NATIONAL ENGINEERS WEEK
In celebration of National Engineer Week (February 19-25, 2017), three students were selected to showcase their Advanced Engineering projects at the Boeing Company. Elijah Farina, SaVon McAfee and Jordan Pineault presented their FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robot that competed in the FTC Southeast Houston League to a 2nd place finish after all qualifying matches. This robot design was also the runner-up for the PTC Design Award for Excellence in Industrial Design. These students also brought their prototype for their Spring project for the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) underwater robotics competition.
The students had an opportunity to hear a presentation from Mike Hopkins, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and a current NASA astronaut (https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/hopkins-ms.pdf). Hopkins also listened to all the student presentations and congratulated our students on their work.
The Boeing Company also gave our students a glimpse into their Innovation lab. This gave the students one on one time with engineers in the aerospace industry. The day ended with the students getting an opportunity to drive the Boeing's Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner spacecraft simulator. Starliner spacecraft is being developed in collaboration with NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The Starliner was designed to accommodate seven passengers, or a mix of crew and cargo, for missions to low-Earth orbit. For NASA service missions to the International Space Station, it will carry up to four NASA-sponsored crewmembers and time-critical scientific research. The Starliner has an innovative, weldless structure and is reusable up to 10 times with a six-month turnaround time. It also features wireless internet and tablet technology for crew interfaces (http://www.boeing.com/space/starliner/).