Women of NASA
Virtual Take Our Daughters To Work Day
QuestChat Archive

Date: April 26, 2001

Featuring: Stacey Morrison
Deputy Chief Information Officer -- Space and Life Sciences Directorate
NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

Thursday Apr 26 11:08:16 2001  The expert's featured url: http://quest.nasa.gov/women/bios/morrison.html

[ YWAC - 0 - 08:13:09 ]
Welcome to the webchat with Stacey Morrison. If you haven't already done so, please take a look at her profile.

[ YWAC - 3 - 09:53:36 ]
Please submit your questions so that we can post them for Stacey Morrison to answer.

[ Shannon - 4 - 09:55:49 ]
How did you develop the Virtual Astronaut program? How long did it take?

[ StaceyMorrison - 5 - 10:00:16 ]
My team of developers used javascript for the programming and a 3-D World program called Viscape to develop the Virtual Astronaut Program. It took about a year to get it to where it is now. We are already working on Phase 2 of the project which would include a lab module and more science activities.

[ StaceyMorrison - 6 - 10:02:15 ]
Phase 3 of the Virtual Astronaut Website will have a habitation module so that we can show how astronauts live in space. The real Space Station may not have this module due to budget cuts, so our 3-D version of Space Station will not be totally accurate to what is in space right now.

[ StaceyMorrison - 9 - 10:06:57 ]
RE: [Jackie] Is the public able to see or use the Virtual Astronaut program? Where can we learn more about it?
The Virtual Astronaut Website is available to the public. The URL is http://virtualastronaut.jsc.nasa.gov/. The website is geared toward students 5th through 8th grade and is mostly science and math oriented, but we also have geography lessons using pictures taken of the Earth from space. Most of the information about the website is on the website itself. There is an e-mail address you can send questions to on the website. You can also send me questions later at stacey.e.morrison@jsc.nasa.gov and I would be happy to answer them.

[ StaceyMorrison - 12 - 10:13:40 ]
RE: [Jennie] You explain in your profile that you did not have many women role models as a child. How do you hope to be a role model for women today?
There are a lot of things that I do that help me be a role model to not only girls, but boys as well. I am the NASA Science Advisor to my daughter's elementary school. NASA pays me my salary to go over to the school and do science presentations. For the first graders I compared space exploration to the Pilgrim's trip to America. For 4th and 5th graders I was an advisor for the First Lego League Robot Competition. The group won best presentation for the district. I am a member of MentorNet which matches up mentors with female college students. I am a member of the Michigan Technological University's President's Council of Alumnae. In that group I try to come up with ideas on how to keep Tech's female students still going to Tech and how to encourage more female students to attend. Michigan Tech is mostly an engineering school and the current female student population is 25%. I also will work with women faculty to see what problems they have. Then I with the other women in the group present our ideas to Michigan Tech's President. I am also on the Johnson Space Center Diversity Advisory Board and I do e-mail mentoring with lots of kids around the country. I am a member of Systers which is a group of women in computer science that mentor each other (some of which are students). I also give demos of Virtual Astronaut at our Open House and Inspection days at the Johnson Space Center.

[ StaceyMorrison - 15 - 10:16:53 ]
RE: [Brian] Do you think that working with government equipment limits the diversity of your software?
I think that the opposite is more true. Since we are the Federal Government, we have to offer competition. We can create standards to a certain extent, but we are encouraged to give every American company a chance. Mostly what we use has to be compatible with Microsoft Windows, so that does limit us a little bit. We are trying also to be compatible with Macintoshes since we know that a lot of school have Macintoshes. We are working with the 3-D software vendor to provide a Macintosh plug-in for the software. In the mean time we are creating a Macintosh version with still pictures instead of the 3-D so that the schools will not totally be left out.

[ StaceyMorrison - 17 - 10:18:31 ]
RE: [Samantha] Do the astronauts use the Virtual Astronaut program?
Since we are using the word astronaut in our program, we demonstrated our website to the astronaut managers and they really liked the idea. In fact Bill Shepherd who was the first commander of the Space Station has endorsed our website. I don't know if the astronauts actually use our site, but we do feature a lot of pictures of them in our site.

[ StaceyMorrison - 19 - 10:21:24 ]
RE: [Tammy] When you designed the website, how did you balance the complexity and "cool effects" with the amount of time the website takes to load?
We were testing the website on a 28.8K modem and I will tell you that it is extremely slow. It is slow on a 56K modem. We are working with the 3-D vendor to try to get a lighter version of the 3-D plug in so it won't take so much time to download and the software will run faster. It is really hard to have cool effects and have a small program. We have been noticing that most people will go to the first page, but don't have time to download all of the plug ins. We are hoping that we can get the plug ins to be smaller in the future.

[ StaceyMorrison - 20 - 10:24:43 ]
RE: [Sammiage7] What classes did you have to take in college to be ready for your career?
I had to take a lot of calculus, differential equations, a lot of programming classes, biology, English, social studies, economics, physical education, and Air Force ROTC classes. I also took two years of Spanish. Because computer science is a math intensive major, I had to take a lot of math classes. I also took math as my technical electives because I love math and am good at math. I did better in math than computer programming, but I believed I could make more money with a computer science degree than a math degree.

[ StaceyMorrison - 22 - 10:27:03 ]
RE: [Marybeth/Virginia] Was it your idea to make the Virtual Astronaut?
The idea for Virtual Astronaut did not come from me, but a contractor that works for me that works in education outreach. NASA is charged to spend so much time and money on educating the public and she thought that this would be a great way of getting the kids involved and also getting out lesson plans for teachers. There are a number of teachers out there that need science lesson plans and we want to get kids excited about space so they can be future NASA employees. It is a win-win situation for us.

[ StaceyMorrison - 23 - 10:29:35 ]
RE: [Joyce] How accuarate and realistic is this new website?
The website is not an exact replica of the current International Space Station. It does have some of the same elements, but it is not one-for-one to scale. In fact we are going to be adding elements on to our Space Station that may not exist in the real Space Station. The experiments and websites that we have links to in the 3-D world do have accurate NASA information on them. We have a link to where the Station is located in its orbit around the Earth at any given time. I wouldn't use Virtual Astronaut as a to scale version of the real Station, though.

[ StaceyMorrison - 29 - 10:34:18 ]
RE: [Marybeth/Virginia] Have you seen a change in more females working in theocmputer industry>
In my current experience I have gone from an organization where there were very few females, to being almost 50-50 males to females. The number of women getting computer science degrees is going down, but so are the number of men getting computer science degrees. Engineering is even worse. There are a number of people that are using computer science as a second career and may not necessarily get a computer science degree to get into that career. There is a lot you can learn in short training classes and on the job training that you don't need a degree for. If you want to get into management, a degree is highly desirable. Most kids today are fairly comfortable with computers and don't see the reason to learn more about them than making them a tool in what they really want to do. Most graphic artists use computers, but don't major in computer science. A number of these people become web designers. Web design is a major draw of women to computers that I have seen in a long time.

[ StaceyMorrison - 30 - 10:36:39 ]
RE: [ERC/Christina] Who were important people in your life who inspired and encouraged you?
My father was the person that inspired me the most. He told me to take the hardest classes in school and I did. He told me I could be anything I wanted to be. He wanted me to be an Air Force officer, but was glad that I got to work at NASA instead. He really encouraged me to do my best.

[ StaceyMorrison - 32 - 10:39:44 ]
RE: [sarah] What has surprised you most about creating and using Virtual Astronaut?
One of the things that surprised me was that I would actually get dizzy when I moved the mouse too fast in the 3-D world. It seemed that real to me. The thing that surprised me most about creating it was that we could put together a really nice website for not that much money. I have really been impressed with the results the contractor has made developing the software. I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't program very well. I make sure that the contractor does good work and I try to get all the tools they need to do that.

[ StaceyMorrison - 33 - 10:43:24 ]
RE: [ERC/Ruth] How do you keep up with current technology?
You may think that NASA has the latest and greatest in computer technology and we actually don't. We don't jump on the bandwagon of new technology for two reasons: 1. There are always bugs in new software and it is better to wait until these bugs are ironed out by others before we jump in, and 2. It is always more expensive to buy new technology when it first comes out than to wait awhile and then the prices will come down. When Personal computers first came out, they were $5000. Now you can get a better computer for about $1000. We test out new software to see if it will work in what we are doing. If it doesn't, we haven't wasted too much money. If it does, then we carefully integrate it into our existing systems to make sure that what we have won't break with the new software or hardware.

[ StaceyMorrison - 34 - 10:45:51 ]
RE: [ERCNathan] From your job description - it sounds like you are a network administrator and computer troubleshooter? Does this kind of work have you on-call 24 hours a day? What are some of the things about your job that you don't like?
I am not on call 24 hours a day, but I do carry a beeper. Since I am one of the computer security managers I have been beeped on the weekends once in awhile. One of the things about my job that I don't like is people asking me questions about their software that they would know if they had gone to the training. It wastes both of our time when we both could be more productive.

[ StaceyMorrison - 35 - 10:49:10 ]
RE: [MrsFaulknersClass] Why did you choose this job?
The month before I graduated from college, I decided not to go into the Air Force. Because of that, I had to scramble to get a job. I sent out 200 resumes and got 199 rejections. NASA/Johnson Space Center was the only place willing to hire me. I was really glad that NASA wanted to hire me because I started reading science fiction in high school and wanted to work with space exploration. I didn't believe that I would ever get a job with them, but I decided to try anyway. I was really lucky that they had an opening at the time. I have stayed with NASA because I believe in the space program. I want to be a part of it.

[ StaceyMorrison - 37 - 10:53:01 ]
RE: [Ted] How do the computers used at NASA to interpret data from Mars, for instance, differ from those found in regular classrooms?
We have a number of different types of computers for different uses. Data crunching computers are usually Sun workstations that have powerful central processing units (CPU), memory and hard disk space. They are a lot more expensive than regular desktops and usually run a form of UNIX for their operating system. These computers are designed for multiple equations and can do calculations in seconds. Personal computers are getting up there in speed and memory, but they are not there, yet. Most data crunching computers have more than one processor so that they can do many more calculations. Sometimes the scientists write their own programs to analyze the data and sometimes they use commercial programs. It just depends on what they need to do with the data.

[ StaceyMorrison - 39 - 10:57:14 ]
RE: [ERC/Brian/Patrick] Hi Stacey, Both Patrick and I are interested in using your Virtual Astronaut in a teacher workshop type teaching environment, most probably in a demonstration mode. Have you used this unique tool in this setting and if so what did you feel was most effective? Thanks, B/P
If you are going to present Virtual Astronaut to teachers, you will want to logon as a teacher (pick teacher instead of student in the drop down box). Then show the teachers the different lesson plans they can use in the Teacher Alert box in the bottom right corner of the world. You might want to print out a couple to show them what they look like. Then show them the different activities in the world. If they are into geography, click on the activities in the cupola (the window that looks out on the earth), if they are into pre-breathing or space walking, click on the activities in the air lock (where the spacesuit is). We will be adding more activities in the lab module in phase 2. I usually just travel around and click on things and show them what they are for. I don't go through all of the pictures at the NBL or in space. I just give them an idea of what is there.

[ StaceyMorrison - 40 - 11:01:38 ]
RE: [ERC/Nathan] What are some of the new technologies that you see coming in the near future that are exciting?
The new technologies I see are being able to see websites on your cell phone. You will be able to check on your airline flight, make reservations at your destination, and maybe even see a video of your spouse and/or child when you are talking to them on the phone. One of the things that I have read about in my science fiction books is an artificial intelligent butler that answers your phone for you and makes sure you have breakfast all ready for you in the morning. That may not be too far distant into our future if we computerize our house. People can talk to each other and see holographic images of one another in their own homes and look like they are in the same room. That may be just around the corner.

[ YWAC - 41 - 11:03:44 ]
Thank you everyone for joining us in our webchat today and for your wonderful questions.If you would like to learn more about Virtual Astronaut please go to http://virtualastronaut.jsc.nasa.gov/

[ StaceyMorrison - 42 - 11:04:52 ]
If there are no more questions, I would like to thank you for your time. It has really been fun answering your questions. Please check out the Virtual Astronaut Website and send any other questions to the e-mail address there. If you mention my name, I will get them. Thanks so much for your interest in NASA.