Is the point of going into zero-g to have fun ?

Four student teams I am sponsoring, will get to ride on KC-135 this coming spring and summer. I have always wondered about the actual return on investment of this type of endeavor. Last year was my real test point in this area. Here are my initial thought after a year :
- one can identify pretty accurately the leaders in these teams. You know that you can count on them later on different projects without having to be on their tails. In my book, it pretty much defines intelligence.
- this is the first time students get to understand the issues of funding and accounting that we as researchers get to be facing on a daily basis
- there is healthy turn over from the time the teams get selected to when they fly. For some people this is the first time they face the reality that they cannot do everything well. Last year, in two of the selected teams, we had a turn over of about five people out of eight.
- all the flying experiments got to be made in the last eight days before flying. No matter how hard one tries to convince people that it will have an impact on their lives afterwards, I expect the same thing this year.
- one can get some pretty interesting movies/pictures that can eventually be a support for a funded project. I am expecting that with lessons learned from the first year, the results of the second year will become even more exciting.
- Because they have been confronted with a very different environment early on, I personally fully expect that the students that have gone through this, will eventually be the people that, when confronted with the general conformism of a large organization like NASA, will be able to stand up, speak out and say when things are unsafe or will come up with very inventive and different solutions like John Aaron did.