{"id":5732,"date":"2020-01-16T08:19:55","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T13:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=5732"},"modified":"2020-01-16T08:20:12","modified_gmt":"2020-01-16T13:20:12","slug":"project-skylab-takes-off-at-aerospace-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2020\/01\/16\/project-skylab-takes-off-at-aerospace-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Skylab takes off at Aerospace Center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The hum of small aircraft flying across sunny skies seemed a\npositive omen for Lakeland’s Aerospace Center for Excellence as it broke ground\non its $4.6 million expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Polk County and Lakeland officials gathered Wednesday morning\non the Sun ‘n Fun campus at Lakeland Linder International Airport to celebrate\nthe start of construction on ACE’s 8,000-square-foot expansion called\n“Project SkyLab.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John “Lites” Leenhouts, president and CEO of Sun ‘n Fun<\/a>, heralded the building as “one of the most\nmonumental” education facilities to be built in Polk County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“We are growing to create a flight path into the future\nof aviation and, more importantly, a superhighway for students to achieve\nsuccess as we change the landscape of learning in Polk County,” Leenhouts\nsaid. “Hands-on STEM learning to put the fun back into the sciences and\nengage young men and women to find a career in the aerospace industry.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The expansion will serve as an educational laboratory to\npromote science, technology, engineering and mathematics and encourage interest\nin related career paths. It will become part of the 14-building campus that\nserves as home to the Central Florida Aerospace Academy, a Polk County public\nhigh school career academy focused on training the next generation of pilots,\nairplane engineers and mechanics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ed Young, ACE’s executive director, said the center\nintroduces hundreds of Polk County students to STEM-based learning through\nclasses and field trips each year \u2014 and those numbers keep climbing. It\nreported an increase from 9,000 to approximately 40,000 student participants\nfrom 2017 to 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young said the new facility will have roll-up doors so\naircraft and large museum exhibits can be brought into classrooms. Other\nfeatures will include a holographic theatre and planetarium with\nthree-dimensional computer software to allow students to see, visualize and\npossibly create pieces to fit in aircraft engineering plans, and an aerospace\nresource center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gene Conrad, director of Lakeland Linder airport, said these\ntypes of facilities and programs are paramount to the future of the aviation\nindustry as there is a worldwide shortage of pilots, aircraft mechanics and air\ntraffic controllers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When we talk about sustainability here, we are talking\nabout the sustainability of our industry and how do we keep it going,”\nConrad said. “This is vitally important.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Construction has started a year ahead of schedule because of\ngenerous financial backers, according to Young, but ACE is still seeking donors\nto help fund the remaining 20% of the project. There is a $1-for-$1 match\nbeing made through March 1 by the James C. Ray Foundation at www.flysnf.org\/project-skylab.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lakeland Commissioner Scott Franklin, a former U.S. Navy\npilot who sits on Sun ‘n Fun’s board of directors, said he’s happy to see the\nlong-awaited project come to fruition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Aviation is critical to all of our economy, he said.\n” We depend on pilots, mechanics and air traffic controllers and there’s a\ndire shortage of those everywhere. There’s really no place in the country doing\na better job than what we have right here at ACE, Sun ‘n Fun and the aerospace\nacademy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The hum of small aircraft flying across sunny skies seemed a positive omen for Lakeland’s Aerospace Center for Excellence as it broke ground on its $4.6 million expansion. Polk County and Lakeland… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}