Lost and Found

One thing that a lot of people ask me, when they learn that I'm a part of NASA's Women in STEM High School Aerospace Scholars (WISH) program (see previous post), is, "What exactly do you do?" The answer is: A lot of things. I've completed 3 modules so far, each of which covers a separate topic, but so far my favorite module has been the second one. In that module, I was required to design a Crew Transit Vehicle (CTV) capable of leaving near-Earth orbit (NEO). [Side note: In science, doesn't it seem like everything has an acronym? So far there have been 5 acronyms in the first 4 sentences.] We had to write a report of at least 500 words about the design of our CTV regarding propulsion, crew accommodations, etc. Using the parts of the CTV that we explained in that report, we then had to draw a diagram of the spacecraft.

Because I realize that this is probably pretty confusing to anyone who doesn't know what a crew transit vehicle is, here's mine (which I designed with the capability of transporting commercial travelers, instead of just astronauts, to the Moon):

 

A warning: I am a terrible artist. My space suits (#5, on the second level) look like blobs of Play-Doh, and the sleeping bags (#10, bottom level) look like... actually, I don't even really know what exactly they look like. Sad as it is, one of the few things I'm actually happy with is the toilet (#13, bottom level), which even then doesn't look remotely like a toilet would in space. Oh, and I'm moderately okay with how I drew the treadmill (#14, bottom level) and water electrolysis machine (#4, top level... don't ask why there's a water electrolysis machine). But even though I'm really pretty awful at drawing, I'm still super happy with how this design came out, because this is my first time ever actually designing anything related to aerospace, and I had so much fun designing it that I don't really care if it looks like something vomited all over it. I even had a lot of fun writing the design report (I interpreted "at least 500 words" as "Oooh yay an excuse to write a 2500-word report on the design of a spacecraft!").

There are some things that make me almost reconsider becoming an aerospace engineer, and then there are some things that make me wonder why I ever considered giving this up as my dream. This CTV design was one of the latter. After designing this, I know that I'd love to have a job like this for the rest of my life, except where my designs actually make an impact on the world. And if designing the interior was this much fun, I don't even know how much I'm going to enjoy any opportunity to design the exterior (which is more interesting to me) of a spacecraft or aircraft.

Module 4 (my current module) will also require a design report and graphic, this time about an innovation that would be able to assist astronauts in the construction of the International Space Station (ISS). Well, this should certainly be fun...

On a completely unrelated note, here's a little poem/story/thing I wrote last year:

Lost and Found

found on a candy wrapper floating in the gutter after a rainstorm:
anywhere on earth is heaven as long as i'm with you.

found on a note falling out of an old algebra textbook:
every minute without you is a minute of my life wasted.

found of the bottom of a recycled board intended for a tree house:
there's nothing like spending time with you to make my day a little brighter.

found on the back of an envelope sticking out of a mailbox:
every word you say is another reason to love you.

found scrawled in the corner of a lab bench in silver marker:
just looking at you gives me the strength to do anything.

lost to misuse and time:
the true meaning of love.


~Becky Hill

Experimental

These days, it seems like everyone is pressuring our generation to do more. Help the community, advocate for a cause, get better grades, and the biggest pressure of all: get an internship or a job. For a while now I've been searching for one of those - not because I feel like I should, but because I really do want to be more prepared before I graduate from high school - but engineering internships aren't normally offered to high school students, and juggling a job with all of my classwork just isn't really feasible. Which is why, in December, I was thrilled that the dean of admissions at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University sent me a message inviting me to apply for a program for high school girls interested in aerospace. (My first thought: YES PLEASE! My second: Wow, this is probably the only email from a college I've actually really looked at before deleting.)

The program is called WISH (short for Women in STEM High School Aerospace Scholars, which is way longer than the acronym, which should realistically be more like WISHSAS - or even WISTEMHSAS if you want to get really specific - but whatever). I applied for it over winter break and was accepted in mid-January, and since then I've already been hard at work. 

The thing about WISH is that it's not really an internship in the traditional sense. It's a program run by NASA - specifically, Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. There are 312 of us in the program, and we're from all over the USA. Unlike a normal internship, which usually means assisting someone, WISH is a series of lessons that are meant to prepare all of us participants for a summer experience. The online lesson section consists of eight modules and a final project - I don't know the extent of the final project yet, but the modules consist of various assignments, from quizzes to essays to ethics discussions to math problems to diagrams. I've already submitted my first module, which focused on an overview of space travel, and started on my second. If I do well in the online portion of the program, I could qualify for the on-site summer experience - a six-day-long, all-expenses-paid trip to JSC this summer. There, I'd work with other participants, NASA employees, and student mentors to design a mission to Mars using the information I'll be learning this semester.

I'm really happy that I have the opportunity to be a part of this program, since there aren't many programs like this available for high schoolers and even fewer for high school girls. Even if I don't get into the summer program, I'm already enjoying the online portion, and I'm really looking forward to learn more about aerospace before I go to college.

On the topic of science and engineering, here's the beginning of a story I wrote recently, featuring a cyborg character: 

Experimental  

As soon as the first tendrils of sunlight tickle her toes, she knows that it is time to leave. This has been their pattern for three days now: They walk for hours, endless hours, before settling down somewhere hidden for the night. Every morning, she has woken him up just as the pinkest morning light begins to expose itself to the world. Better to let him think that she is a light sleeper than that she doesn’t need to sleep at all. 

When she nudges him awake this morning, he greets her with a smile. It takes him only a second to remember where they are before he rolls to his feet. “Where to today?” he asks sleepily, fumbling to fold up the blanket that has kept them warm for the past few nights. 

She shrugs, crouching to pull on her socks and tie her shoes. “The same way we’ve been going, I guess,” she says. East: endlessly east, following the long road that never seems to bend, ducking into the shadows whenever a car threatens their safety. All it takes for one person to recognize her as the Engineer’s defective creation or one person to know that the boy’s clothing marks him as a person from the Depths, someone who can be executed simply for venturing aboveground, and their journey will come to an unexpected halt.  

“Then the same way it is,” he responds, slinging the bundled blanket over his shoulder. He takes her hand in his, and in silence they trace their way from the overgrown field to the roadway.  

When he isn’t looking, she presses a hand to her chest and feels the soft thud of her heart in her chest. Anyone, she suspects, would feel it and think that it means she’s alive. But only her touch is sensitive enough that she can feel the gears turning in her chest - the gears that act as a heart and give her some semblance of being human.

You can read the rest of the story here - and if you have a Figment account, I'd really appreciate it if you would heart my story (the little red heart button below the cover). Thanks!

~Becky