Welcome

     Hi, and welcome to my blog about spaceflight. I am excited to start this brand new adventure. I will start with a little bit about me. I just graduated from Oak Ridge High School in June 2015 and am preparing to begin my freshman year at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) studying Electrical Engineering with a focus on Robotics. 

     So what does a high school graduate know about spaceflight? Well, that's a good question. I was born in Florida and as far back as I can remember have been interested in space and the exploration of it. I have known for as long as I know that I have wanted to enter the industry any way I could and so when I began looking at colleges I learned about Aerospace Engineering and it fit me perfectly. However, by going for mechanical engineering I could have a wider background and so I settled on mechanical engineering with a focus on aerospace. Sadly, RIT waitlisted me for Mech Eng. but I was able to get in under electrical engineering and I love robotics and so I decided to take that route until I can transfer back to Mechanical. 

    In my junior and senior year of high school I took an engineering design class. This year at the end of the year we were required to make a portfolio so some of my work is available here. In addition to engineering, I was a part of our school's initial robotics class in which we participated in the VEX Robotics competition. Also over the course of my junior year, I participated in the Texas High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) program which is an intensive 8 month online program followed by an insane one week long hands-on internship. Some highlights of robotics and HAS are also available at the link. This year though I participated in another NASA program, HUNCH. For HUNCH, 3 other students and I from my school worked on two projects. The first I did individually where I was digitizing plans for one of two Internationational Space Station cargo bags. The other project is still in progress. For it we are working on making molds for an assortment of items from pipes, gaskets, to ratchets. A number of NASA engineers and astronauts were very excited about this project and NanoRacks expressed interest in continuing research with us. 

   Well that pretty much covers through today. If you have any questions or want more information, feel free to leave a comment below. In addition, I have embedded some of my research papers I wrote while involved in the HAS program.

Mars Rover Design     The Human Factor - Mars       Mars Colony Plan