Software of Seismic Proportions Promotes Enjoyable
Learning
Computer Technology
Originating Technology/
NASA Contribution
While working for NASA, Jack Sculley and Terry
Brooks had a revelation. They wanted to find a
novel and unique way to present the scientific
principles of NASA research to the public, so as
to not only enlighten, but entertain. Suddenly,
their revelation morphed into something even grander.
“Why stop at NASA?” they asked themselves. With
this thought, Sculley and Brooks left NASA and
set out to convey voluminous scientific findings
from different organizations
in the form of digital, interactive media that
would enhance the exploration and adventure interests
of people of all ages.
Sculley, a former researcher at Ames Research Center,
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Apple,
Inc.’s and LucasFilm Ltd.’s multimedia labs, and
Brooks, a former public information officer at
JPL and an Emmy award-winning documentary film
producer, founded Seismic
Entertainment in 1989
to communicate their “edutainment” ideas. The two
acknowledge that NASA has provided much of the
inspiration and content for Seismic Entertainment
over the past decade and a half. Additionally,
Sculley’s experience as a virtual reality and Mars
specialist and Brooks’s experience creating NASA
public access programs were significant to the
San Francisco-based company’s success. Its most
recent project, “Inside NASA,” provides virtual
tours of NASA’s field centers and allows for a
comprehensive focus on the broad range of NASA
programs for the benefit of the general public.
Partnership
In addition to the inspiration and knowledge acquired
while employed by NASA, the founders gained assistance
from the Agency in the form of Small
Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts. They applied for a NASA
SBIR grant with Marshall Space Flight Center in
1998, and were awarded a Phase I feasibility study
contract and later a Phase II commercialization
contract to develop virtual tours of NASA facilities,
Web sites, image archives, and programs.
Together with Tom Simmons, Seismic
Entertainment’s producer, Sculley and Brooks visited all 10 NASA
centers and several subsidiary facilities, and
pored over countless NASA Web sites, data archives,
and program outreach materials before selecting
the final set of locations and programs to feature
in the “Inside NASA” product. Photographic scouting
visits to all the centers led to final location
shot lists, which were developed with the centers’
public information and outreach personnel.
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“Inside NASA”
is packed with in-depth virtual tours that
let users discover the inner workings of NASA,
as well as the outer reaches of space. |
Photography began in 2001, and a special hemispheric
lens was used to create spherical panoramas of
numerous locations, including rocket test chambers,
launch pads, astronaut training facilities, scientific
test facilities, and rover obstacle courses. Production
of the virtual tours commenced that fall. The ensuing
software product featured the field center tours,
in addition to 10 topic tours, which followed programmatic
themes across multiple centers, such as aeronautics,
robotics, rocket engine development, astronaut
training, and space science research.
Initial versions of each center’s tour were uploaded
to a private site, where NASA public information
personnel could access them and provide feedback
to the Seismic Entertainment staff. The final “Inside
NASA” software product was released for public
use on CD-ROM in late 2003, and NASA has folded
the virtual tours into several new employee training
and outreach Web sites.
Product Outcome
Designed for NASA, educators, and the general public,
and employing the latest developments in virtual
reality, “Inside NASA” is available in science
center stores and retail outlets across the country.
One of its many highlights is an extensive tour
of Johnson Space Center, developed in collaboration
with Johnson’s staff. In embarking on this virtual
tour, users can take a plunge with astronauts in
the National Buoyancy Laboratory, a 22.7 million-liter
swimming pool in which fully-suited astronauts
spend 7 hours training for every hour they will
spend spacewalking during a mission. Users can
also wander through Space Shuttle and Space Station
simulators, and observe experiments being performed
in large, zero-gravity vacuum test chambers.
To navigate a tour, users can either move a cursor
over the up, down, left, and right arrow tabs to
travel in any of these directions, or click and
drag within the image itself. When browsing a panoramic
image, hotspots will appear with subject titles
concerning areas of interest. To learn more, users
can simply click on the hotspot. For example, when
taking a virtual stroll through the Ames Extremophile
Laboratory (Extremophiles are life forms which
thrive in harsh conditions on Earth, analogous
to those on other planets.), individuals can click
on a workstation to learn about an actual microbial
sample taken from a salt pond in Baja, California,
and how it could provide NASA with insight into
early life on Earth and protecting life in space.
Other features include “zoom in” and “pan” buttons
for getting closer looks; “next” and “back” buttons
that move users through the tour chronologically;
color-coded nodes that let users know their current
location within a tour; topic and center “badges”
that are awarded upon completion of each tour;
and an online chat zone for posing questions and
discussing the tours with other users.
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A virtual visit
within NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building, where
nose cones for the Space Shuttle solid rocket
boosters await assembly. The Vehicle Assembly
Building is one of the largest buildings in
the world, by volume. With a volume of 3,665,013
cubic meters, it can house nearly four Empire
State Buildings. As another indicator of size,
the American Flag painted on the exterior of
the building required 6,000 gallons of paint,
with each stripe on the flag being as big as
the tour buses used to transport visitors around
Kennedy. |
“Inside NASA” also steps well outside of the NASA
field centers’ front doors to give its audience
an adventurous yet informative panoramic look at
some of the heavenly bodies above. These images
explore the landscape of the Moon, as seen from
the Apollo 17 lunar rover; the Martian surface,
as seen from the Viking 2 lander; and the red spot
of Jupiter, as seen from the planet’s Jovian moon,
Europa, via the Galileo orbiter.
Through Seismic Entertainment, Sculley and Brooks
have flexed their NASA know-how in developing other
interactive educational products. They created
the “Exploring Other Worlds” interactive exhibit
series for the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Air and Space Museum. For this effort, Seismic
Entertainment was selected for permanent exhibition
by the Smithsonian, and won the gold medal at the
New York Film Festival in the “Best Museum Exhibit”
category.
The company also takes its customers on virtual
expeditions of Antarctica and legendary lost cities.
Its “Antarctica: Ross Island Area” CD-ROM features
panoramas taken by expert researchers and live
tours of the National Science Foundation facilities
located on the cold, remote continent. Its “Palenque:
Lost City of the Maya” CD-ROM employs panoramas
and educational material from Dr. Merle Green Robertson,
a leading curator of pre-Columbian art at the De
Young Museum in San Francisco. A separate-but-similar
themed product called “Lost Worlds: Atlas of the
Unknown” boasts an interactive electronic atlas
of 12 “lost world” regions, with character guides,
virtual tours of important cultural, archaeological,
and scientific sites within the regions, and live
chats with archaeologists.
Seismic Entertainment’s interactive software products have been featured on CNN
and “Good Morning America,” and in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, and the San
Jose Mercury News.
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