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
