Society’s expectations from Space is becoming a factor in the decision-making process for governmental spending in aerospace programmes, especially considering today's financial constraints world-wide.
The need to get ordinary people and particularly students and youth, in general, more involved in space exploration is outstanding.
One of the few ways in which the value for society of S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines can be effectively communicated to the general public is by implementing a system enabling anybody to directly experince the sensations and live the thrill of an actual research spaceflight, although down-scaled to a parabolic flight mission.
This is the reason why we deem important to keep on striving for a systematic opening of parabolic flight opportunities to the laymen, through a series of OPEN flight missions in so-called Lunar-gravity and Mars-gravity flight conditions on board existing aircrafts which, at negligible costs with respect to the potential cultural and scientific return to the society, can increase and enhance both interest and excitement of the general public for Space, especially addressing tomorrow’s youth.
The support which the SpaceLand parabolic flight research and educational program, focused on such objectives, is getting also in intellectual and political terms in Italy and in Europe nowadays provides good reasons to keep on being optimistic about the on-going projecy of systematically providing parabolic flight opportunities for the public.
The underlyng concept is to train, by underwater and ground simulators and training facilities, and eventually fly members of the public in their capacity as hand-on observers or even as test subjects and test operators on board serious though breath-taking parabolic flights.
This paper will provide an opportunity to present, discuss and explore the on-going flight campaigns which have already brought top-level scientists, including groups coordinated by Nobel Prize winners, together with very young kids (11 year old), elderly men (86 and, respectively, 93 year old) and disabled women (100% handicapped), to fly on board so-called Moon-gravity, Mars-gravity and weightless flights for state-of-the-art research addressing, inter alia, ICT, neurobiology, telemedicine and bioengineering at cutting-edge level.
In other words, by engaging the public on board such flight missions at very impressive return vs. cost ratios, we can bring people, and particularly the youth, to the awareness of considering Space as a strategical asset of today's and tomorrow's society, turning Space programs into an useful everyday's reality for the progress of science, technology and knowledge.
SpaceLand means: YOUR FUTURE in SPACE !
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New audio-videos on the u-tube link on http://www.spaceland.it/
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