NASA Engineering Competition!

This was an amazing opportunity. Three long days at NASA! We designed and built a robot rover. We were divided into teams or "companies" and "proposed our rover to NASA". We didn't retrieve the most expensive rock on the obstacle course... so we didn't "win the bid" but our rover was the best... really! It could turn 360 degrees on a zero radius and change its center of mass to make it easier to navigate Martian terrain... two features that no other rover had nor came close to at this competition. I was chosen to give the presentation for my team/company in front of hundreds of students from all over Texas and the judges.

We got an exclusive tour of NASA. The picture in the lower right corner is a vacuum chamber. The one right above it is the door of the vacuum chamber. On part of our tour, the public tour came through on the other side of the glass and they were looking at us... that felt weird!

Our team was given royal blue shirts and NASA loves acronyms so we named our company Royal Aerospace or RA after the Egyptian god. We named our rover Royal Aerospace Martian Surface Exploration System or RAMSES after the Egyptian Pharaoh. Our logo was the eye of RA... in the lower left corner. The pupil is red symbolizing our shared vision of Mars exploration. Our slogan was "Parting the Red Planet"... a play on Moses parting the Red Sea.

My adrenaline kept me awake both nights at NASA... it was so exciting!