Area 21, Tech Port’s new exhibit, gives hands-on look at San Antonio technology
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A new San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology exhibit at Port San Antonio will give visitors a virtual ride in electric-powered aircraft, a tour of 3-D printed moon habitats and a chance to learn what makes a self-driving vehicle go.
Sounds like fun, but David Monroe, founder and CEO of the museum, says the exhibit has a serious goal: introducing schoolchildren and adults to STEM-based education to foster interest in jobs in cybersecurity, aerospace, lunar architecture, robotics and bioscience work in San Antonio.
“We’re trying to inspire children at an early age to join the fascination of science and technology,” he said during a sneak peek tour of the 20,000-square-foot exhibit this week. “Right now, there’s a lot of open tech jobs, so if children and young adults develop interests in those areas they have a lot of opportunity to land those high-paying jobs and make real significant contributions.”
Called Area 21, the free exhibit is set to open to the public Monday at Tech Port Center + Arena. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Thursday afternoon, as crews were putting final touches on the space, Monroe stopped to look over a mini-city built of Lego components.
The display created by SAMSAT interns includes mockups of buildings, homes, streets — even an airport. The interns collaborated with Port-based CACI International Inc., which provides cybersecurity services for defense agencies, to integrate the sort of systems that control electric grids and water and sewage plants in cities across the U.S.
“This is a cyber city,” Monroe said. “This is a teaching tool to teach children how infrastructure operates and how these controls can be protected.” He stopped to reflect on the city and other displays, and added: “This room is not just a museum. It’s a workplace. It’s a learning place.”
Drawing power
For the past five years, the Port has invited San Antonians fascinated by the early days of computing, camera phones and cybersecurity hardware to explore the main museum in the former Kelly Air Force Base chapel.
It, too, is an effort to foster interest in STEM programs and cultivate the next generation of talent for companies at the Port. Since opening that modest facility in 2017, an annual average of 20,000 students from across San Antonio have visited to take part in hands-on learning experiences.
During that time, companies on the Port campus have created more than 5,000 jobs “in the very sectors that are being showcased at SAMSAT and around which some terrific learning experiences are being built,” Port President and CEO Jim Perschbach said in a statement. “There are some significant opportunities ahead to keep growing these leading-edge industries right here in San Antonio as our innovations are being used around the world.”
The “key to this success and to future growth” relies in part on raising awareness of innovations that already exist in the community while delivering the tools for young people to learn the technology and science skills to find work in the future, he said.
Port officials say the new space will draw more than 100,000 K-12 students every year. They’d come to see revolving exhibits and take part in a host of STEM programs coordinated with area school districts, as well as summer camps and internship and volunteer opportunities.
Port San Antonio’s sprawling 1,900-acre campus is home to about 80 companies employing nearly 16,000 people, mostly in technology. It’s also home to the Air Force Medical Operations Agency, and adjacent to Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, where the Air Force Civil Engineering Center and the 16th Air Force, known as Air Forces Cyber, are located.
Tech Port
In April, the Port opened its $70 million Tech Port. Since then, it has announce the launches of an e-sports gaming center and an office for Capital Factory, the Austin-based accelerator working to connect local startups with Defense Department contracts.
The SAMSAT exhibit is the last big component to open at the new center.
The Port had contributed “hundreds of thousands of dollars” over the years to support SAMSAT and its program development, including its first cybersecurity simulator and the addition of a large training center to support K-12 and workforce training, Monroe said.
Now, the Area 21 space is offered at no cost to SAMSAT.
The Port’s board of directors has has directed all profits from Tech Port, including net proceeds from concerts, conferences and industry events, to the Kelly Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit established to fund STEM and workforce development programs.
On Thursday, Monroe stepped past cables and crews using forklifts to move items around the space, including the Motoman EA 1400, a welding robot — one of the first industrial robots deployed in San Antonio.
He greeted Sam Ximenes, founder and chief executive of space architecture firm Exploration Architecture, or XArc, as well as a space construction company called Astroport. The San Antonio native is also founder and board chair of the WEX Foundation, an entity focused on space education for middle and high schoolers.
Ximenes has worked with researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio and garnered funding from NASA to study how to melt moon rocks to help humans build lunar outposts. One idea involves melting moon dust, or regolith, to create bricks.
Thursday, he was wrapping up the setup for his exhibit which features a prototype of the 3-D printing technology he hopes will one day make bricks on the moon. There, moon dust would be its raw material. Here, the printer will use basalt found in the Knippa Quarry off Texas 90 between Sabinal and Uvalde to show visitors what habitats on the moon could look like. He hopes it will inspire students to enter the field of space engineering.
“We’re trying to make San Antonio known as a space community, specifically with a niche in space construction,” he said. “When the kids come through here, they’ll see this is actually happening in San Antonio. They can be part of the space program. They don’t have to go anywhere else.”
Also in the exhibit is one of Southwest Research Institute’s autonomous vehicle prototypes.
In 2006, the local nonprofit research and development organization began its Mobile Autonomous Robotics Technology Initiative to build combat military ground vehicles, passenger cars, commercial trucks, industrial tractors and mobile robots. Two years later, SwRI demonstrated its first automated vehicle, known as MARTI, in New York City as part of the ITS World Congress, a global event focused on transportation technologies.
SwRI recently donated MARTI to Area 21.
“We love it when we can find San Antonio history,” Monroe said. “San Antonio has a huge legacy of technology innovation but it’s a well-kept secret. We want to change that and help San Antonio get its place on the map.”
eric.killelea@express-news.net
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