The Youth Empowerment Summit
Wednesday, July 22, 2009

“We are the roots that break through the concrete that’s been piled on top of us,” said Seattle delegate Luisa, addressing her peers at the Youth Empowerment Summit.

Delegates shared their thoughts, their stories, and the impact of YEP in their lives in the morning session on the final day of World Vision’s Youth Empowerment Summit. Second-year Tacoma delegate, Tanajah, said that she no longer feels intimidated when talking with professional people, and the reason for that is YEP.

Delegates donned evening gowns and tuxedos for the evening’s gala event. Josh Dubois, executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, was the evening’s keynote speaker. He started by having everyone hold their hands up and shake them back and forth. “I told President Obama that I would shake everyone’s hand,” he joked. He quickly turned more serious, commending the Youth Empowerment Project. “World Vision’s YEP is helping to develop the leaders of tomorrow,” he said.

Young people sat at tables with donors, community activists, and government officials, where they discussed the needs in their communities, their week in Washington, D.C., and about the impact of World Vision’s YEP.
Romanita Hairston, vice president of U.S. Programs for World Vision, told the audience she knows the youth in YEP are committed to being advocates for change. “This is an opportunity for you to become social advocates,” she said to the donors as she asked them to consider making a donation.

As the delegates return home, they will remember the words of their colleague, Shamae, from the D.C. YEP delegation: “Never let anyone steer you wrong and crush your dreams. When you get that opportunity to reach your goal, don’t let anything in your way, not even yourself.”

Shamae finished up with this exhortation: “You are on the front lines of community change, so let’s take back our communities in the name of justice.” With the training they have received in YEP, and with support from mentors and community leaders, these teenagers can make it so. read more at: http://www.worldvision.org/content.nsf/learn/globalissues-america-youth-empowerment-summit

 Health is worth more than learning.
-Thomas Jefferson

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life,

which fade and are tasteless without it.
- William Temple

Image on Right : "The Fountian" by Christine Pradel-Lien

The Dream - Safe drinking water for everyone". Design made with permanent ink markers on white cotton. Words for WATER written in several Languages...

EAU - French,   - Arabic, AGUA- Spanish, ME DZIM - Fang from Gabon Africa, NIBI - Ojibwe, Native American

Check out Flicker to see all the submitted Visionary Panels.

Listed below are 100 great men and women who offered inspiration, innovation, and hope throughout our history.  These are the greatest thinkers, scientists, and visionaries of our time, whose influence has significantly shaped our world today.  The Dream Rocket will celebrate these historical figures by exhibiting “Visionary Panels,” where each work of art will be colorfully displayed and stitched by children and teachers from all over the world, and will remind everyone that any dream is possible.

1. Jane Addams - She opened the Hull House, the first American settlement house, in 1889 with Ellen Gates Starr. The house included night school for adults, classes and clubs for children, a public kitchen, a library, and more. She later became the president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and travelled the globe supporting peace.

2. Madeleine Albright - She became the first female United States Secretary of State in 1996 under Bill Clinton, making her the highest-ranking woman in United States government history.

3. Maya Angelou - She was an African-American poet, author, and civil-rights activist. In the 1960s she became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at Martin Luther King Jr.’s request and became the first African-American woman welcomed into the Directors Guild of America.

4. Susan Brownell Anthony - She was a civil rights activist who acted as a leader and orator in the early 1900s women’s rights and suffrage movement.

5. Gloria Anzaldua - She was a Mexican American who wrote poetry, novels, and children’s books supporting feminism and gay and lesbian rights, and bridging cultural identities.

6. Aristotle - He was a Greek philosopher who wrote the earliest formal study of logic and pondered morality, aesthetics, science, politics, and metaphysics.

7. Jane Austen - She was an English novelist who used realism to convey sometimes critical and, at other times, comic plots and observations about English high and low society.

8. Dr. Thomas John Barnardo - He noticed the great number of destitute children in England in the mid to late 1800s and started a number of homes dedicated to care for and then train the homeless youths.
9. Clarissa Harlowe Barton - She was a teacher and nurse who, after working to ease the chaos of the Civil War, organized the American Red Cross in 1881 to deal with any crisis.

10. Simone de Beauvoir - She was a French author and proponent of both existentialism and feminism.

11. Alexander Graham Bell - He was a scientist, inventor, and engineer who invented the first practical telephone.

12. Boudicca - She was queen of the Iceni tribe in the eastern part of England who led her people in a rebellion against occupying Roman forces. Though the rebellion was ultimately a failure, the Iceni won many victories and Boudicca became an inspiring symbol of British independence and strength in the Renaissance era.
13. Wernher von Braun - He was a rocket scientist who, as director of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, oversaw the development of the Saturn I and Saturn V boosters, the Gemini managed-flight project, and the Apollo Moon Flight project.

14. Muriel Morris Gardiner Buttinger - A psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, she was concerned with the disenfranchised and the poor. While living in Vienna, she used her home as a safe house for anti-Fascist dissidents until the outbreak of World War II.

15. George Washington Carver - He was an African-American botanist who taught former slaves superior faming techniques to ensure their self-sufficiency. He experimented with cycling crops to improve the efficiency of farms and discovered 300 ways to use peanuts to make the crop more profitable.

16. Jimmy Carter - He was the 39th President of the United States and used his position to pursue environmentally conscious national energy policy, peace between Israel and Egypt in 1979, and the return of the Panama Canal to Panamanian government

17. Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel - She revolutionized French fashion with her modernist philosophy, love of expensive simplicity, and belief that women should dress for themselves and not their husbands.

18. Cesar Chavez - He was a migrant worker who, in 1962, founded the National Farm Workers Association which worked for Latino civil rights, fair treatment of farm laborers including migrant workers and grape-pickers, and improved conditions on all farm facilities.
19. Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm - She was the first African-American woman elected to Congress in 1968 and in 1972; she became the first major-party candidate for President of the United States.

20. Agatha Christie - She wrote English crime novels and plays. She is the all time best-selling author of book and the best-selling writer of any kind with only the Bible outselling her collected sales.

21. Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill - He served as the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1955, most notably leading and inspiring the Allied powers during World War II.

22. Christopher Columbus - He journeyed across the Atlantic in 1942 and initiated Spanish colonization of the Americas that led to European colonization.

23. Confucius - He was a Chinese philosopher who developed an ethical system employed throughout East Asia. His values focus on the importance of education and morality.

24. Marie Curie - She was a physicist and chemist who broke new ground in the study of radioactivity, was the first to be awarded two Nobel Prizes, and was the first female professor at the University of Paris.

25. Dalai Lama - He is the official leader of the Tibetan government and is believed to be a reincarnated individual put on earth to enlighten others.

26. Charles Robert Darwin - He studied the natural world and developed the theory of evolution and natural selection which, once accepted, fundamentally changed the perception of history and human development.

27. Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey - He invented the Dewey Decimal Classification System which revolutionized library science.

28. Emily Dickinson - She was a visionary poet whose individual style, development of imagery, and creative use of capitalization pressed the limits of creative writing and the social boundaries of women in the late 1800s.

29. Walt Elias Disney - After creating Mickey Mouse in 1928, Disney became a famous cartoonist, producer, director, voice actor, and entrepreneur by co-founding Walt Disney Productions, now one of the best-known motion picture producers. He was an innovator in animation and, thanks to the very popular Disneyland, theme park design.

30. Frederick Douglas - A former slave, he was an abolitionist and suffragist who dedicated his life to supporting equal rights by writing, speaking, and serving as a statesman

31. W.E.B. Du Bois - He advocated civil rights in America and Pan-Africanism. He was a well-educated man and a prolific writer who started the Niagara Movement and, later, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He encouraged black literature, art, and thought and promoted African-American history.

32. Marcel Duchamp - Associated with Dada and Surrealism, he contributed to the American avant-garde arts and proposed that art is made by perception not by technique or a particular style. His most celebrated work, “Fountain”, consisted of a urinal turned upside down.
33. Amelia Earhart - She was one of the first women to earn a pilot’s license, the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928, and actively supported the growth of aviation and women’s role in the sciences.

34. Thomas Alva Edison - He was an American inventor and scientist who developed the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the light bulb. He was a prolific inventor and contributed greatly to the modern industrialized world.

35. Albert Einstein - He contributed to modern physics, quantum mechanics, cosmology, and statistical mechanics, won the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics and famously formulated the theory of relativity in 1915.

36. Elizabeth I - She was the Queen of England from 1558 to 1603 and pursued cautious and moderate politics. As a result her rule was relatively peaceful and ushered in a golden age of art and literature known as the Elizabethan era. Authors like William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe flourished during her reign.
37. Federico Fellini - He was an influential Italian film director famous for baroque images and fantasy.

38. Terrance Stanley Fox - Canadian born Fox ran his Marathon of Hope from the Atlantic to the Pacific to support cancer research after losing one leg to cancer. He never finished his run due to the spread of his cancer, but he inspired many more runs and raised millions of dollars for cancer research.

39. Benjamin Franklin - He helped found America and served as a political advisor, a leader during the Revolutionary War, and a winning diplomat in Europe. Franklin also was a successful printer, newspaper editor, and writer and formed the first public lending library and fire department in America.

40. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi - He was a paramount political and spiritual leader in India during the Indian independence movement and developed non-violent civil disobedience to protest oppression.

41. Bill Gates - He developed an early microcomputer and founded the Microsoft Corporation with Paul Allen that constructed some of the first affordable home computers and software.

42. Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg - She served on the US Supreme Court and was the second female Justice in US history. She notably swore in Vice-President Al Gore in 1997 and advocated equal rights for men and women.

43. Jane Goodall - She is an English UN Messenger of Peace famous for a long-term study of chimpanzee society and family structure. She is an activist for animal welfare and safe environmental practices.

44. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev - He served as the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and helped negotiate the end of the Cold War. He also helped orchestrate the dissolution of the Soviet Union and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in 1990.

45. Martha Graham - She was an influential dancer and choreographer credited with dramatically furthering the development of modern dance. She was the first dancer to perform at the White House, the first dancer to act as a cultural ambassador, and the first dancer to receive the US Medal of Freedom.

46. Johannes Gutenberg - He was a German printer who first used movable type printing in 1439 and invented the mechanical printing press which increased the ease of communication and made the written word more accessible.

47. Alfred Hitchcock - A filmmaker and producer, he experimented with suspense. He was successful in the UK for his silent films and beloved in the US for his psychological thrillers.

48. Thomas Jefferson - He was the principal author of the 1776 Declaration of Independence and co-founded the Democratic Party. He was the first US Secretary of State and, from 1801 to 1809, he served as the third President of the United States.

49. Edward Jenner - He discovered the smallpox vaccine in 1796, the first vaccine.

50. Jesus - Regardless of his role in religions, he campaigned for love, forgiveness, obedience to law, faith, and charity. The qualities he preached about are valued in most societies today.

51. Joan of Arc - She was a peasant girl who, upon hearing the call of God to free her lands from the English, led French troops during the Hundred Years’ War to several victories before being burned at the stake by the English at the age of 19
52. Helen Keller - In 1904, she was the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college, and used her education and experiences to become an international activist for those with sensory disabilities.

53. John F. Kennedy - He was the 35th President of the United States who, along with Robert F. Kennedy, spoke in favor of civil rights legislation and acted decisively for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

54. Robert F. Kennedy - With his brother, he advocated advances in civil rights through legislation and played a crucial part in ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.

55. Martin Luther King, Jr. - He was a civil rights activist and preacher who led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a group dedicated to ending segregation and racism in the Southeast, and played an integral role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and the March from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.

56. Aung San Suu Kyi - She received the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy of democracy and nonviolent resistance in Burma and is the Prime Minister-elect of Burma though she remains imprisoned by a military junta.

57. Abraham Lincoln - He protested American aggression against Mexico over the Texas border and protested the secession of the south during the Civil War. He served as President of the Union from 1860 until his assassination in 1865.

58. Martin Luther - He protested the Catholic ritual of indulgences and supported the translation of the Bible into local languages with his 95 Theses in the early 1500s. His protest is credited with starting the Protestant religions.

59. Malcolm X - He was a militant Black Nationalist leader in the United States and an activist for international human rights. He promoted black pride, economic independence, and cultural separatism often in opposition to Martin Luther King, Jr.

60. Nelson Mandela - He was an anti-apartheid activist from South Africa and, after the fall of apartheid, became the first fully representative, democratically elected President of South Africa.
61. Henri Matisse - He painted using expressive and wild colors that were labeled Fauvist, or like a wild beast. He contributed to the development of modern art and remains popular to this day.

62. Michelangelo - He was a prominent Italian Renaissance painter, architect, sculptor, poet, and engineer who was so well-liked that Italians referred to him as the Divine Michelangelo during his life. He is most famous for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the scaffolding he invented to paint it, the Medici Chapel, and the Statue of David.

63. Doris Miller - He was the first African American to be awarded the Navy Cross for manning an anti-aircraft gun despite his lack of training, and shooting down a Japanese bomber during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

64. Joan Mitchell - She was an Abstract Expressionist painter who gained international acclaim when most female painters were largely ignored.

65. Samuel F. B. Morse - He created the single-wire telegraph system and Morse Code to communicate over that telegraph system.

66. Pablo Neruda - He wrote poetry and won the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature. He supported communism in Chile with his poetry and fame and, upon his death shortly after a military takeover, inspired protests against the new Chilean military dictatorship.

67. Isaac Newton - In 1687, he published Philosophie Naturalis Principia Mathematica which is considered to be one of the most influential books in science, advanced the scientific revolution, laid the basis for universal gravitation, and proposed the three laws of motion. He built the first practical reflecting telescope, developed a theory of color by using a prism to decompose white light, and helped develop differential and integral calculus.

68. Florence Nightingale - She was a pioneer in nursing who received training despite social criticism and later worked with wounded solders in the Crimean War. Her revolutionary ideas on hygiene, organization of patient care, and the need for medical records reduced the mortality rate by more than 30%, proving the importance of nurses and expanding the roles of women.

69. Alfred Bernhard Nobel - He was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and inventor who invented dynamite and owned a major armaments manufacturer. He willed all of his fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes supporting innovations in several intellectual fields and supporting profound social contributions.

70. Barack Obama - In 2008, he was elected President, making history as the first African-American President of the United States.

71. Rosa Parks - She fuelled and participated in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott as the movement’s test case, and continued to actively protest segregation and support equal civil rights.

72. Plato - Greek philosopher, he founded the Academy in Athens, contributed to mathematics, and taught Aristotle.

73. Pablo Picasso - He co-founded the Cubist movement with Georges Braque and produced a wide array of famous and beloved paintings such as “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.”

74. Edna Annie Proulx - She wrote such titles as The Shipping News, “Brokeback Mountain,” and Postcards which won her the Faulkner Award for Ficion.

75. Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan - A librarian from India, he developed the five laws of library science and is considered the father of library science, documentation, and information science.

76. Ronald Reagan - He was a famous actor and the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He reduced business regulations, reduced the growth of the government and its spending, and cut taxes in policies referred to as “Reaganomics.” As President, he denounced Communism and the Soviet Union, then negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev to create the INF Treaty and eventually end the Cold War.
77. Sally Ride - She was the first women in space in 1983 on the shuttle Challenger (STS-7)

78. John Davison Rockefeller - He founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870 and became America’s first billionaire. He felt that the privileged are obligated use their good fortune to help others and so he created foundations that pioneered the development of medical research, improved education, and furthered scientific research.

79. Jackie Roosevelt Robinson - He was the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers, ending almost 60 years of segregation in professional baseball leagues. He was also a really good ball player.

80. Eleanor Roosevelt - As the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, she used her influence to support civil rights and continued to be a powerful advocate and prominent speaker for the New Deal coalition, the United Nations, the Freedom House, and many other human rights causes. From 1945 to 1952 she also served as a delegate to the UN General Assembly.

81. Franklin D. Roosevelt - He was the 32nd President of the Unites States. He created the New Deal to alleviate the Great Depression and worked with Winston Churchill before and during the United States’ entry into World War II to defeat the Axis Powers.

82. Theodore Roosevelt - He served as the 26th President of the United States. He was a progressive reformer who dissolved forty monopolistic corporations, created the “Square Deal” as a compromise between businessmen and citizens, and supported conservation and universal health care. He was also instrumental in the creation of the Panama Canal.

83. Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre - He was a French author and playwright who influenced philosophy and helped develop Existentialism.

84. Albert Schweitzer - He was a German-French theologian, philosopher, musician, and physician who attempted to reconcile the secular and traditional Christian view of Jesus and promoted life through is philosophy of “Reverence for Life.” He founded and sustained the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in west central Africa and worked on a universal ethical philosophy to make compassion and moral values available to all.

85. William Shakespeare - This prolific English poet and playwright was famous during his own life but left very little evidence of his existence apart from his works, which include: “Romeo and Juliet”, “Hamlet”, “Macbeth”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Julius Caesar”, and “Othello.”

86. Socrates - A Greek philosopher, he taught Plato and developed the Socratic Method while contributing to the studies of epistemology, logic, and ethics.

87. Elizabeth Cady Stanton - She was a social activist who helped lead the women’s rights movement in the mid-1800s, organized the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls which demanded voting rights for women long before they were granted, and participated in the anti-slavery movement.

88. Igor Stravinsky - He was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who transformed 20th - century music with his unusual rhythms, energy, and changing compositional style.

89. Rabindranath Tagore - He won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature making him Asia’s first Nobel laureate as a poet, visual artist, playwright, novelist, educator, social reformer, nationalist, business-manager, and composer. He supported the Indian Independence Movement and now two of his songs, “Amar Shonar Bangla” and “Jana Gana Mana”, are the national anthems of Bangladesh and India respectively.

90. Mother Teresa - She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 and spent the rest of her life ministering to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying throughout India and elsewhere. She won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian efforts and dedication to missionary work.

91. Nicola Tesla - He contributed to the field of electricity and magnetism by inventing various tools that made commercial electricity. Tesla’s studies also formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power systems.

92. Francois Truffault - He was a French filmmaker who helped initiate the French New Wave movement.

93. Sojourner Truth - A freed slave, she protested slavery and spoke out for women’s rights. She was a celebrated speaker and famously delivered the speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” at the Ohio Women’s Right Convention in 1951.

94. Alan Mathison Turing - He developed modern computer science and formalized the concept of the algorithm and computation. In 1948 he designed the Manchester Mark 1, the world’s earliest true computer.

95. Archbiship Desmond Tutu - He opposed apartheid in South Africa, became the first Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town in South Africa, and chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission following apartheid’s fall. He continues to fight for human rights throughout the world, winning him the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, the 2005 Gandhi Peace Prize, and the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism.

96. Vincent Willem van Gogh - He was a Post-Impressionist and inspired Expressionism with his use of bright and contrasting colors in works such as “The Church at Auvers”, “Starry Night”, and “The Night Café.”
97. Leonardo da Vinci - He was an artist, scientist, inventor, and engineer that helped define the Italian Renaissance with his innovations and memorable works of art, such as “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper.”

98. Madame C. J. Walker - She founded the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company to sell cosmetics and hair tonics in the 1910s. By 1917 it was a thriving business and Madame Walker became the first female American self-made millionaire and the first African-American millionaire.

99. Booker T. Washington - He opened and led the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in 1881 to educate and train African-Americans in an effort to make them economic equals to whites and therefore earn equal civil rights. He was an advocate for civil rights and education.

100. George Washington - He was the commander of the Continental Army during the America Revolutionary War and then served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. He is consider the father of the country and remains a beloved symbol of America.

101. Eli Whitney - He invented the cotton gin which revolutionized farming and utilized interchangeable parts which revolutionized industrial work in America.

102. Oprah Gail Winfrey - She hosted an AM Chicago television talk show, later the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986, and used her popularity to become influential and address serious human plights. She is a successful entrepreneur and considered one of the most powerful women in the world.

103. Frank Lloyd Wright - He was an American architect and interior designer fascinated by organic architecture who led the Prairie School movement of architecture in the early 1900s. He completed over 500 projects.

104. Orville and Wilbur Wright - The Wright brothers designed and implemented both controllable gliders and the first practical airplane called “Flyer I” in 1903, leading to a long history of reaching to the skies.

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www.nasascience.nasa.gov/kids/earth-science-for-kids

‘Earth from Space’

“The Sun gives us heat, light, our food, and the air that we breathe. It powers the atmosphere to give us the winds and rain. Even the coal and oil that generate electricity for light and power come from plants and animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago and depended on the Sun for life. The Sun heats the land, oceans, and air. It evaporates water from lakes and oceans. When the water vapor cools, it drops as rain or snow, giving us the moisture we need for drinking water and for plants and animals to grow. Water, Air, Life, and Land - the Earth is a system.” www.nasascience.nasa.gov/kids/earth-science-for-kids

Anyone who thinks the sky is the limit, has limited imagination.
- Anonymous

Some men see things the way they are and ask, "Why?" I dream things that never were, and ask "Why not?"
- George Bernard Shaw

For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.
- Donald Williams

http://space.xprize.org/

Why the Moon?

We live in a unique two world environment - the Earth-Moon System. Earth’s offshore island the Moon is a stepping stone to the rest of the Solar System and a source of solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on the Earth.

The Moon is the closest source of materials for doing anything in space. Right now we have to bring every single bit of material that we need for space operations at great expense from the bottom of the Earth’s deep gravity well.

However, it’s 22 times easier to launch from the Moon than from the Earth. The lack of an atmosphere on the moon also makes it possible to launch materials from the moon using electric motors rather than expensive rockets.

The moon is more than 40% oxygen by weight. Oxygen is the main component of rocket propellant. Much of the rest of lunar soil is silicon (useful for making solar cells) and metals like aluminum and iron. Thanks to the rock and soil return by Apollo astronauts and recent robotic probes we now have detailed knowledge of our nearest neighbor in space.

Clean solar energy can be sent from space to the earth with solar collectors in high Earth orbit made from lunar materials. A single solar power satellite could power a major Earth city without CO2 or other pollution. Since these systems provide power at night, energy from power satellites could charge electric cars, generate hydrogen from water, or make synthetic fuels for cars or aircraft during nighttime off-peak power times.

The moon is so close to the Earth (1.3 seconds for radio or light) that people can directly control lunar robots and other machines from Earth.

Once lunar materials are available for construction in space we can overcome many of the limits to space exploration that we currently take for granted. For example:

We can shield astronauts from cosmic and solar radiation

We can use beamed power to enable fast transportation in the solar system 

We can build large telescopes and other astronomical tools to learn much more about the universe and how it came to be.

We can protect the Earth from the threat of impacts from asteroids and comets

In addition to using lunar materials to build solar power satellites we can collect energy on the moon’s surface and transmit it to the Earth. Eventually we may also collect Helium 3 trapped in moon soil which is an ideal low-radiation fusion fuel.
read more at: http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/education/why-the-moon

Today, we announce a new game of skill we call MoonBots.

A partnership between the X PRIZE Foundation, Google, LEGO MINDSTORMS, National Instruments, and 's GeekDad blog, MoonBots will require 6-member teams of both children and adults to essentially conduct Google Lunar X PRIZE missions using LEGO components. For more information about the contest, check out our post on the Launch Pad or the MoonBots homepage!
read more at: http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

Tour the Moon in Google Earth

On July 20, 2009, our friends at Google released Moon in Google Earth, a free and intuitive piece of software that allows users to see stunning data from five decades of lunar missions in context and in the highest qualities possible. More than ever before, the rest of us will be able to recreate the experiences of the 24 men who orbited around or landed on the surface of our celestial neighbor.

As you explore this new software package, we hope you’ll also take the Google Lunar X PRIZE tour. Simply download this file to your computer and open it the new Google Earth, and you’ll be whisked away on a tour of the lunar surface with X PRIZE Founder Peter Diamandis and with X PRIZE Trustee and second generation astronaut Richard Garriott. They will use the software to imagine what we’ll all be watching in the near future, projecting the preliminary designs published by our teams onto the lunar surface. This tour is a rough draft, and will be revised and updated as often as possible to give you the best information about this new race back to the Moon.

read more at: http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

Team LunaTrex Talk to the Space Fellowship About Rockets, Rovers and GLXP Rules

By Rob GoldsmithPublished: 10 August 2009 9:32 AM CEST

After The Google Lunar X Prize was announced the Space Fellowship spent much of the coming months speaking to teams and finding out how they planned on beating one another to the Moon. One of the teams that was kind enough to discuss their plans, and perhaps one of the most interesting teams, was Team LunaTrex.

LunaTrex was formed in 2008 as a team comprising several individuals, companies, and universities from all over the country (USA) who bring the needed skills, talents, vision, and experience together to pursue the noble goals set out by the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Speaking with the team in March 2008 the LunaTrex team leader Pete Bitar gave an in-depth interview with the Space Fellowship. Over a year on from that interview the Space Fellowship have spoken to the team again to see how the past 18 months have gone.

LunaTrex

Last time we spoke with Pete we asked him about the potential of Ion propulsion, Pete had told us  ”We are not necessarily choosing ion propulsion, but likely either that or Hall effect thrusters, or some form of electric propulsion” I wanted to know how this was developing or if it had been refined, Pete updated me.

“We are refining the idea, based on available launches and launch slots, and also based on what we will hear, hopefully soon, from the XPF (X PRIZE Foundation) and Google, regarding the final rules for the competition. That said, if we can get an affordable launch to TLI (Trans Lunar Injection), it will change our requirements for electric propulsion. However, based on a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) launch, we are still eyeing that approach”.

Read more at:
http://spacefellowship.com/2009/08/10/team-lunatrex-talk-to-the-space-fellowship-about-rockets-rovers-and-glxp-rules/

September 9, 2009: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business, ready to uncover new worlds, peer ever deeper into space, and even map the invisible backbone of the universe. The first snapshots from the refurbished Hubble showcase the 19-year-old telescope's new vision.

Topping the list of exciting new views are colorful multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie "pillar of creation," and a "butterfly" nebula. With its new imaging camera, Hubble can view galaxies, star clusters, and other objects across a wide swath of the electromagnetic spectrum, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light.

A new spectrograph slices across billions of light-years to map the filamentary structure of the universe and trace the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life. The telescope's new instruments also are more sensitive to light and can observe in ways that are significantly more efficient and require less observing time than previous generations of Hubble instruments. NASA astronauts installed the new instruments during the space shuttle servicing mission in May 2009. Besides adding the instruments, the astronauts also completed a dizzying list of other chores that included performing unprecedented repairs on two other science instruments.

Now that Hubble has reopened for business, it will tackle a whole range of observations. Looking closer to Earth, such observations will include taking a census of the population of Kuiper Belt objects residing at the fringe of our solar system, witnessing the birth of planets around other stars, and probing the composition and structure of the atmospheres of other worlds. Peering much farther away, astronomers have ambitious plans to use Hubble to make the deepest-ever portrait of the universe in near-infrared light. The resulting picture may reveal never-before-seen infant galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 500 million years old. Hubble also is now significantly more well-equipped to probe and further characterize the behavior of dark energy, a mysterious and little-understood repulsive force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate.

Check out Flicker to see all the Space Dream Theme panels submitted.

The Dream Rocket team will be featuring non-profit organizations from around the world on the "Dream Theme" pages. Our hope is to help inspire participants everywhere to create panels with "Dream Themes" such as poverty, energy, space, health, peace, science/technology, conservation, and community. If your non-profit oganization falls within one of our "Dream Theme" categories listed and you would like to be represented on The Dream Rocket website,  please email

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