SEDS-Earth

"Filipinos are highly practical people," someone once mentioned to me. I've seen this trait time and again in the College of Engineering at De La Salle University. Between being a developed country and being saturated with an amalgam of cultures that is strongly family oriented, the Philippines (or at least Manila) fosters a strong sense of financial practicality. Fields of study are chosen with care so that they may lead to lucrative careers; along the way, sometimes, dreams are quashed. So many have told me: "I once dreamed of becoming an astronaut," or "I love astronomy!"

My answer to these statements are, and have always been, "So why didn't you follow through?" I got responses ranging from, "Oh, you know childhood dreams." to "Where's the money in it?" Limits, boundaries, boxes, we build them as we grow and forget the limitlessness of our childhood imaginings. We don't realise that human progress lies in going beyond imposed boundaries, whether they be petty rules or seemingly grand physical laws. But I digress. My observations of why the students here abandanoned aerospace or space science pursuits showed me that it was because there was very little encouragement from the industry or universities. With all the space science related fields of study out there, I think that there is only one university (about which I only found out recently) that offers Aerospace Engineering, and a B.S. in Astronomy Technology just got approved at another university here.

This, of course, was not ideal. Something had to be done to correct this. Leah Villalon, the current Vice President of the chapter, and I brainstormed last Spring, and decided that we had to start a new organisation at our university. Having been a member of ERFSEDS (Embry-Riddle Future Space Explorers and Developers Society) my first thought was to start a SEDS chapter here. We got the documentation together and found thirteen other people with whom we could apply to the university for organization status.

PhilSEDS, then, was founded primarily to promote awareness and interest in field of the space sciences here in the Philippines. We planned to not only limit ourselves to activities within the university, but also to target state elementary and high schools.

The university's bureaucracy kept us waiting, but in December of last year, we were told that we were granted probationary status. This meant that we could operate within the university as an organization, but we didn't get the financial privileges such as the ability to officially collect membership dues and a budget from the university.

That didn't deter us. We held a general assembly to get all the members acquainted with each other, as well as to introduce the organization to new recruits. About twenty-five people showed up, which was much less than we'd anticipated; it was understandable however, in the light of the fact that this was a new organization and we held the assembly at the time where there were numerous other activities already planned.

The informal planning meetings held by the original "founders" resulted in three main activities for the term:

A seminar titled "Interplanetary Travel" was given by Dr. E. Rodulfo of the Physics Department at the De La Salle University Manila. It was an informative lecture highlighting the basics of relativity, the distances involved in interplanetary travel and a demonstration of a freeware called Celestia. Though the floor was opened for questions at the end of the lecture, the time available to us ended and that part of the activity had to be cut short. That was a shame as I believe that that could have been the best part of the activity; discussion breeds ideas and ideas breed innovations.

The next activity planned is the workshop. This workshop will center on astronomy and will be mainly about the technical aspects of observational astronomy, such as stellar cartography, star-chart reading and telescopes. This will take place on March 14, 2007.

The third activity on the list is an outreach activity. De La Salle University has adopted a developing community in Baseco, Tondo (in Manila) that is struggling to rebuild itself after a tragic fire accident razed the entire community to the ground. The children of this community are our target and we plan to take them on a day trip to the local planetarium. This is tentatively planned to take place on March 17, 2007.

It is our hope that the SEDS chapter here in the Philippines does not remain within the walls of De La Salle University, but expand across the country and settle not only in other universities but also in high schools. In the meantime, we are creating our own little ripples in the quiet practicality of this nation, little ripples that will hopefully set big things in motion.

The sky is not the limit.