## 3 Objectives
### Educational Facilitation Objectives
#### 3.2.1 Creation of Benefits to Participants  
The OpenOrbiter program is designed to provide several classes of benefits to its participants. These include: (1) gaining experience in developing a spacecraft, (2) gaining experience working in an industry-analog aerospace engineering environment, (3) learning specific technical skills, (4) demonstrating competence in technical skills and (5) obtaining the professional development benefits from participating in a project with a highly emotive and demonstrable product.  
Spacecraft development projects are normally high-value projects that do not facilitate the substantive involvement of students or junior (entry-level) employees. Because of this, an aspirant to spacecraft development may be a substantial portion of the way into his or her career before he or she is able to actually work with real spacecraft hardware. While this may decrease project risk, it removes a key source of innovation. It also prevents students from gaining the experience that is only possible via hands-on interaction with a flight-quality or prototype system. OpenOrbiter, as with most university-run small spacecraft programs allows students complete access to the flight and prototype hardware and thus the opportunity to gain this experience.  
A key challenge for many students (and, by extension, the companies that eventually employ them) is learning to work with and speak the vernacular of the various disciplines that must be involved in an engineering project. Students may make it all the way through their university career (and even years into their initial employment) before they are required to communicate, about technical concepts, with those outside their particular technical'silo'. Many small spacecraft (and other engineering/hands-on STEM projects) provide STEM students with experience working with other STEM students (in some cases, more aptly, providing technology and engineering students with the opportunity to work with other technology and engineering students). OpenOrbiter takes this one step further by incorporatingstudents from business, public administration, fine arts, education and other disciplines, in discipline-appropriate roles (e.g., project management, website design, outreach).  
Many small spacecraft projects highlight technical skill learning as a key educational outcome. Skills such as systems engineering require use in a project of reasonable size to be reinforced through use and refined. Like most small spacecraft programs, OpenOrbiter provides participants with this opportunity.  
Students, seeking employment at the end of their college careers, desire involvement with demonstrable projects that can be highlighted to potential employers as a demonstration of their skills and abilities (and particular competency as compared to 'book-learning-only' students). Small spacecraft projects provide this demonstrable experience and are an emotive project for presentation to employers. OpenOrbiter participants can also highlight their 'cross-silo' communications and working environment as a key benefit to prospective employers.  
Finally, students desire to develop and document their professional skills. Milestones such as design reviews and integrator and launch provider acceptance allow students to document their participation in terms of external standards (to differentiate participation from joining an extra-curricular club, for example). Giving participants titles which reflect, appropriately, their project responsibility and authority also helps ensure this benefit accrues.