Hello! I hope you all are enjoying the beginning of summer/end of the school year.

Last week I went to Washington, DC as a student traveler for the Citizens for Space Coalition. Every year the organization goes to DC to speak with government members and their staff to educate them on the importance of NASA’s human space flight programs. It was awesome, they paid for about 20 students from across the country to come together to help the 80ish space industry professionals. There were two other students from Embry-Riddle that also attended. I represented Minnesota because that’s my home state and other students represented where they are from. While I was there I met with lots of people, including aides from Congressmen Collin Peterson, Betty McCollum, Michele Bachman’s offices and Senator Amy Klobuchar, all from Minnesota. Here’s a picture of Amy and me. I also had the opportunity to talk with several from Oregon, Indiana, Illinois, Idaho, and South Carolina.

Walking through the capital buildings was so surreal. I’ve been to DC before, but always as a tourist. Members of the government had always seemed so far removed to me, like people you vote for and never really hear from again. It was awesome to be able to sit down with these people and talk about something I am passionate about, space flight.

I went to all these offices in a team of four and we each had our little parts to talk about. I discussed how important of an investment it is in our future to keep the Constellation and Shuttle programs fully funded. We’ve already spent so much money on both projects and to not continue allowing them to grow is a total waste of the money spent thus far. I also said that NASA is a source of national pride. I’m sure you’ve all seen the movie Apollo 11 but you can clearly see on those people’s faces how excited the entire country was! If we go to Mars or back to the Moon, maybe we can unite the nation towards that goal in these tight economic times. But enough rambling about why space rocks, because it does, but that’s beside the point.

After my trip to DC I spent a few days in Daytona saving my apartment from the random heavy rains. My parking lot had fish in it! It was ridiculous, but nothing was damaged so that was good. Now I’m in Colorado, I start my internship in a few days and I am so excited! I think I spoke a little about it before, but just to recap I’m going to be working in systems engineering at Ball Aerospace. It’s a really cool company; they worked on the Hubble and also the Deep Impact program. If you aren’t familiar with it, check out their website BallAerospace.com. Starting a new anything is always a little nerve racking but then again, it’s going to be new to everyone, not just me. I’ll post after my first day! Wish me luck!

Hey everyone! I’m glad you’re all interested in Embry-Riddle! It’s an awesome school and I love it here! I became interested in the space program when I was really young. I went to space camp when I was in elementary school and since then have wanted to become an astronaut. In high school I took an aviation class; my teacher mentioned the name Embry-Riddle and after that I knew that’s where I wanted to go to college. When I came to visit, I saw how everyone here loved aviation and aerospace and knew it was the place for me.

This summer I actually won’t be spending much time on campus. I will be very busy with a lot of other things. A few days ago I competed in the NASA Means Business competition (more on that later), I’ll be going to Washington D.C., to meet with government members and tell them why space exploration is important and to ask their support in funding the space program, and last but certainly not least, a systems engineering internship at Ball Aerospace in Colorado!

My NASA Means Business team and I have been working since last fall on a branding strategy, which is basically a marketing campaign, for NASA’s new manned space flight program, Constellation. For those of you who haven’t checked it out yet you definitely should! It’s going to be taking us back to the moon and onward to Mars! We were named finalists back in December and all the finalist teams were invited to Kennedy Space Center for the final presentations and some behind the scenes tours. It was really cool to see what all the teams had came up with and how different everyone’s ideas were. Sadly the competition overlapped with Riddle’s commencement ceremony and I wanted to see my friends graduate so I wasn’t able to go on the tours but my teammates said that went said it was awesome. They were able to go inside the vertical assembly building and also walk underneath the shuttle. We didn’t win but the winning team had a few similar ideas to ours so it was encouraging to know that the judges liked them.

I’ve been communicating with the HR representative at my internship via e-mail and I am so excited to start. There won’t be anyone else from Embry-Riddle with me; I think the majority of the other interns are from schools in Colorado, and a few from Cornell and Purdue. In the beginning of college all the general courses, like all the math and physics, got really boring but this year I’ve actually been able to start putting things I know into an aerospace prospective. Finally being able to apply it to engineering and see why all these classes were important will be sweet! I’ll write more after my trip and if you guys have any questions about school feel free to e-mail me at fossu15a@erau.edu!

Hello Everyone! Well, this is it. I am officially done with classes. WHEW! It feels so great!

The past two weeks were spent finishing up my classes and the CRJ simulator course. I only had one final and it was in my History class. It was over a lot of material, but it wasn’t too hard after all. Other than that, the past two weeks were primarily spent in the CRJ simulator. What an experience! The course really does prepare you to fly a true jet aircraft in the real world environment. When I was done, my partner and I were able to fly the CRJ completely by ourselves from one airport to another! What a rewarding experience.

Well, this is it. I walk across the stage on May 5th and I will officially be in the real world. I will be returning home on the 7th of May to see the family for the summer. After that, we’ll see where the world takes me. It was a pleasure sharing my experiences with all of you guys for the past year. Thanks for listening and good luck to you all!