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Space Exploration Inspires Engineering Students
on July 20, 2009
Forty years ago today, Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from Apollo 11 walked on the moon and made history. Students at Georgia Tech have been aiming for the stars ever since, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Seven Tech grads have already been to space. And of NASA's current corps of 89 astronauts, seven have undergraduate or graduate degress from Georgia Tech, trailing only the U.S. Naval Academy (18 graduates), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (15) and the University of Texas (eight) in current astronauts.
Tech grads "go on to be astronauts," said Robert Braun, an associate professor of aerospace engineering, adding that each year, about one-third of the university's aerospace grads go to work for NASA, the military or contractors across the country. "They go on to be mission controllers."
About 200 freshmen enter the school's Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering each year. Jarret Lafleur was one of them. He came to Georgia Tech in 2002. Now he's working on a master's degree in space systems engineering and learning to build space ships. This summer, he's an intern at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He is working on a project that may put an outpost on the moon's south pole, maybe after 2020.
"It's an occupation where you get to explore," he said. "It's an occupation where you get to represent your country."
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