For the small balloon payloads developed under ACES, a student team consists of about 3 to 5 undergraduates.
No! In fact, the leader of one of the more successful payloads during the ACES pilot was a music major. In particular, it is advisable that team members have different skills and backgrounds so that all areas of payload development (e.g. electronics, documentation, mechanical, power, science, programming, data analysis, presentation, etc.) can be covered.
Students with widely varying backgrounds can successfully participate in ACES. Note that most of the students participating in the ACES pilot at LSU were either Freshman or Sophomores. In fact, one of the major goals of this program is to provide students with practical skills that they would not normally obtain through standard classwork, so "entering" students should be able to profit from ACES as well as "advanced" students.
It has been our experience that students will become very enthusiastic about ACES once they understand the nature of the program. Thus, you may want to schedule a series of lectures about ACES for undergraduates at your institution. If you have a local Society of Physics Students chapter you might volunteer to make a presentation at one of their meetings. Alternately, you might advertise an orientation meeting during science or engineering courses; promising free food (always a crowd pleaser with students) if they come to hear you talk about ACES. Using this technique we had little trouble filling the ACES pilot project with students.
The "Documents" page on this website provides a few items you might find useful during recruitment. In particular, the ACES poster presentation for the LSU Foundation could be printed as a 36" by 47" poster to mount in strategic locations if you have access to a large bed printer or can be printed on letter size paper as handouts. Note, however, that the PDF file for this poster is very large (74 MB) so I would advise that you to right click on the link and "Save Target As ..." to download to your hard drive first. Further, you are welcome to download any of the PowerPoint presentations on ACES for your use.
From the ACES pilot results it appears that with each student devoting 10 hours per week to the project, a team of 3 to 5 students can acquire the necessary skills and design / construct an operational small balloon payload in two semesters. During the ACES pilot we required the students to attend two 2-hour common sessions each week during which we provided instruction and structured activities. For the other 6 hours the students had access to the laboratory where they could extend the structured activity or devote time to their payload design / development effort.
While we have found that ACES students are an enthusiastic lot, the demands on their time, due to classes, work-study and other activities, generally means that additional incentive is needed to keep the students focused. Such incentives might include course credit or offering the equivalent of work-study compensation.
The La ACES Leader mentors to the students and provides the overall guiding force, but is not necessarily directly involved with the student payload design and development. The Leader, of course, would be a reference source for the student team either answering questions or suggesting approaches for the students to find their own answers. The Leader may also need to pose questions to the students in order to direct the payload development toward success (e.g. What happens to the closed-cell foam padding you want to use under vacuum?, How long will your alkaline battery provide power when cooled to -20o C?). Finally, the Leader provides the interface between the student team and the La ACES Flight Team management at LSU on issue concerning the actually flight of the team payload.
Developing a small balloon science payload and analyzing the data returned from the flight can be used to expose students to a very broad range of subjects including electronics, programming, thermodynamics, mechanical engineering, systems engineering and project management as well as the nominal science topic the payload will investigate. Thus, faculty and staff volunteers whose area of specialization falls within these kinds of categories can be very helpful to the student team when questions arise. Another resource that you may have available is a local group of HAM radio operators. HAM's are usually well versed in electronics and many are interested in working with students.
Yes! The La ACES Management at LSU is currently developing a "Student Ballooning Course" based upon the material we developed during the ACES pilot project. Lessons, session plans, activity instructions, materials lists and references will be included on a CD and distributed during the La ACES Leader Training Workshop (see the La ACES General FAQ for more details about this workshop). This material is designed to help you structure an ACES program at your institution.
We will always be available to answer questions that may arise. You are welcome to e-mail questions to either one of the manager or to the La ACES Discussion group (see the La ACES General FAQ for details). Further, it may be possible for one of us to visit your institution on occasion to provide help in presenting some specific topic. Finally, we provide the flight vehicle to which your payload will be attached and support flight operations including interface with the National Scientific Balloon Facility, flight planning, GPS real-time tracking, payload recovery and flight profile data (i.e. latitude, longitude, altitude versus time).