Samuel Baltz
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Samuel Baltz was the 2010-11 Education Commander, and a Wikimaster for the latter half of 2009-10. When he assumed the position, the Mission Branch was the primary focus of the club while the Education Branch was a distant second, and he spent most of 2010-11 trying to promote education initiatives and make the club more interested in teaching and learning space science. His Wiki username is Darth Wombat.
Contents
Initiatives
Education Initiatives
In order to increase the role of the education branch, Baltz scheduled semi-regular planetarium training sessions, and led the first five EEPs training sessions since 2005-06. He also introduced the concept of an automated mission to the OCESS, as well as holding the first worksession in at least a decade devoted entirely to teaching people the rudimentary electronics of camera systems and computer networks, software, the hardware of computer networking, and drywalling. He also held two general physics explanations, devoting worksession time to various concepts in Newtonian physics from various high school curricula. He also spent two lunchtimes of the year explaining what categories of components are necessary, and what process must be followed, in order to design a functional satellite. Finally, and probably most successfully, he promoted the idea of a mission to Gliese 581, hoping that this would bring the reality and awe of extrasolar planets to the general attention of Spacesim members. While most of these initiatives met with limited success, and some of them met with no success at all, they are all viable ideas with serious potential to be explored by a vigorous Spacesim Executive team in the future.
PR Initiatives
Baltz devoted a large portion of his time in Spacesim to external affairs. During his tenure as Education Commander, he invited Dr. Iain Christie to Spacesim and gave him a tour, which resulted in the astronaut Dr. Robert Thirsk coming to Sim during the mission. He was also the primary contact of the Ottawa Citizen reporter Matthew Pearson, giving him a tour of the habitat, resulting in an article that made the front page of that day's City Section, as well as a video online. As well, Baltz and then-External Affairs Subcommander Euan Wheaton visited School Council and gave them a 15 minute presentation on what Spacesim is and how it operates, in order to promote goodwill towards the organization among parents and the Lisgar administration.
Mission-Specific Positions
On 2009-10 Mission Daedalus Samuel Baltz served as Flight Director. Until 1 day before launch on this mission he was scheduled to serve as a simulator, having helped to build the Planetary Surface despite not being on the Planetary Surface Task Force, but was seemingly relieved of his duties for reasons that remain a secret. In 2010-11, he served as an astronaut on the mission, operating as Chief Engineer (and consequently the head chef) and the only Laura pilot. In the one and only robotic mission, which occurred in 2010-11, he served as Mission Control Commander, Chief Systems Engineer, and Project Founder. Unfortunately, the automated mission was never completed, as it was choked to death as a priority by the Occupational Health and Safety Episode of 2010.
Written Documents
Samuel Baltz was the first to write any proposals between Stefan's Proposal to Change the Hierarchy in 2005-06 and late 2009-10. This was less out of a desire to change things than it was because he thought that proposals were a normal thing when he joined in grade 11. Regardless, he found proposals to be extremely useful for commanders to gauge the opinions of the club, and strongly encouraged members to produce proposals throughout the 2010-11 school year. Accordingly, he has produced a long paper trail, including:
- Samuel's Proposal to Rejuvenate EEPs
- Samuel's Proposal for Training Missions
- Samuel's Mandate to Rejuvenate EEPs
- Samuel's Proposal to Regulate Commanders' Authority
- Samuel's and Arrian's ES1 Reprimands, which was written by him in an astronaut mission persona with extensive input by Arrian LeClaire.
- Samuel's Proposal for Automated Missions, which has yet to reach the wiki but is on the Spacesim Office computer network, and presented an abridged version to Spacesim.
- Samuel's Proposal for Robotic Missions, which also has yet to reach the wiki because he is a lazy slob.
- The Rouble-Baltz Manifesto for Commander Application, co-authored with Maclean Rouble in April 2015.
- the BIOCOM stats, logistics, and manual
- The Baltz Algorithmic Generator of Spectra (BAGS), during a visit to Silver Seas 2018
- Many, many, many paragraphs of Wiki Contributions.
Callsign
Samuel Baltz's current callsign is "Moogle". It was changed from "Finland" on February 20, 2010 by Lyra Evans and Maclean Rouble. Baltz resisted the change strongly, voicing the opinion that "Finland" was more dignified, but the two commanders co-issued an executive order, stating that they thought that his previous callsign was too boring. Despite voicing strong opposition to this callsign in 2009-10, Baltz never issued an executive order to change it back.
"Moogle" was derived after Crunch Time 2010 in preparation for Mission Daedalus, when Occupational Health and Safety questioned the cleanliness of the facilities and as a result an entire evening was spent cleaning. During this time Baltz spent several hours completely reorganising Keplernicus, which resulted in his knowing the exact location of every object belonging to Spacesim. His unerring accuracy in this department for days on end was a source of comic relief, and as a result he was first named "Keplernicus Boy", then the slightly more imaginative but less accurate "Keplernicus Girl", and finally "Moogle" after the infamous Copernicus Moogle.
His first callsign, "Finland", was derived approximately two minutes after the start of his first Work Session. It was assigned to him after a confusing chain of logic had been perpetuated by Euan Wheaton. In easy-to-read graphic format, complete with arrows, it is best summarized by:
Baltz ---> Baltic States ---> Nothing actually even remotely like a Baltic State ---> Finland
Samuel Baltz is still referred to as "Finland" in some official documents, such as attendance records, documents on Spacesim's network at Ottawa Tech, and the original copies of Samuel's Proposal to Rejuvenate EEPs.
UTSDC
Samuel competed in UTSDC in 2010 and in 2011, and has written a commentary on the contest that he refuses to put on the wiki.
