Article by Prof. Grzegorz Wrochna,
President of the Polish Space Agency
In practice, people’s dreams about space and reaching for the stars are thousands of hours spent in lecture halls of universities and polytechnic universities, academic libraries, and laboratories. To meet the demanding challenges related to working in the broadly understood space sector, you need to focus on deepening your knowledge, self-improvement, constant broadening of horizons, creative interaction with teachers and peers who set similar goals.
Competitions such as the European Rover Challenge – with a well-established position and reputation in the world, are part of this type of activity. Here, young people from different countries will learn about the pros and cons of the solutions they have designed in an exciting competition and verify in practice the effectiveness of the ideas implemented in their Mars rover.
As a result, they see the achievements of others, confront them with their own, exchange experiences and make friendships that may evolve into international cooperation in their future professional work. Then it is time to use the acquired knowledge and skills to implement professional projects into space or creatively use the received data.
The universe with its secrets is open not only to pilots, engineers, medics, and naturalists, although they constitute the vast majority of those who supply various professions in this industry. There is also a place for managers, lawyers, financiers, psychologists, etc., whose role in space projects will surely grow successively. We set ourselves ambitious challenges, thinking about our future and deciding to associate it with the space industry.
Paraphrasing President J. F. Kennedy’s famous speech at Rice University in 1962, which paved the way for a man’s landing on the Moon, it is worth remembering that we are conquering space not because it is easy, but because it is difficult.
And it is the most persistent ones who will be rewarded with active involvement in realizing our dreams of space travel, the colonization of moons and planets, caring for the Earth and its resources, and thus for a better future for its inhabitants.