'Astronaut Teacher' says Kids Will Live In Space by 2025

Oct. 11, 2012 - PRLog -- HOUSTON,TX–Speaking as Presenting Author before journalists, engineers, quantum physicists, and government officials at DARPA/NASA's
100 Year Starship Symposium, 'astronaut teacher' Mike Mongo proposed a bold shift in direction of the international space program: Involving kids in plans for space.

"We as adults must stop thinking of ourselves as potential astronauts and star pilot-hopefuls; we are not the ones going to space," said Mongo, "Who we are is the living ancestors of the builders of the space colonies and starships. Kids today are the ones who will be building for the next-generation to follow to go to the stars. Our responsibility is to own this role and begin getting kids today ready for their careers in space and astronautics."

"Let us think of moving to space as a multi-generational initiative," Mongo further proposed, "and where we were born in the scheme of this endeavor is at the place where starships, asteroid mining camps, and space colonies are being conceived. We are like those who dreamed of the building of the pyramids. Like them, it is our job to ready the next generation for their roles as the builders of the dream. And the dream is moving humankind to space."

Mike Mongo is the author of
HUMANNAIRES! Mike Mongo's Astronaut Manual for Pre-Teens.

The 100 Year Starship (100YSS) is an initiative fostered by Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The idea behind the 100YSS initiative is to propel humankind to another star system within approximately 100 years of its conception in 2010. The initiative is inspired by the approximately 100 years it was between the 1865 publishing of author Jules Verne's From The Earth to the Moon and of humankind's subsequent traveling to the moon in the 1960's.

Last year, DARPA and NASA sponsored the first 100 Year Starship Symposium in Orlando, FL. Participants were invited to apply for a $500,000 award to be used for seed money funding. At the completion of the proposal period, the award was won by astronaut Dr Mae Jemison's Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, along with Icarus Interstellar and Foundation for Enterprise Excellence as partner organizations. This year's 100 Year Starship Symposium was the first run by the newly-selected 100YSS team.

In wrapping up his presentation before the Symposium audience, Mike Mongo reminded the room that realizing kids as the builders of starships is "a secret we all forget....as adults we must accept our role to be played in history and explain to kids today from all backgrounds this simple but powerful message: 'You are going to be the next-generation of astronauts. From space you are going to be building the ships to take humankind to the stars. You are going to get to work live and play in space. And you need to get ready.'"

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For more information,
contact Mike Mongo
at mm@humannaires.org,
@mikemongo (twitter)
facebook.com/mike-mongo-astronaut-teacher.

Photo:
https://www.prlog.org/11996646/2