80% of Jobs in Next Decade will Require STEM Skills

Promoting STEM Education is one of the core missions of the Google Lunar X PRIZE, and after reading a recent article written by Sally Ride, I am even more convinced that we need to do more to promote this mission. Published in the USA Weekend, 80% of jobs in the next decade will require skills in math, science and technology. This is a very high statistic and is extremely important to start talking about with our children today. Studies show that youngsters naturally like science, but they drift away in late elementary/junior high school because they get signals that science is dull or maybe too difficult. Ride mentions that there are four things we can do to change this notion.

1. Watch what you say. Saying things like, “I was never really good at science” can impact kids to think that they aren’t good either and is an easy excuse to give up.

2. Encourage and reward. Reward kids for good grades on math tests like you would for winning sports achievements.

3. Take a weekend trip. Visit museums, planetariums and science labs.

4. Stay current. Talk about what life could be like if we didn’t have science. You don’t want to scare them, but be honest about your concerns.

So, are there things you can do right now to get children involved? Here are a few X PRIZE related subjects:

* Global Innovation Award. Maybe your child isn’t involved in FIRST LEGO League, but that shouldn’t stop them from going on line and reading about kid’s ideas for future inventions. They can even vote daily for their favorite invention.

* Engineering Week is February 21-25. Talk to a child about the engineering field. Have them meet an engineer and have them learn about the engineer's job. The child will learn how engineers are improving the world and better yet, why the career is fun!

* Stay current! There are many exciting things happening in the Space Community. Just yesterday, one of our Google Lunar X PRIZE teams-Team Astrobotic announced that they are taking a ride on the SPACE X Faclcon 9 Rocket to land a robot on the moon. Pretty cool stuff!

Prize Roundup: Flagsuit Contract, ALS Biomarker Prize Won, Stardust, CRuSR Workshop, More

Flagsuit Handed Contract To Develop Improved Gloves For NASA Space Suits - Space Frontier Foundation

@Prize4Life: The $1M ALS Biomarker Prize has been won! Read the New York Times article for more information on the winner. http://fb.me/NYhTnHX4

RNAi Sequences Targeted to the Asian Citrus Psyllid Genome - InnoCentive posted this $100,000 challenge.

@astrobotic: Video of Red Whittaker's X PRIZE seminar is now up: http://youtu.be/0hrYfA_5bfk

@unrocket: Disassembled CAT pack from test motor, spent the rest of evening machining anti channel rings to force flow into center of cat pack.

We will be testing early Saturday.

@jeff_foust: Israeli team joins Google Lunar X PRIZE competition, thinks it can do mission for only $8M: http://bit.ly/gfSS7n

FOP-CRuSR, What We’ve Learned So Far (PDF) - This is the abstract for one of the presentations at the NASA Flight Opportunities Workshop, which in turn is part of the 2011 Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference.  The abstract covers the Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems CRuSR development test flights: 

The initial two payloads were the Suborbital Flight Environment Monitor (SFEM) and the Automated Detection Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) units developed by NASA and the FAA respectively. 

Planetary Society sponsoring Stardust Contest - Space for All 

Kids Micro-G experiments chosen for ISS - Space for All

@sedsusa: Illinois Space Society has won the 2010 Holiday Contest over their UB-SEDS competitors! Check out the photo entries at http://bit.ly/gyKzrQ