The Minnesota Space Grant Consortium (MnSGC) held a “TEDx”-style online event 19 April 2019. The talks, from Tonnis ter Veldhuis (Macalester College), Richard Barker (University of Wisconsin), and James Flaten (University of Minnesota), discussed a unique way to make outer space accessible to the public and students in K-12 and university – from using high-power model rockets to inspire physics learning, flying plants on the ISS and developing new web interfaces to engage students and citizen-scientists in the search for better genes, to running astronaut training in the hallway using shopvac hovercrafts and cold gas thrusters!
The talks were the first in a series planned by MnSGC over the next few semesters and will feature speakers from each of 8 midwestern states. The full video will eventually appear at the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium website.
(Credit: James Flaten/Minnesota Space Grant Consortium)
UPDATE – 3 May: The lecture series has been uploaded to YouTube. A higher-quality version of the hovercraft lecture is available here.