UCF Space U?

05GTCorndog said:
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A bunch of posters in this thread who have their panties in a knot because GT has so few astronauts. Maybe we should look at Rhodes Scholars next.
 
Astronauts today are not the same as an astronaut of yesteryear. Back in the day, they better be the best of the best. Nowadays, an astronaut can be just someone along for the ride.
 
JJacket said:
Astronauts today are not the same as an astronaut of yesteryear. Back in the day, they better be the best of the best. Nowadays, an astronaut can be just someone along for the ride.
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It’s been a politicized role for a while. All the emphasis is on being the first-of-this-demographic astronaut now. Much of the progress in past couple decades has been unmanned missions run out of JPL.
 
OmnipoTech said:
Did they become astronauts before or after they got their GT degrees?
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14 is a pretty low number even when we try to plus it up with graduate school. If every school used that criteria the only schools we would probaby move up on are the service academies. The fact is when talking about producing astronauts GT is kinda meh.
 
JJacket said:
Astronauts today are not the same as an astronaut of yesteryear. Back in the day, they better be the best of the best. Nowadays, an astronaut can be just someone along for the ride.
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Able and Baker were the best of the best. Albert I, II, III, & IV not so much.
 
aeromech said:
It is not really that surprising that 29% of employees at Kennedy are UCF graduates, it is a proximity thing. Here in Huntsville, the home of Marshall Space Flight Center, I seldom bump into UCF grads. UCF funnels AE, EE, ME, etc. to Kennedy and the space support contractors in the research park next to the campus. GT on the other hand tends to disperse graduates all over the country/world to a variety of industries. A UCF EE or ME is much more likely to work on some space program than a GT EE or ME grad I would suspect.
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Living in Florida, I get to work with quite a few UCF engineering alumni. They've earned my respect and seem to be competent enough engineers for sure. I've always differentiated myself as an "elite engineer" from my peers in my career (If I can say so about myself) so perhaps that's the GT difference? Engineering is hard no matter where you go to school so a school that is elite at engineering produces elite engineers?
 
gojkts said:
John Young is the gold standard of astronauts. Flew on two Gemini missions, two Apollo missions, two shuttle missions - including the first shuttle flight. Walked on the moon. Pioneered docking maneuvers critical for moon landings. Worked the Apollo 13 rescue. Oversaw the Challenger investigation and ran NASA’s astronaut program until he retired. Set time to altitude records as a test pilot before his astronaut days. He was a trailblazer in the golden age of manned space flight. GT’s astronauts are the real deal.
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John Young’s family just donated “his” moon rock to Georgia Tech. I attended the dedication ceremony this afternoon—the truly the model Tech man we should all aspire to be. If anyone would like to see it, the Library will have it on display at the central information desk between the Crossland Tower and Price Gilbert meeting.
 
OlearyLookAlike said:
UCF started in 1963 Florida Tech to provide NASA with engineers and staff. 30% of NASA employees are UCF grads. Many other space and defense companies are heavily staffed with UCF grads.

The 50 yard line lines up directly with launch pad 39A.

And UCF launched Geoff Collins to another planet.

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Working in the HR department is technically working for NASA I suppose.
 
While at Purdue I had a class in the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering.

I don't know why I posted this it just seemed relevant to the conversation.
 
I took a couple of postgraduate engineering courses at UCF. I'd say there was little difference between UF, UCF and USF (I took postgrad courses at all of them before finally getting my MSEE from USF). They all had a lot of Asian (-American?) professors (mostly Indian and Pakistani origin) whose English was hard to decipher and who (seemingly) really did not like teaching classes. I got my BEE at Tech and also took a couple of graduate level courses at Tech, and IMO Tech was a step ahead of all of these places. But none of them were terrible. And probably the best of the lot was an optoelectronics class I took at UCF.

Yeah, it's all fun. But back in the day, you would hear folks at Tech call MIT "The Georgia Tech of the North," and sell T-shirts to the same effect. And I'm sure the guys in Cambridge made some good fun of that, too.

For the average bear, engineering is hard no matter where you go. A couple of years of calculus, differential equations, etc.? LOL. The average bear has no chance, whether it's MIT, Tech or UCF. Hell, 90+% of the folks in our Congress would have zero chance. I'll reserve my scoffing and ridicule for home economics, French lit, "cultural" studies, and similar Lib Arts majors at places like uGag, Bama, etc. And I'll try (and too often fail) to temper even that with compassion or pity.
 
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