Dear Museum Galaxy Guide Cadet,
I’d like to welcome you to the Museum Galaxy Guide Academy and thank you for joining us on a journey of the imagination in Space Odyssey.
As you enter your training program, you may be wondering what it will be like. Let me assure you that it will be an out-of-this-world experience. By the end of your time at the academy, you will be prepared to greet visitors from all over planet Earth and help them explore their visitor center to the universe. You will have learned how to deliver fascinating programs and demonstrations on a wide variety of space science topics. You will have trained in teams to work in teams. You will be well versed in all of the fascinating interactive devices that Space Odyssey has to offer, and will be prepared to help our guests explore them in new and unpredictable ways. You will have all of the tools at your fingertips to fire our visitors’ imaginations and curiosity.
For visitors who may one day become astronauts, you may be the very person who starts them on their journey to the stars. For visitors who will never have the chance to leave the planet, you may be the person who helps them dream about it just the same.
At the dawn of the 21st Century, we are at one of the most exciting times on our planet. Citizens of the world can do things, see things, try things, and learn things that were unimaginable just a generation ago. With the tools of the 21st Century, humans can actually think in ways that were impossible in the past. We can see galaxies billions of light years away. We can talk instantaneously with anybody on the planet Earth. We can access knowledge databases from the greatest institutions of learning with the touch of a few keystrokes. We can start communities and build friendships with strangers from around the globe, whom we will never see and never meet. We can manipulate ideas on a computer screen and gain insights about the universe that even a few short years ago could only be comprehended by geniuses. Space Odyssey is one of the centers of this new kind of thinking.
Even so, the more humanity changes, the more it stays the same. Nothing will ever replace the experience of talking with other people face to face. When presented with a new idea, nothing will ever replace the experience of learning with your own hands so you can translate those concrete experiences into abstract thoughts. Watching a presentation through virtual reality glasses will never replace the thrill of being at a live performance, in an audience of real people, laughing, clapping, or crying at the same time. This shared human experience is essential. As the world becomes more and more digitized, human contact and physical experiences will become more important, not less. Space Odyssey is also a center for this.
And it all depends on you - the Museum Galaxy Guides.
You will be able to introduce visitors to an astronaut, working on the surface of Mars, just outside the visitor center window.
You will be able to engage visitors with interesting scientific experiments to expand their minds.
You will be able to explore the Museum’s world-class digital library, and share its treasures with visitors young and old.
As you listen to visitors’ interests, you will be able to help them scan the planet’s digital library, the Internet, to find just the thing to spark their imagination, then send it to their home electronically where their journey can continue.
As a Museum Galaxy Guide, you will be briefed on the most current news stories in space science, and will be able to present them to groups of a hundred or discuss them with a single person.
Most importantly, you will be able to tap into your own experiences, talents, and interests - ones that you have developed over years - and use them as the starting point for your unique slant on Space Odyssey.
Of course, the full Space Odyssey staff will be there to support you all of the way - from your first day at the Museum Galaxy Guide Academy and throughout your Space Odyssey career. We will be working with you side by side all of the way.
So, get ready to blast off.
I would wish you all a Bon Voyage, for the great journey that you are about to embark on. But I will also be along for the ride. So let me say instead, let the journey begin.
Eddie Goldstein
Senior Space Science Educator
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Earth