Rocket man

The USU students' rocket was test launched in April.

Bowen Masco works at the CPD, providing technical support for the Early Childhood Alternative Teacher Preparation program. In his other life he does rocket software. Recently he was involved in an engineering team that did something so cool, we just have to talk about it. He was on Utah State University’s 27-member rocket team when it won the grand prize in NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative competition. Again.

Bowen was one of three students who were on last year’s USU rocket team, when it won the same prize in the same competition. Both years, the team made a reusable rocket from components that cost less than $5000 and designed it to go exactly one mile up before turning and coming back to the ground. As part of the competition, they communicated with the public, wrote a report and published it on the Web. (Bowen built and maintained their website.) And their reward for winning? They were invited to watch the launch of the space shuttle Endeavor last November.

“It was incredible,” he said. “It was a night launch. We were as close as people are allowed to get. … We were looking right at the pad.”

They had the same vantage point as the press corps, three miles away. They still felt the blast from the launch. “You’re three miles away, you see the flames, and then all the sudden, whoosh!”

This year, the USU team won the same competition and will receive $5000 and another invitation to a shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center this fall. In addition to his work on the website, Bowen wrote software that took measurements, crunched data and opened the rocket’s flaps that slowed it down so it could hit the one-mile-up point in the sky.

“Bowen was a critical person on the team,” said Stephen A. Whitmore, faculty mentor for USU’s senior design team. “Without him we couldn’t have done what we did.”

The rocket is the subject of several YouTube videos, including one shot from a camera mounted on the rocket and another detailing the project from design to launch.

The CPD appreciates what Bowen does here, too. “I’m just really thrilled that we have someone with his capabilities,” said Marlene Deer, who directs the program where he works.

The Early Childhood Alternative Teacher Preparation Program provides distance education to prospective early childhood special education teachers. Because of the program, these students are able to work on licensing requirements from off-campus locations in rural Utah. Bowen is working on cutting-edge software that, when it is done, will allow the program’s staff to observe teachers by robotic video camera. He also provides technical support.

He will leave the CPD in a few months to focus on graduate school.

Bowen Masco