On The Next Six Months...

I arrived in California a couple of days ago and today will be starting the first day of a 6-month internship at XCOR Aerospace. While I would love to tell you about all of my experiences the next six months, I will have to speak in very general surfacy terms when talking about XCOR for obvious reasons. But you will hear all about my adventures in Mojave and Lancaster and of course my own personal projects (thinking very seriously about level 3, and I'm going to try and find a high-power rocketry club out here!)

Me and the two other interns are sharing an apartment in Lancaster. It is very nice, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a wide-open living room. We bought some cheap furniture at Goodwill to fill up the empty void. As far as the other two interns go, I think we're going to get along great! Time will tell.

Very excited, and I'll hopefully post some pictures soon.

Stressful Fun: Random College Updates

If I thought I spread myself too thin last semester... I had no idea what was coming! Junior year in aerospace engineering is famous for requiring super-human abilities. Below I have summarized in a random bullet list some of the hectic, crazy objectives I am trying to complete this semester:

• Juggling 18 credit-hours (times 3 is 54 hours/week dedicated to my studies): Flight structures, astrodynamics, flight dynamics, french, and thermodynamics. 
• Flight Structures: Easily my hardest class, since it is based on mechanics of materials, which was the first class that I had to worry about not passing... So I will abe putting some extra effort into this one.
• Astrodynamics: Easily my hardest class, but since it is also my favorite class it really isn't *hard*. The professor also makes it a great class since he is an excellent teacher, extremely knowledgeable and has a definite passion for this subject.
• Flight Dynamics: I'm behind! (I had to wait two weeks for my book to come in the mail). Must go study! The fun part of this class is the part where we get to go to the Ames Municipal Airport and fly airplanes.
• French 101: I have to take a foreign language since I didn't *formally* take one in high school. I picked French since I already had a foot in the door, and some family members already speak it. If the University would let me I would like to learn the basics of a couple languages instead of advancing to 102 in French. For instance, I've learned a few phrases in Chinese and its a fun language to speak.
• Thermodynamics: A lot of it is easy review of physics topics, but the professor is making the class hard. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
• I have already pulled two all-nighters doing homework for classes...
• New project! More on this in another post, but it involves high-altitude balloons and rockets. Going to be a lot of time to see it through to completion.
• Need a part-time job to pay for school. I've applied to some good ones, but if I don't get them I'll have to start thinking smaller, such as working in the dining center, etc. (I have an interview today with a professor in materials engineering about a possible research assistant position). 
• Applying like mad for internships! My number one objective is to land an aerospace internship for either spring or summer, or both. I have a list of about 20 companies in my sights, but have only managed to apply for 3 so far: XCOR Aerospace, ATK and SpaceX. Other options include: ULA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Moon Express, Virgin Galactic, and pretty much any NASA center. The list of companies is seeming to grow faster than I can apply.

More in-depth posts to come, specifically on Rockoon, and I'm considering continuing some of my YouTube series if I have the time. Stay tuned!

Fun fact: This is my 300th post on this blog!

Internship at XCOR!

I had a very interesting Thanksgiving break. During the first couple of days I was contacted via email about a possible internship at XCOR Aerospace. I called the next day and learned about what it involves. It sounds...

AMAZING!

XCOR is based in Mojave, California. Mojave is a small town of maybe three or four thousand people, and whose industry is almost entirely based around aerospace. The life of the town is the Mojave Air and Space Port, the first inland spaceport in the United States. Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites once said, "Innovation is what we do here, because there's not much else to do in Mojave." Mojave is also the future home town of Captain Christopher Pike, for all you Star Trek geeks out there.

XCOR Aerospace was founded in 1999 by former members of the Rotary Rocket company. Their main focus is on building Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV's). Current projects are:

• Lynx is their big project. It's a HTHL suborbital rocket plane that's designed to take one pilot and one passenger and/or payload into the edge of space. I've actually posted about the Lynx before. It is still in the development stages, and looks to enter flight service in the beginning of 2014. In the future they plan to develop a more advanced version with an external dorsal pod for experimental payloads requiring exposure to space, or for launching mini satellites into orbit.

• EZ-Rocket: This rocket plane is basically an R&D testbed for their rocket engines and other stuff.

• X-Racer: This is a plane much like the EZ-Rocket, but designed specifically for the Rocket Racing League. The vehicle they have now is a prototype. It has flown for many demonstrations, including Oshkosh AirVenture 2008. It holds several records for rocket powered aircraft, such as the most flights of a single rocket power aircraft, the fastest turnaround time for a rocket powered aircraft, and some other stuff. They continually conduct new flight tests on the vehicle, often with new test engineers in the designated right seat. From my conversation with Aleta Jackson, it sounds like they like to send up their engineers, including interns (!), because they don't want people designing stuff they wouldn't fly themselves.

Possible Internship at XCOR Aerospace

Last night I got an email from Aleta Jackson at XCOR Aerospace indicating that they are interested in taking me on as an intern. I'm all excited! But I have to call today and verify the details, and figure out what it would entail. I'll keep you all posted on the details as they become more evident.

I wrote a program in my mind of how the phone conversation might go.

PROGRAM XCOR_AEROSPACE_QUESTIONS

IMPLICIT NONE

CHARACTER :: response*400

CHARACTER, ALLOCATABLE :: question(:)

LOGICAL :: answering_machine

INTEGER :: i, numQuestions

CALL Aleta_Jackson()

IF(answering_machine==.TRUE.) THEN

     WRITE(*,*)"Hello, this is Daniel Hastings. You had emailed me last night about a possible internship at XCOR, and I just wanted to call and talk to you about it. You can reach me at 763-XXX-XXXX. Otherwise I’ll probably try again later today. Thank you very much! Bye."

     END PROGRAM

ELSE

     "Hello, this is Daniel Hastings. You had emailed me last night about a possible internship at XCOR, and I just wanted to call and talk to you about it today."

END IF

DO

     READ(*,*) response

     OPEN(unit=10, file="Daniels_memory.dat")

     WRITE(10,*) response

     IF(response == "Do you have any questions?") EXIT

END DO

READ(10,*) numQuestions

ALLOCATE(question(numQuestions))

DO i = 1, numQuestions

     READ(10,*) question(i)

     WRITE(*,*) question(i)

     READ(*,*) response

     WRITE(10,*) response

END DO

WRITE(*,*) "Thank you very much for your time, and for considering me. I look forward to talking to you again in the future. Yup, m-hm, bye."

END PROGRAM

"…\Daniels_memory.dat"

7

"Is this internship intended to be for the summer, or for next semester?"

"What sort of work could I expect to be doing?"

"What would a typical day look like?"

"What sort of pay/compensation would I get?"

"Does XCOR help make living arrangements?"

"Do I have to have any specific knowledge or would this be mostly on-the-job training?"

"For how long would the internship last?"