companies are also much smaller than the one-size-fits-all airlines and also tend to be rather entrepreneurial. In fact, you can find several air charter pilots that own the charter business and the airplane they’re flying.

This new Aviation Business Academy is very interesting but there’s currently very little information about it on the web. Here’s a press release written prior to the academy at this link
and some cool pictures of the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum here, but that’s about it.

The article in CAP Volunteer shows cadets presenting their aviation-related business plans. I bet that each cadet remembered to include a website in their business plan. It’s strange that the Aviation Business Academy apparently does not have one.

You can get the short article, and actually the entire Sep-Oct 2008 issue of the CAP Volunteer here.

Air Combat Training Simulators

One of our customers recently asked about the Air Combat Training Simulators (ACTS) machines pictured on our website and our videos.


There were two machines, ACTS1 and ACTS2 completed in early 2006. They were Roger Dodger Aviation’s first dedicated dogfighters and we flew hundreds of missions with them.

ACTS1 and ACTS2 are sturdy and heavy; built from wood, medium density fiberboard (MDF), and seats from a Dodge Caravan. The pilots view a large projected screen mounted on the wall and use the TrackIR system for view tracking. The TrackIR camera is mounted on a post in the pictures, but now it’s mounted on a HUD replica.

ACTS showed us that you shouldn’t build things that are difficult to climb in and out of. We discovered that a center-mounted joystick wasn't going to work well for this machine. People kept tripping over it, so we changed it to a side stick. We also cut out a section of the right sidewall to make it easier to enter/exit.

ACTS comes apart in sections to make it somewhat portable, but it’s still very awkward to try to move it anywhere. It was a real hassle to move it for the NY2LA for Diabetes fund raiser, and this led to the idea for the lighter, more mobile and more attractive Portable Aviation Combat Sim (PACS) DIY project videos we sell on DIYflightsims.com.

We sold the ACTS1 cockpit shell last week. We're still using ACTS2. There are several more pictures of ACTS1 on this page.

3 Ways to Improve Attendance at Your Aviation Events

Many non-profit aviation organizations like museums, the Commemorative Air Force (CAF), Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) chapters, etc. host public events. These events are often the best opportunities to attract new members or generate revenue for the group. Also, these events feed the “soul” of the organizations by promoting the joy of flight, the beauty of aircraft, honoring veterans, etc. So one of the most vital parts of having an event is ensuring people actually show up to it.

Here are three ideas that can help.

1. Website
Every volunteer organization must have a useful website or eventually disappear. A website should showcase the upcoming events, and also do a great job of showing how fun the past events were. The website should also have multiple ways for a visitor to call or email questions, or sign up to be notified of future events.

Websites do not need to be fancy. The fancy stuff tends to annoy and distract the reader from real information. Websites must be relevant and updated and updated and updated. There I said it three times. Even a blog will do. If there is nobody currently in the organization that can pull this off, hire someone.

2. Fly-In calendars
This is like posting flyers on airport bulletin boards, but 100 times better. Post your event information on ALL of these calendars and include the link back to your excellent website.
Barnstormers.com
Fly-ins.com
EAA Aviation Calendar of Events
APOA online fly-in calendar
Airshow Calendar
Fly-In Calendar

3. Google Adwords advertising
Yes, Google Adwords. Online advertising has surpassed newspaper, magazine and radio advertising because it is so scalable and versatile. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot, actually it can cost almost nothing, it all depends on how cheap your organization is…or rather how effective you want to be.

Scalable means you can set an advertising budget as cheap and ineffective as $5 bucks a month or more effective like $100 bucks a month or more. You only get charged when someone clicks on your ads, so you’re only spending money on people that are at least mildly interested. Will they be interested enough to actually show up to your event? That’s up to you. Your Google ad links back to your website which should be excellent, helpful, relevant, and updated.

These are just three ideas to increase the attendance at aviation events in addition to the more traditional methods like newspaper classifieds, signs, and flyers on the bulletin boards. What others can you think of?