During Week 2 of the Spring 2023 semester, we started off with a visit to our client, the Moonshot Museum. Using the information we gathered during the visit, we brainstormed different ideas for the three prototypes that we have to create. We then worked to flesh out our best ideas in anticipation of both the client meeting and ¼ walkaround in Week 3.
Visiting the Moonshot Museum
On January 23, we visited the Moonshot Museum in Pittsburgh’s Northside neighborhood. Mike Hennessy, Manager of Learning and Programs for the Moonshot Museum and our primary client contact, was kind enough to give us a tour of the museum.
We entered the museum through its front lobby. In the lobby, there was a screen showing one of the lunar landers currently being worked on by Astrobotic. Guests could scan a QR code to open a website on their phones where they could view a small model of the lander in AR (augmented reality). Other features present in the lobby included a large poster of the Moon and a small gift shop.
Upon entering the museum, we were first invited to sit down in a theater to view a video on the future of space exploration and travel, featuring Astrobotic and the city of Pittsburgh. After the video finished, the screen lifts up and presents guests with a view into the clean room where ideally guests could see spacecraft under construction. However, on the day we visited, there was nothing in the clean room.
After the theater, we went into the main room of the museum. In this room, there were a number of interactive displays and activity stations. We tried out a rover building puzzle, an interactive lunar map, a debate about space law, and a scavenger hunt. In general, we found the activities enjoyable, particularly the rover building and the space debate.
The visit to the Moonshot Museum allowed us to better understand the environment that we were designing for. We were able to see the three areas of interest (theater, clean room, and art zone) that had been previously mentioned by our client. We also became aware of other potential opportunities in the family room (where the space debate was located).
Brainstorming Ideas
We returned from the Moonshot Museum visit ready to brainstorm new ideas for potential interactive exhibits and experiences. Working together, the team was able to come up with roughly six to seven ideas.
These ideas are:
- Interactive theater
- Cooperative mission control
- Projection mapping + floor pressure sensors
- Moon colony tabletop game with AR elements
- Interactive moon globe
- Payload packing
- Construct/repair a rover in AR
We will do further research and work to nail down additional details of each idea’s basic specifications such as expected installation space, potential throughput, and anticipated pros and cons. We anticipate that we will be able to share more about our ideas in Week 3.
Review & Looking Ahead
For Week 2, the team was able to make good progress in determining what the future of our project looks like. The visit to the Moonshot Museum, in particular, proved to be extremely helpful for us. With the knowledge that we had gained from the visit, we were able to generate a number of diverse ideas for potential exhibits and experiences.
However, we faced some challenges in Week 2 as well. While our brainstorming generally went well, we did find ourselves struggling to come up with ideas for the clean room. The combination of limited space and a potentially empty clean room meant that many of our ideas had to be discarded. In the end, we were able to use information that we found on Astrobotic’s website as inspiration.
In Week 3, we are expecting that we will be able to further develop our current ideas so that they can be first presented to our client on Wednesday before being presented to the faculty on Friday for ¼ walkaround. After receiving client and faculty feedback, we will be able to make a decision on what ideas we want to begin prototyping.