Posted on 10/01/2005 6:09:03 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Future explorers of Mars got a literal leg up thanks to a NASA research grant provided to a student space project.
The Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program announced September 21 that they have received a $200,000 NASA advanced projects development grant. The funding will support development of a full payload engineering model, as well as make possible a number of tasks that push the project nearer to a real-time liftoff.
The Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program is the first ever mission to study the effects of Martian gravity on mammals, a fundamental step moving humans out beyond low Earth orbit to the red planet.
Initiated in 2001, the effort is student-driven, as well as being an international space collaboration. The initiative is uniting students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the University of Queensland in Brisbane.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
MIT produces solid engineers, but myopic visionaries. The grant would have done better at Stanford or the Univ of Alaska.
Well the Cal Poly Universities produced Burt Rutan and me, so I'd have to say there are some pretty good visionary engineers outside the big name private schools. A grant from NASA is more of an anchor chain than a enabling boost anyway.
What good are hypothetical projects like this that disconnected from reality anyway. Hands on projects where you build and break things are where students really learn anyway.
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