Some students at Bakersfield College will soon be trading in their old desks for front row seats at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to lend their talents in a competition to design a Mars rover.

Travis Burns, Florencio Ortiz, Kevin Galloway and Arturo Monzon were among the 80 students selected out of 280 applicants from community colleges around the nation. These students will take part in a team competition where they will create a fictitious company, design an efficient Mars rover that will be able to collect soil samples, figure out how it will get there and back as well as how the project will be financed and budgeted.

According to Rageshwar Goldberg, the STEM program manager at BC (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics), the applicants had to apply for the NASA project by December of 2010 and then complete a three-month-long process where students would participate in online webinars and complete various writing and designing assignments. The work completed by the students was also all extra-curricular and had to be done by the individual alone outside of class time.

“I’m really proud and surprised because it just seems like such an interesting thing, such a different thing, such a rare thing and we’ve got four students going, which is more than any other colleges selected, so that’s really quite an accomplishment, and I think that says a lot about what our faculty and students do here,” Goldberg said.

She added that the process is not easy and that the students deserve their recognition because the project is a lot of hard work to complete in addition to everything else the students are doing at home and school.

“It’s a project that allows students to be creative, implement their engineering skills, design skills, math skills and their existing knowledge and interests in aerospace engineering,” Goldberg said, noting that it’s a great all around STEM project.

Galloway was drawn to the project because he is majoring in aerospace engineering and felt that the project was a perfect chance for an aerospace engineer to show what he can do.

“I really did enjoy the whole experience but it did become a little hectic and stressful, what with having a full schedule with my classes this semester,” Galloway said, admitting that the science portion of the project wasn’t too difficult but that creating the budget was more troubling.

“I’d say the thing that challenged me most was the assignment that asked for a budget,” he said. “Although I researched the cost of materials and supplies, I found it to be a somewhat harrowing task as we had to explain how NASA would obtain these funds with a very specific breakdown of where we would receive the money from.”

Galloway was very relieved that he had been selected because he said at times he was unsure if he would make the deadlines for projects but that he did everything he could to stay on top of the work because he knew how competitive it was and he wanted to succeed.

“When I found out I was chosen, a wave of elation swept over me.  I honestly didn’t think I was going to be accepted.  I do believe the reward was worth the effort I put into it,” Galloway said. “Getting an all expenses paid trip to Johnson Space Center is like a dream come true. What’s more, is the fact that we’ll be getting advice from and working with actual NASA engineers and technicians.”

Ortiz had a similar reaction to being chosen for his work, though he wasn’t so sure at the beginning that it would pay off.

“I must have had an inflated self-esteem when I applied, because that was the only point at which I thought I had a chance on winning,” he said.

Ortiz said that the assignment given to them “was simple and explicitly set up yet still vague and ambitious” meaning all they had to do was design a rover, send it and bring it back – a simple procedure that is at the forefront of scientific thinking and analysis which consumes millions of dollars in research.

He admits that at times, the process was overwhelming and that he had to persevere through many hardships, balancing his home, school and work lives.

“There were times when I wanted to quit. I work 50 to 60 hours a week as an industrial maintenance technician,” he said. “I go to school, I have family I want to spend my time with, my health is falling apart and then to take on this NASA assignment for which I get no pay nor school credit. I constantly asked, ‘why am I killing myself?’”

He credits much of his success to the support from his family.

“My wife helped push me through. The vast interest my 7-year old-son has for space exploration also helped me push through,” Ortiz said, adding that the experience was a ride he will always remember.

“When I turned in the last assignment, a simple line drawing of the Mars vehicles I had been obsessing over for a couple of months, my body wept with joy. ‘It’s over. Wow.’ I felt like I had been to Mars myself. I was flying to Mars’s thin atmosphere – still am. I feel like I own a part of it,” said a very relieved Ortiz.

Burns felt the process was not as difficult except that “the need for independent motivation and out of the box thinking was the hardest part.” Interested in the field of electrical engineering, he wanted to expand his outlook and dive into a project that included other interesting elements he was interested in working with.

He also said that the reward for being selected is a prestigious honor and worth the effort.

“The competition was steep, but at the same time it was against ourselves alone,” he said.  “I was unaware of any of the others’ progress as I turned things in. All I could do is the best I could and hope that was all the edge I needed. The reward is by far worth the effort. The prestige and honor that comes along with being selected is great.”

Burns is looking forward to competing and hopeful that his experiences with NASA will further both his educational and career related goals.

Monzon admits that he didn’t understand at first the gravity of his accomplishments.

“Honestly, I didn’t even realize how big of an accomplishment it was until random faculty started congratulating me,” he said. “I was proud that I got in, and I hope that when next year’s applications go out, BC will again have the most students attending.”

He also said that “the only difficult part about the assignments was having to come up with an idea that had not been done already by NASA and then trying balance the rover’s budget.”

Among the 80 students selected, 40 will go to NASA’s space center in Houston, while the other 40 will go to Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, Calif. This is another location of NASA’s science and engineering scientists who specialize in space exploration technology. Goldberg, however, is excited that the students will get the chance to go to Houston and be surrounded by such a historical atmosphere.