Today, I had a moment of fierce pride. My computer was used for two PowerPoint presentations in my design class--we were going over mission specifications, if anyone is interested, more on that later--and two people, after seeing my background, asked me what it was. It was the image you see, which, to the best of my knowledge, is property of the Ad Astra Rocket company, http://www.adastrarocket.com . I encourage you to go look at the rest of the site because the company is A-MAZING. But in a nutshell, it's a concept spacecraft using the company's VASIMR engine that can (theoretically) get a manned mission to Mars in about 39 days (using chemical rockets: 6 months). Anyhow, since this is what I want to work on getting done in my lifetime, and I really like having it as my desktop, I was very pleased to have someone take an interest :) Actually, two someones, both of them classmates I intensely respect.
On design presentations: My group decided to take Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, the Jetsons, and the DeLorean of Back to the Future as our inspiration and work on a flying car design. We're never actually going to MAKE this vehicle, but we're looking at having something that can drive 100 miles and fly 500 on a full tank of gas. You can't quite take off from your garage, but you can drive to a local airfield, take off, fly to the next one over, and then drive to grandma's house. Or your business meeting. You do need a pilot's license to operate it, though.
A little update on me (I put this at the end for a reason, hehe): The end of last semester was a somewhat stressful and hectic time--I ended up with 3 projects toward the end of the semester, plus two classes (and a few CAD homework assignments) thrown into the mix. A couple other things happened, the result of which was I made a difficult decision and chose to leave research for two jobs: TA for the CS department and tutor at the Academic Resource Center (the latter I had held before, and remembered it being fun and, dare I say, relaxing :))
Now, after a mostly relaxing break and a lot of graduate school applications (sorry, you missed them all: Princeton, University of Washington, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, CalTech, Georgia Tech), after all that, I started my 3 design classes+IPRO semester. It's been okay so far, the hardest day (night) being last night when I had to come up with 20 product ideas! And I didn't quite procrastinate, because we only really heard about the assignment on Monday (he had mentioned it before, but not in detail).
Still, I came up with some cool ideas, went to class, and am basically having a blast with all these cool projects. I'm also looking forward to Interview Weekend in a little over a week, having a high school student stay in my room one last time before I graduate!
Cheers. Early bedtime for me!
Galliver,
ReplyDeleteOne of my friends (and neighbor in fact; his apartment is just above mine) here at Purdue is a graduate student studying spacecraft. When you come by, I'll introduce you to him and you two can talk propulsion technologies while I try to look like I'm following the conversation.
-JM