Education

During my professional life I have worked with many proactive students who tried to apply their knowledge into various projects at local level. I am happy they were able to transform their knowledge into specific product at high technoligical level. Even so, I still feel it's not right and we need more international cooperation.  In my opinion, the cooperation between Slovakia and other countries in the field of education could be a very good option, as these countries are very well known for excellent school system. I also hope that this collaboration would lead to even more projects in the future which all countries could eventually benefit from. My son Lukas is a good example of Swiss educational system which I see as very efficient.   I am astonished by his personal growth. I found interesting that ETH not only teaches students material but also teaches them how to think and apply their knowledge into life and real projects. I have been trying to apply this approach at my university, but by myself.  Of course, the results were not satisfactory.  I understand I need strong partners. This, however, is a very complex problem and therefore in order to find the right solution, science as well as politics must be taken into consideration.  

Talking about the problems of collaboration between universities it would be impossible without referring this to the right goals. Today has been generally accepted that big goals are missing for young generation. We feel that the main task for our generation is to formulate some big goals which could attract and unite young generation. This was a great idea of President Kennedy when he said:  We choose to go to the moon. This happened on September 12, 1962 and he turned the young generation to the bold plans.  It is a pity that today nobody flies to the moon, but there are other great challenges which are aiming to the universe. The new challenges of space exploration, but also the ability to send high in the sky complicated equipments give the young generation ideas, create international friendships, but mainly let change the software in heads which is of course the role of the university. 

It is not enough to have good ideas one must also have good reasons for that ideas (Rene Descartes). I entirely agree with this.  I feel that good reason for our collaboration (ideas) could be the Galileo navigation system and the possibility to use this system for real applications. Just now I see a great opportunity in this segment of space industry. With this we could participate on many other project eventually with Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. If we will successful, the cooperation between  universities (countries) will bring desired result with high added value.  Other project that could support this activity is CubeSat. In common work we can prepare new generation of nano satellites and then participate on scientific projects which are organized by ESA. I feel this could be  beginning of a great collaboration between our institutions.

Prof. Dr. Peter Ballo

Head of National Center for Space Engineering