Boys Night In, 2019
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Scolese: Today we are having a boys night in where we've invited a number of students
from various schools in the Maryland and Virginia area to come in spend a night
about science technology engineering and math.
Gregory: This evening I've come in to meet some very enthusiastic young men, who are interested in STEM, which is what I'm interested in.
Turner: What we'd like to do is share our love and passion for what we
do here at NASA, with these students whether they come and work for us work
for industry or work in the private sector somewhere else. We want them to
find that passion we want them to enjoy what we've enjoyed over the years here at NASA.
So there's students from three school districts here in Maryland and
one from Virginia.
Agugua: We came I saw the different like sections of engineering
from building telescopes, to weathering, we used a VR system
I saw how space communications works. It was just a very fun day.
Ogle: And what I liked about the day is we actually got to meet the people who do stuff here and they
were hopeful enough to actually lead us through the stuff that they do and like
give us opportunities to look into their daily lives and what the work they do here is.
Leschinger: Later we got to watch the interview from the astronaut which was really interesting.
Gregory: If you go back and you look at any of us when we were kids
we were excited by things that were risky and scary and and very few had
done before, but what it does then is, is get you ready for the next journey and
that's what we're hoping to excite these young men this evening to get on that
journey and do things that no one's done before.
Turner: Sometimes students confuse hard
and impossible. What we want to do is show those are not the same things, just
because it's hard doesn't mean we can't do it. And I found that when you excite
somebody's passion almost everything gets a little easier and that's what they excel at.
Eeesmercado: They gave us a problem we have to build a robot, it has to
travel at least one meter.
Agugua: Basically we have a space crew and we have to protect
them from the radiation, which is shown by a UV light, and we also have to make
the shuttle move a whole meter off of a ramp. So it's not easy but we can do it.
Turner: So the benefit for me is to have those students be my next pool of really smart
and amazing people. So I want to bring them many of them in as I can and do the
amazing things we do here at NASA.
Agugua: I want to become a mechanical engineer once
I graduate high school, so I communicated with a lot of other engineers, also
talked to people who worked at NASA about internships, which can also make my
resume look better from when I graduate college. So today was all in all a great experience for me.
Eeesmercado: My love for engineering has increased from before,
and I think this is just a great program for all students.
Leschinger: I didn't realize how many different parts go into NASA just besides the engineering, I can really see
how like the business side of it, the research, the outsourcing there's so many
different components that come in together when making an entire team
which is really interesting.
Ogle: Well what struck me is like the stuff that
they were doing here at NASA is actually really involved, and it's like it's not
just science and technology, it's stuff you can apply to every aspect of like any career you do.
Scolese: For Goddard it helps us to see the excitement and the enthusiasm
of the newer generations next generations of scientists and explorers,
and hopefully to inspire them so they will come here, and if they don't come
here they'll go into other areas and make our nation in our world a better place.
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