SC Moon Base Project Immersive Experience

SC Moon Base Project Immersive Experience

The SC Moon Base Project and Math Club grew out of an internal challenge towards the end of 2023 as The Science Circle was coming up on its 15^th Anniversary. The challenge was to do something more than just have a party to celebrate, rather to demonstrate through example how The Science Circle had persisted for 15 years through developing a project or class or both.

Interest in the Moon had waned for decades as spacefaring nations concentrated on what humans could learn about the Earth from the International Space Station, which was celebrating its 25^th Anniversary that year, and from robotic craft that explored the solar system and beyond. Since about the time that The Science Circle was established, there has been increasing interest in the Moon for a number of reasons, with a variety of lunar missions as a consequence. However, a crewed mission still seems to be slightly out of reach, despite the success of the initial manned landings of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A diverse set of members of The Science Circle took up the anniversary challenge and formed the SC Moon Base Project, meeting every Monday for the past two years now to discuss what a sustainable Moon Base in which residents could live and work might look like and how it would operate. The group has tackled every issue they could think of or discover through research, with no subject out of bounds. The more we have discussed, the more questions have presented themselves, many of which may not have been thought of before, and the more fascinating the subject has become.

Last Fall, members of the SC Moon Base Project group decided it was time to share what we had discussed and our visualization of part of that in several virtual Moon Base versions, with members of The Science Circle and the public through participation in the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) Conference this year. We submitted proposals for two types of events and both were accepted – an educational Immersive Experience where we could share our Moon Base visualizations and what we have learned about its design and operation, and a Roundtable event during which we will share how our peer-to-peer education experiment has been successful, as well as hear from conference participants about their own experiences with this educational format in virtual worlds.

Join us this Saturday for the background and thought behind the SC Moon Base Project and then join us in an Immersive Experience outside of the VWBPE conference event schedule.