Christa McAuliffe boarded the shuttle Challenger Jan. 28, 1986, hoping to inspire a nation of young pioneers to embrace and conquer "our new frontier." Though tragedy followed, the pioneering spirit survived. Today, a second generation is joining the adventure. Removed by four decades from NASA's birth, they are finding new ways to achieve McAuliffe's cosmopolitan vision of the cosmos. • The thousands for whom space is a vocation for most an avocation as well are developing the tools and technology that will allow us to probe ever deeper into a mysterious universe, that will allows us eventually to call other planets home, that will make us citizens of "our new frontier."

The Job's The Right Stuff

Tech students take advantage of NASA opportunities

By Jerry Schwartz

The Georgia Tech co-op program has been one of the best ways to land jobs at NASA. The opportunities have come from a broad range of disciplines. And in today's sophisticated world of space travel, Top Gun pilots no longer have the inside track for those astronaut jobs.

In the movie, The Right Stuff, astronaut candidates of the 1950s were recruited from the grizzled, fast-living and well-worn test pilots of the military services. But in today's world, a career in the space program can be assured while apple-cheeked engineering students have barely begun college.

Both students and space-industry recruiters say the best way virtually the only way into the space program is through a work-study cooperative program such as the one that has landed dozens of Georgia Tech students in jobs at various centers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

"The co-op program has been our primary source of entry-level hiring, particularly for engineering jobs, for as far back as I can remember," says Bob Musgrove, manager of the cooperative education program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston better known as the Mission Control Center for Apollo moon missions and the space shuttle program. "We do some other hiring in different situations, but these are almost always people who come in with more experience and probably in different kinds of jobs. But in terms of coming right out of school, there is a high demand in NASA for people who want to co-op. We're always going to look at them first.''

The experience of students confirms what Musgrove says. Clint Baggerman, a 23-year-old Tech senior who was on the last of five work assignments with NASA in the summer and will graduate in December, says, "Virtually all entry-level employment at Johnson Space Center, at least is done through the co-op program."

With NASA in a hiring freeze, the importance of spending time in the co-op program is even more important, says Sarah Graybeal, a 20-year-old Tech junior majoring in aerospace engineering. "Definitely with the hiring freeze, it seems if they have a position available, you've got a much higher chance than anybody else if you've been a co-op. It gives you a big foot in the door."

It's not just NASA itself that depends on a co-op program for entry-level recruits. "If somebody co-ops and does a decent job, then they are 99 percent guaranteed a job as long as the work is there," says Patsy Smiley, human relations representative for employment at the Johnson Space Center for the Boeing Corp. "There's no question that the co-op program is the best way. It gives us the chance to look them over, and they get to know us and the kind of work involved."

But what precise educational qualifications are Smiley and Musgrove seeking in candidates for engineering jobs? Surprisingly, there are no precise qualifications for successful candidates entering the space program.

In particular, aerospace engineers are not favored over engineers in any of several other disciplines. "Aerospace engineers are a very small part of the disciplines we use," Smiley says of Boeing's entry-level hires into the space program. "Probably the least we would use is chemical. But we hire a lot of mechanical, electrical, computer science and computer engineering graduates."

Musgrove agrees. "I'm looking at the list of folks that we hired for the upcoming quarter of the co-op program. There are seven aerospace engineers, six electrical engineers, and nine mechanical engineers and 'other.'

"We try to maintain fairly good balances between those three majors. Occasionally, we might hire someone with a math or physics background. But I'd say that, if anything, we lean more toward mechanical than anything else. That may just have to do with the fact that they are going to be exposed in school to several disciplines. They'll generally have some computer background and some familiarity with the other areas of engineering."

A Broad Range of Opportunity

But Musgrove and the co-op students say that doesn't necessarily mean that NASA has specific jobs that fit only mechanical engineers, and others that fit only candidates with electrical engineering backgrounds, and so on. In fact, the co-op students can find themselves working across a broad range of jobs, frequently unrelated to their majors.

"Having knowledge of more than just your major or specialization is good," says Keith Lee, who is in his fourth of five years as a Tech co-op student. "I have done some computer science-related work and some physics-related work for entire co-op sessions, even though I am an electrical engineering major. Nowadays, jobs are becoming interdisciplinary, and I think Georgia Tech has helped prepare me for this."

His educational advice: "Don't focus or narrow yourself too much. There are a lot of opportunities to do various things, but you have to be well-rounded."

"That's definitely a growing trend, but it's obviously not confined to the space program," Boeing's Smiley says. "Employers in all industries realize they need much more of a well-rounded type of person instead of pigeon-holing people with a specific education for a specific job."
Co-op students get "a big foot in the door" for
available jobs. Tech co-op students at the Johnson
Space Center in Houston include (clockwise from top left)
Quincy Harp, Terrance Cravin, Clint Baggerman and Craig Forest.

Graybeal agrees. "What I tell potential co-ops who ask me questions is that NASA isn't looking for one particular type of person. You don't have to be a nerd," Graybeal said. "I guess the general feeling I get is that there is no definite educational route to take. Do what you feel is best for you and you'll succeed," she says.

The interdisciplinary approach won't hurt even if students decide, ultimately, to choose a career that isn't space related.

"I've talked to a lot of people who have co-oped at NASA but didn't choose to go to work in the space program or couldn't find a job because of the hiring freeze," Baggerman says. "They all had secondary job offers in other fields they were more than happy with. In fact, I haven't talked to anybody who didn't get a job they love."

Smiley agrees. "Graduates who have NASA or Boeing on their résumé can get a job just about anywhere. That's something that looks good on a résumé. But in the past few years, it has been such an employees' market that these kids are getting offers months before they graduate.

"We called Rice University in Houston last April looking for job applicants, and they only had three seniors who had not already found jobs. And it's the same at just about every other school," Smiley says.

A Passion for Space

If there's one thing that almost all future employees of the space program have in common, it's an enthusiasm, even a passion for space exploration. "Most people I meet at work are simply normal people just like you and me who just happen to be crazy about space," Graybeal says.

Graybeal confesses to becoming positively giddy when, during her last work assignment, she was granted the privilege of working in the Mission Control Center for a space shuttle flight and, at one point, even speaking over the communications link that connects controllers and the shuttle.

"My interest in working in the space program began when I was in ninth grade and took a trip to Florida to see the Kennedy Space Center," she recalls. "I'd always thought space stuff was neat, but I hadn't realized I could make it my life until then. So, all through high school I knew I wanted to be an aerospace engineer and work for NASA."

Baggerman says, "The co-op director once told me that he looks for two types of people: good workers who are interested in space and good workers who will become interested in space."

Ron Sostaric, a 21-year-old aerospace-engineering major who began his fourth year at Tech last fall, admitted to a long-term fascination with space. His girlfriend, he says, was given the nickname "Buzz" because "she's a space crazy, just like a bunch of us."

Sostaric, who worked on some payloads for STS-95the John Glenn space shuttle mission among other assignments during his last work tour, said, "I have always been fascinated by airplanes and space."

Such enthusiasm is helpful because salaries at NASA and even at the private companies involved in the space program are not as lucrative as starting salaries in other fields particularly computer engineering. "We have a tough time competing with the IBMs and the other companies on the computer side," Smiley says. "The people are here in our industry because they really want to be. It's certainly not a bad living, but some of these kids are getting offers straight out of school for $45,000 or $50,000 on the commercial side. So most of the people here have literally wanted a space career their whole life."

But if the co-op program is the best route into ground-based engineering jobs, is it still true that those Top Gun fighter pilots continue to have the inside tract for the real superstar jobs of the space program: astronaut?

Don't be too sure.

"I intend to be an astronaut," Sostaric says flatly. He continues to maintain his ambition with two more work tours and four quarters of school remaining before graduation.

And Graybeal says, "Somewhere along the way, I will definitely be putting in an application for the astronaut program.

"Space is the most interesting, fascinating and mysterious thing that I know of," she says. "There are so many questions about the universe that we haven't got the slightest answer for. But the space program is going to help us find them." GT

Jerry Schwartz is a freelance writer in Atlanta.

Point Man

Charles Kohlhase is leading the charge to keep Cassini on track to Saturn

By Hoyt Coffee

After four decades of planning planetary excursions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Charles Kohlhase retired earlier this year. But he's still out front of the effort to keep his last big mission on course.

Launched in a spectacular light show along the dark Florida coast a year ago, the Cassini probe last of the giant Mariner series has already whipped around Venus once in a slingshot maneuver to pick up speed. Now it's headed for a similar rendezvous with Earth next August, the third of four acts in a planetary ballet that will give Cassini a 50,000-mile-per-hour boost.

"One of the things my office did was design the special flight path needed from Earth to Venus, again to Venus, again to Earth, then to Jupiter and finally to Saturn to gain enough speed to get there," says Kohlhase, Phys '57, the mind behind some of NASA's most sensational successes in deep space.

Once the six-ton probe reaches Saturn, it will use the Ringed Planet's gravity to shift orbit and fly by the 18 known moons for four years, studying them with 12 scientific instruments. Of particular interest to planetary scientists is the giant Titan, a moon larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto, which is believed to have conditions similar to those on Earth in the distant past.

"We want to explore Titan to learn more about how life might have begun on Earth," Kohlhase says.

To test Titan's dense, murky atmosphere of nitrogen and methane, the European Space Agency sent along the Huygens lander, which will detach from Cassini, drop through and analyze the primordial gases, and touch down, taking a panoramic photo of the moon.

First of all, though, Cassini must get by a roadblock much closer to home, a feat that's keeping Kohlhase busy even in retirement.

One in a Million

Factions that failed to halt the mission on the launch pad last year are trying to force NASA to abandon the $3.3 billion probe and send it hurtling off into the vastness of space. They are concerned that Cassini may hit Earth during the fly-by, releasing plutonium from its radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs).

"There's a fairly major movement to stop us from flying by the Earth," Kohlhase says. "They think the plutonium threat outweighs the scientific value of going to Saturn.

"So the thing I am involved in, being a scientist, I guess, who understands in simple terms what we are doing to make the Earth flyby safe, is acting as a spokesperson and consultant to meet with groups that say this is a terrible thing, that we are keeping the risks secret and so forth."

The sun is so dim in the inky recesses of Saturnian space, solar arrays could not generate sufficient electricity to power the craft without being too heavy to launch. So Cassini's designers turned to RTGs, which have been in use since the days of Apollo. Utilizing a "ceramic-like" form of plutonium, not the same type used in nuclear weapons, the RTGs create electricity by using the heat generated by the plutonium's natural decay.

Besides, Kohlhase says, JPL has successfully navigated craft in deep space for 40 years in projects like Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Galileo all missions he helped design. When Cassini passes by Earth at about 1,200 kilometers, four times the distance of Galileo's slingshot swing-by, Kohlhase says the odds of an accident are one in a million.

« Cassini is the last of the giant Mariner-class probes. Once the six-ton probe reaches Saturn, it will use the Ringed Planet's gravity to shift orbit and fly by the 18 known moons for four years, studying them with 12 scientific instruments.

Starry Knight

Kohlhase's outreach effort is taking another tack as well, one well suited to any mission with a Southern California connection: he's making a movie.

Not a movie in the usual sense, but a 23-minute computer animation about the Cassini mission meant to inform youngsters about science.

"It's made like Toy Story," he says. "It's an exciting way for young people to learn some of the principles of physics, in particular what photons are and how they carry information and light throughout the solar system."

2004: A Light Knight Odyssey is being produced in conjunction with Entertaining Solutions, and some of Tinseltown's well-known names are signing on for the effort gratis: James Earl Jones, John Travolta, Michael York, Ann Archereven Jerry Lewis, who has agreed to portray the bad guy.

"This story is all about how information comes from things we see, but it is cast in a Cassini/Saturn space environment," Kohlhase says. "There are 68 principles of physics that are mentioned or at least occur in the story in one form or another." GT

Star Search

SETI investigator Jon Jenkins scans the heavens for signs of intelligent life

By Shawn Jenkins

"Every star
out there is a potential home
to other beings. "What we
don't yet understand
is how often intelligent
life arises."

Jon Jenkins' laboratory is the atmospheres of uninhabitable worlds. As a NASA scientist and principal investigator for the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) Institute, Jenkins probes distant stars and the hostile outer layers of planets like Venus searching for conditions favorable for sustaining life. In a larger sense, he is helping to answer one of mankind's most timeless questions: Are we alone in the universe?

A possible answer to this question lies in a formula known in the scientific community as the "Drake Equation." Derived in 1961 by SETI President Dr. Frank Drakea colleague of the world-renowned astronomer and author of Contact, the late Carl Sagan the equation identifies several factors that combine to predict the number of intelligent civilizations that may exist in our galaxy.

"My research ties in with the part of the Drake Equation that determines the fraction of planets that are habitable," Jenkins says.

Through a process called radio occultation, Jenkins is able to a examine the atmosphere of Venus remotely by analyzing radio signal data transmitted from the Magellan orbiter or other spacecraft. The radio signals provide a profile of Venus' density, pressure and temperature.

With an atmospheric pressure almost 100 times that of Earth and temperatures reaching 900 degrees Fahrenheit, one wonders why Venus attracts the attention of someone looking for life-sustaining planets.

"Venus is basically Earth's twin," Jenkins says. "It's kind of a laboratory whereby we can study what could happen to Earth if conditions were slightly altered we're only talking about a 30 percent decrease in the distance from the sun. That's pretty small compared to most distances in the solar system. One question is, 'Over what range of orbital distances can you have life as we know it?' About 50 percent of my research involves trying to understand Venus' atmosphere, which is shrouded in mystery by sulfuric clouds."

The other portion is directed toward detecting Earth-like planets around other stars.

"In the lifecycle of stars, our sun is a 'main sequence' star one that is burning hydrogen, rather than helium," Jenkins says. "Main sequence stars are the most hospitable to planets because they haven't expanded to engulf them yet. These are the places where you would look for extra-terrestrial life. The project I spend most of my time on is called the Kepler Mission. It is a proposal for a space telescope, one that would be different from the Hubble telescope in the sense that it would not be making 'pretty pictures.'"

The Keppler telescope would search a star-rich piece of the sky called Signus, trying to detect an infinitesimal decrease in light (0.01 percent) which results from an Earth-like planet transiting a solar-type star.

"Every star out there is a potential home to other beings," Jenkins says. "What we don't yet understand are: how those beings arise; how often you see a star like the sun that has planets; and how often intelligent life arises. Also, how often does intelligent life overcome its own extinction to start reaching out to contact other civilizations?"

Though it may not have been written in the stars, Jenkins' career in space science was almost a foregone conclusion, having grown-up "in the shadow of Apollo and the shuttle," on Merritt Island, Fla. His parents first met at the Kennedy Space Center and made their careers there.

His road to Georgia Tech was almost as predictable. "My dad [Louis Jenkins, AE '56] was a Tech graduate, and I was the only child in the family who had an interest in engineering. It would've been hard not to at least apply."

While at Tech, Jenkins spent his first two summers as a NASA intern writing software for Spacelab at the Kennedy Space Center. When he ran into money troubles, his roommates suggested he talk to Paul Steffes, a professor in electrical and computer engineering who was looking for undergraduate research assistants.

"He was doing research on planetary atmospheres for NASA under various grant programs," says Jenkins, who earned his undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees under Steffes' direction. "He remains one of my colleagues, and we collaborate on various efforts, mainly with regard to the atmosphere of Venus."

Praising the "versatility" of his electrical engineering degree, Jenkins is also using his background in signal processing and communications to search for intelligence from a source he can actually reach out and touch.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, Jenkins is collaborating with another former SETI scientist to analyze the complex clicks and whistles of the dolphin language.

"We're tracking the development of the whistles of the young dolphins as they interact with their mothers and other dolphins," Jenkins says. "They go through this process where they acquire the ability to make various sounds, then put those sounds together in meaningful ways."

The project could eventually expand to a study of the commonality of languages among various species of animals.

"This relates to SETI, too," Jenkins says, "because it relates to the intelligence of a species and how likely it is that if you have life arising, it would be capable of building a radio telescope and sending a signal that Project Phoenix could detect it's hard to imagine that occurring without language."

Project Phoenix, formerly NASA's High Resolution Microwave Study (Project SETI), is the SETI Institute's primary search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. It nearly died on the floor of Congress in 1995, but rose from the ashes of bureaucracy thanks to funding from private donors.

"SETI and planetary programs in general enjoy a popularity among the public," Jenkins says. "But Congress ranked SETI along with UFO stories that you would read in National Enquirer. Though SETI itself has very firm scientific foundations and was broadly endorsed by the scientific community, it had a 'giggle factor' associated with it.

"Some scientists are critical of the program because a null result doesn't generate an increase in our knowledge base. All you can say is, 'We haven't looked far enough, or we haven't looked long enough.' It's like playing roulette you don't know what the odds are, but you know that when you win, it's a huge payoff. We can't exclude the possibility that there are other civilizations out there. And SETI is satisfying a fundamental necessity of human nature to satiate our inquisitiveness and curiosity." GT

Back to the Future

A new series of X vehicles is setting the stage for the next generation of space flight

By Hoyt Coffee

In this era of "better, faster, cheaper" projects, NASA scientists are deciding the shape of spacecraft to come by taking some hints from the past. As they did with the experimental airplanes of the 1950s and early '60s rocket-powered craft that just nudged the threshold of space researchers today are designing and testing a new series of "X" vehicles, laying the groundwork for spacecraft of the next millennium.

X33

"You can almost say it is 'back to the future,'" says Curtis McNeal, AE '72, chief engineer and deputy program manager on the DC-XA program. "When we look back at the rate at which advancements were made in the '50s and '60sto be honest they were kicking butt. They had a lot of new frontiers back then to tackle, and they tackled them on multiple fronts and relatively inexpensively.

"One of [NASA Administrator Dan] Goldin's guiding visions is that we need to go back to the way we used to do business, which is to design small, low-cost vehicles to tackle individual problems, rather than one vehicle to do everything for everybody."

A Plume of Flame

Originally called the Delta Clipper, the 43-foot DC-XA that McNeal worked with before moving on to improved booster technology was itself something of a throwback: a rocket that took off and landed on its tail.

"Everybody from the '50s and maybe even the '40s remembers Buck Rogers taking off and landing on a plume of flame," McNeal says. "That had always been everybody's dream, everybody's ideal of how to do it. In fact, that is how we landed on the moon. But it had never been done here on Earth until we did it."

After a series of Air Force tests, NASA flew the Clipper four times, as few as 26 hours apart, before a landing accident ended the trials. The DC-XA lifted off the launch pad, flew as high as 10,300 feet and hovered. Controllers put the craft through a variety of maneuvers, rotating through large angles, twisting, even flying sideways, "which is another thing that rockets don't typically do and which really twists your mind when you see it done for the first time," McNeal says.

An X-15 for the '90s

While it completed all but one of its technology-demonstration goals and set some ground rules for maintaining a single-stage rocket, the DC-XA was limited to lower altitudes and speeds. Expanding that envelope falls to a follow-on of the Clipper, the X-34.

Designed and engineered by Orbital Sciences Corp., the X-34 can be considered "an X-15 for the '90s," says John Hudiburg, AE '83, who was chief engineer on the project. Like the X-15, the new experimental craft is launched from underneath an airplane, rockets up to about 250,000 feet roughly the altitude reached by Alan Shepard on the first Mercury flight and Mach 8, then lands on a runway. Unlike the X-15, the X-34 does this without a pilot: it is intended to be totally autonomous, thanks to computer technology that vastly outpaces even that used on the space shuttle.

"X-34 is an experiment in building rockets and planes, rocket planes in this case, that is significantly more cost effective than anything we've done before at NASA," says Hudiburg, who worked on the International Space Station before taking on the X-34 project. "Its goal is to enable truly low-cost reusable launch vehicles."

With space shuttle launches costing between $200 million and $400 million each, Hudiburg says the X-34, as well as the X-33/VentureStar project to come, aims to cut the "fire and smoke" component of space flight to about a tenth of the shuttle's cost. There is a trade-off in capability, however, even though the X-34 is not intended as an actual launch vehicle.

"A shuttle can launch very large satellites in orbit," Hudiburg says. "This can only carry about a 400-pound payload, and it's suborbital at this point; it won't go into a full Earth orbit. It's just for testing the technologies that will ultimately put satellites in orbit." X-34 does provide a substitute for the shuttle in an important arena testing critical components without endangering human life.

Constructed in large part of "low-tech" materials, X-34 will fly about 24 times a year, beginning in March 1999, and "float" in space for about two minutes. And at a low-maintenance cost of about half-a-million dollars per flight, it will make space more accessible for researchers with smaller budgets.

The Future of X

Once its technologies are proven, Hudiburg says private industry may scale the vehicle up as a new launch system.

"Orbital Sciences is very keen on this," he says. "They want to replace the Pegasus, which is a solid, expendable rocket. It's the most cost-effective way to get to space today, but they want to dramatically drop the price, and they potentially can do that. They have all the design and the computers, and they could easily multiply by two." The technology will be made available to other American companies, too.

Another in the experimental series is the X-33, which will fly higher and faster than the X-34. The X-33 will take off vertically, fly to an altitude of about 75 miles at about 14 times the speed of sound and land on a runway. The first pieces of the X-33 reached the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in California in February. Its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base is slated for July 1999.

"Beyond that is a program we have under way at Marshall called Future X," McNeal says. "Future X is actually a series of vehicles we expect to start either annually or semi-annually: other vehicles, showing other reusable technologies over other parts of the flight envelope, and with different propulsion systems."

The first Future X proposals are being considered this month as NASA celebrates its 40th birthday. The first concept should be contracted a month later. McNeal says it may be flying in less than three years.

The Next Shuttle?

While the new series of experimental rocket planes is in line with Goldin's "better, faster, cheaper" mandate, their ultimate goal of a next-generation shuttle may be slow to develop.

According to NASA's "Human Exploration and Development of Space" strategy, the current shuttle will remain in use for an indefinite time. And the economics involved in creating even a smaller replacement may further extend the development curve, especially given the costs of ensuring astronaut safety.

"I think it's going to be quite a while before they replace the shuttle," says James R. Thompson Jr., AE '58, executive vice president of Orbital Sciences and former NASA deputy administrator. "That's not because you couldn't, but the NASA budgets are very flat, if not shrinking, particularly in real-year dollars." Currently, he says, there is no real need for a new shuttle, and the country isn't in position to commit the money required.

Also, it's cheaper to use expendable systems, such as Orbital's air-launched Pegasus and vertical-launched Taurus, for smaller payloads.

"Unless you've got very high traffic, then I don't think you really justify the added costs of putting in a reusable system," says Thompson, known as "Rocket Bob" to his friends. "There are higher priorities in the country right now than the space program.

"Being an enthusiast in the space program, I hate to say that, but I think it's a fact." GT

Space Vacations

Are we there, yet?

Forget about road maps. And don't pack for the beach or the mountains. Vacations of the future are going to be out of this world. How far out of this world will depend on how far into the future. And maybe your definition of vacation.
Some tourism firms say they are scheduling space vacations beginning in 2001. Stanford University's alumni association is offering space vacations through Zegrahm Space Voyages of Seattle, a division of the Zegrahm Expeditions travel company.

The firm is taking reservations for departures that begin Dec. 1, 2001, pending Federal Aviation Administration approval. For $98,000 each, tourists are offered a seven-day travel program that includes six-days of on-Earth preparation for a three-hour round-trip space flight, which Zegrahm says will soar to 100 kilometers or 62 miles official astronaut altitude. There passengers would be able to see the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space, and float in weightlessness for two to three minutes. The Space Cruiser would then head back for a runway landing.

"We've gone to Irian Jaya in Indonesia; we've gone to the Arctic; we've tried to go through the Northwest Passage on a Russian icebreaker," Duncan Beardsley, the Stanford alumni travel director told the New York Times. "Why not space?"

A "mother" plane called the Sky Lifter would take off from a standard runway, transporting a six-passenger, corporate jet-sized "Space Cruiser" under its fuselage. At 50,000 feet, the Space Cruiser would detach and climb to astronaut altitude, first under jet power and then with a burst from its rocket. After falling back into the stratosphere, the plane would restart its jets and fly to the runway. The system confronts a battery of tests before the FAA makes a decision to grant a license.

Opinion surveys record a demand for space travel by the public. In a 1993 survey for the Japanese Rocket Society, a private group, 30 percent of American respondents said they would spend three months of their salaries for short rides in space. Astronaut John Young, AE '52, says vacations into outer space will happen "just as soon as we get a national goal to explore space with human beings. We'll be taking vacations to the places in space."

Richard "Dick" Truly, AE '59, agrees that space vacations will happen in the future when the cost is not so exorbitant.

"It sounds like a wonderful idea," Truly says. "The problem is simply the cost of getting you there. Companies are in the business to make money, and to make a profit in the space [tourism] business requires a much more cost-efficient launch system. That's one of the reasons so much effort is being spent today in the military and NASA to try to reduce the cost of getting to space." The day may not be too far distant when instead of planning for a holiday in Florida, you opt to visit the space station, orbit the moon or tour Mars. GT