Escape Velocity Offers Much More Than Celebrity Meet-and-Greets and Photo Opportunities
When Escape Velocity roars to life Friday through Sunday, May 24-26 at the Gaylord National Resort in Fort Washington, MD, science fiction and popular culture fans will certainly enjoy their fill of opportunities to revel in their favored genres spanning the universes of Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien, Dr. Who, Battlestar Galactica and others; but for many of the attendees, it’s actually pure science that’s serving as the main attraction.
Sure, there will be ample opportunities to get a photo taken inside the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon; get up close and personal with an eight-foot-long full-scale replica of the USS Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and meet Dominique Tipper who plays Naomi Nagata, the Belter engineer of the Rocinante from the SyFy original series The Expanse; but that’s only part of the excitement. During all three days of the show, Escape Velocity offers programming designed to demonstrate to attendees the power and vitality of real world math, science and engineering through breakout sessions scattered throughout the venue.
Examples include:
Afterschool Universe — a highly personalized look at a freely-available hands-on astronomy curriculum created by NASA for afterschool programs, summer camps, and other platforms, focusing on the benefits of teaching astronomy in out-of-school time settings. The workshops lead participants in a series of hands-on activities focusing on the chemical elements, how they are created in stars, and how light is used to determine which elements exist in distant objects.
Creative Writing Workshops for Teens — An interactive creative workshop for students aged 11-17 led by published and speculative science fiction authors. The session will emphasize writing techniques and story development followed by a Q&A session focusing on writing and publishing sci-fi literature.
Electricity and Magnetism Before the Electronic Revolution – A historical look at the emergence of electrical science in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Ethics of AI – An in-depth discussion of the way machine systems work (and don’t work) and the impact they have on our human values.
Escape Velocity mixes the fun of comic cons with the fascination of science and engineering festivals to create an amazing 3-day experience for the whole family.
