This update is late in the coming, mainly because of brief and puzzling start-up problem with my computer, but I'm back up and running now and ready to post.
The Iowa State Space Society is a chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space organization, which has a national conference once a year at various universities across the country. This year it was in Boulder, Colorado, and about ten students from Iowa State (myself included) made the trip this past weekend. It was a great experience traveling, networking and meeting new people.
Why didn't I go to school here??
Oh yeah. $45k out-of-state tuition.
Anyway, I am reinvigorated to pursue a great career in space industry. Specifically, I was surprised by how far the private space industry has advanced. We've got companies building capsules for CCDev, we've got an explosion of suborbital launch vehicles, companies like SpaceX and ATK are building their own launch vehicles, and myriads of other private ventures, such as teams competing in the Google Lunar X Prize.
I am a busy college student, and I don't have the time to write down all my cool stories from this adventure unfortunately. I will at least share a few pictures:
This is a VTVL monopropellant rocket built by Frontier Aerospace. I talked to a guy named Jack, who I believe build this rocket, for upwards of half an hour. He was very interesting.
This a snap of me behind the wheel of a full-size mockup of the new Dream Chaser commercial crew vehicle being developed by Sierra Nevada.
This is a 1/16th scale model of the Dream Chaser with the hood open. This was actually primarily constructed by undergraduates at CU Boulder, and was drop tested from a helicopter at 15,000 feet.
I really should have taken more pictures, but I kept forgetting. Some blogger I am, ay?
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