Fri, 11/19/2010 – 23:28 — Tim Pickens RCSP team leader
Today was a real special event for me and the Rocket City Space Pioneers (RCSP). I returned to the Huntsville Center for Technology (HCT), my old stomping grounds from high school where back in 1981 and 1982, I attended tech school. It was cool then – and even cooler today.
I had come back not to go to school, but to unite with my brothers on a very special project. After revisiting the school a few weeks ago, I was impressed and hooked! After seeing the amazing projects they designed and built like hover crafts, battle ships, NASA hardware, and even moon buggies that students routinely beat out major colleges like MIT with, I knew I needed these guys as partners to help us win our Google X PRIZE!
We had an awesome day of cool students, live rocket engine testing, robots, and a whole lot of people enjoying a fun day at the Tech Center! Thanks to Dave Hewitt from Dynetics who fired “the little engine that could” after a couple of tries.
We had the mayor of Huntsville speak on the importance of technology and real hands on-engineering and building. And he pushed the button on one of our rockets! We also had Dr. Ann Roy Moore speak about what makes the HCT the great school it is. We had our team members joining us from Teledyne Brown Engineering, Draper Laboratory, the Von Braun Center for Science & Innovation (VCSI), and UAHuntsville. Tom Baumbach, Dynetics president, and Dr. Marc Bendickson, CEO, also came out.
Thanks to the team at HCT who helped with the activities; and Janet Felts, Public Outreach Liaison for RCSP, and Joy Dukimineer, the counselor at HCT, for doing such a great job coordinating this event.
I could not say enough about how honored I was to be back and actually working a project that will carry our generation to the moon. These students and faculty are amazing and second to none. They presented us with an incredible prototype of our lander! We are so excited about the momentum of this hardware rich team we are building. Huntsville is an amazing place to launch a team project to the moon! Welcome aboard, HCT, and thanks for your support, Huntsville!
Read about the event at www.rocketcityspacepioneers.com under “News.”