Tag: schools

Day 4- Houston Rockets Day 2, and Mother’s Day

First let me begin by wishing all you Moms out there a Happy Mother’s Day! I sincerely hope it was a great one for you. I know this wasn’t the ideal mother’s day for my mom, being in rehab for her knee, but at least it will all be done soon and she will be up and going again. My son and I did spend a couple of hours there with her after church today. We had a nice visit. Later I made him go with me to see the movie, Age of Adeline, and then to Wal-Mart shopping. His sister, Kasey, called me right after the movie and found much humor in that I had drug him to a chick flick. I treated him to Whataburger after though.

Houston launches ended around 8:00 pm this evening. It was a successful weekend with only a few transonic not making it to the pad. I watched the launches on Livestream for several hours this afternoon. I saw about 7 go up, before the live feed ended for the day. It was fun to watch, albeit not nearly as fun as it is to be there in person. The live feed only showed the rockets leaving the pad, but didn’t follow them in flight so a little is lost there in the fun and excitement of the activity.

It was amusing to watch the live feed go from the pad to the schools watching the flights. Each time, the students were all there with the camera phones videoing, and they all moved in unison upward following their vehicle into the sky. Next after it landed, they would share high fives with each other, and often with Mr. Brett Williams, the SystemsGo Coordinator. Whether in person or on the stream, they thrill on the students’ faces is still the same.

Congratulations to all the schools and their students that participated this weekend. You have all done a marvelous job, and even if you don’t realize it you are in a category ahead of your  peers in your learning skills. Take it all with you and you will go far.

Congratulations to the whole SystemsGo team, you have one launch set completed for this season. You all be careful on your return trip tonight, I know you are all tired and it’s a long road home. The team finally got on the road after packing up the site, at about 10:20 this evening, which will put them back here somewhere around 2:30 to 3:30 in the morning. God bless you all, safe travels, and I will be praying for you all.

www.systemsgo.org as always is the place for more information on this program. Take the time to get your school involved, the future of your students will be greatly benefited.

In The Beginning

This is basically a writer’s blog, with the main writer being of course, me. It will be a way to share writing and keep myself busy doing some form of writing, hopefully every day. At some times it will be things I have written and want to share. At other times, it will be interesting things I am involved in that I want to share with you, whomever you may be that decide you want to read my words of wisdom, or perhaps not. You see, there I go, sometimes things may be really serious, other times they may be completely goofy and off the wall.

I will give you a little preview of next week’s blogs. I do intend to share some highlights from the SystemsGo Fredericksburg Rocket Launches in Willow City. If I can figure this out and add pictures I will try to do that too. I am helping with recovery again this year, and am super excited to help. It is always a blast. There will also be a live video link so you can come out and watch in person or from the safety of your computer at home.

If you have never heard of this, it is part of the STEM program now available in area high schools. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math and is designed to start our children in future careers in all these now heavily technical fields. If you listen to the radio you may have heard ads by the US Navy backing this program (STEM), they are highly interested in receiving candidates that have had prior training and education in this program because our military has become very hi tech as well. This program benefits our youth whether going the college and job route or the military route. If you have a junior high or high school age student encourage them to get into the STEM program at their school. If your school has not yet developed a program, encourage them to do so, because these are the big jobs of the future.

Skills learned in the different areas required by STEM and programs like the rocket program and other programs in STEM encompass more than just the four core classes you hear in the name STEM. Students in these programs, learn skills in mechanics, welding, PlasmaCAM, wood working, and other hands on building skills. They learn grant writing and proposals in order to fund their projects. They learn business skills, presentation and marketing, research and analysis, design and development, materials, inventory, and product ordering and so much more. Most of all they learn critical thinking and how to work both on their own and as a part of a larger group that each contributes a vital piece to their project in order to have it completed and successful.

I personally have had a nephew, niece and 2 daughters that have gone through our local program and they have all benefited from it greatly. My nephew, is top management at SpaceX in McGregor, TX, my niece is in Avionics Electronics  in the US Navy, one daughter is an Aviation Structural Mechanic for helicopters in the US Navy, and my older daughter is studying Electrical Engineering at Texas Tech University.

This week several of our program graduates, the SYSTEMSGO coordinators, and several volunteers are headed to Clute down by Lake Jackson, TX to help several Houston area schools launch their rockets. Next week the team and many more volunteers will be here at Hillview Ranch in Willow City, TX to help over 30 Texas high schools attempt to launch over 80 more rockets. It is well worth the time to watch, not only to see the rockets fly, but to see the joy in the students’ faces as their project of 1-2 years in the making, comes to a successful end. To clarify, even if the rocket doesn’t fly, it is still a success in all that the students learned to get it here, and in what they will continue to learn from analyzing what went wrong that prevented it’s flight. The hard work that is done to get them to this point is the true success and is a catalyst that will help launch them into their future careers.

Ok maybe I did know what  to write about today.

Houston launches are this weekend, May 9 & 10.

Fredericksburg launches are next week, May 14-17. Come watch them or watch online at the SystemsGo web page. Directions and details are also on this website.

http://www.systemsgo.org/announcements/rockets-2015-fredericksburg-launch-details

Watch this crazy blog for more updates.