hello to everyone not reading this

Well, now that most of the interns have left, I'm finally getting around to making an entry. I'm not sure I'm "officially" a Small Spacecraft Intern, as I'm in the NASA CoLab. We don't have any small spacecraft sitting up on blocks in our front yard that we're trying to build/fix, but I think the CoLab is organized as part of the Small Spacecraft Division.

With all that established, I figure I'll limit myself to two points in my first post.

Number one, Mythbusters' show on the "moon hoax" aired last night, and wow did it lay a vicious beating on the conspiracy theorists. These folks usually need half an hour of screen time to figure out whether you can tenderize a steak with high explosives, but it took them about five minutes apiece to spank the daylights out of each dopey "the moon shots were FAKED!" myth. Seriously, if you haven't seen it, you should.

Number two, am I the only one who thinks the logo on this page is reminiscent of the emblem used by the Galactic Empire in Star Wars?

Yup, I'm a major turbonerd.

Intros: Ashwin

Hello- my name is Ashwin and I will be entering my senior year at the University of Michigan (UM). I am studying mechanical engineering and originally from Ontario, Canada. 

I got interested in space when an elementary school teacher gave a class assignment to write an essay on the Future of Space for entry into a Canada-wide competition. The competition was sponsored by Space Camp Canada. I happened to be one of the 50 winners and as the reward, got to take 11 of my friends (and our teacher) on an expense-paid trip to Space Camp. Here, the 13 of us got to experience, among other things:

(1) simulated lunar gravity on a seat suspended by springs from a ceiling

(2) a trial on a Manned Maneuvering Unit

(3) a simulated mission, including launch, black-out, emergencies, payload experiments, a scaled shuttle and a fairly realistic mission control center; the 12 students served different roles on this simulated mission (i.e. flight director, commander, pilot, payload specialist, etc.)

At UM, I have worked extensively on the aerodynamics team of the University's Solar Car Team doing CFD simulations and CAD modeling.

I took my inclination of building/engineering systems and combined it with a related interest, entrepreneurship, and with friends, founded a student organization at UM called MPowered Entrepreneurship (www.umich.edu/~mpowered). Our mission at MPowered is to expose students to entrepreneurship and support student ventures. We have been pleasantly surprised with the demand for MPowered from students. We went from a group of 15 students during the summer of 2007 to over 700 that currently make-up our community of entrepreneurial-minded students.

It comes as little surprise, then, that my primary interests are in space systems and entrepreneurship. Having recently attended ISDC 2008, I got first-hand exposure to commercialized space industry (aka New Space) and the people within it.

Details about my job at Ames to follow...

Looking forward to hearing your story,

Ashwin

http://ashwinl.tumblr.com

Welcome, 2008 Small Spacecraft Interns!

Thank you to all of the 2007 interns for contributing and working hard on your projects here!

And welcome to the 2008 interns, who are arriving and starting up work at NASA Ames... feel free to introduce yourselves, guys!