Guests: Chris Koehler, Shawn Carroll, Emily Logan. Topics: National Space Grant Consortium and the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. Please note that you are invited to comment, ask questions, and rate this program on the new Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. In our first segment, Chris Koehler introduced us to the National Space Grant Consortium program which was authorized by Congress in 1987. There are 52 Space Grant programs in the country reaching thousands of college level students across the country. Each state has its own Space Grant Consortium and spreads that program through various in-state higher educational institutions. For example, the Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC) has 16 affiliates managed out of the Space Grant HQ at UC Boulder. As you will hear discussed throughout this program, both the national and the state consortiums are about students doing hands on space engineering projects. As our first segment was nearing its end, students Shawn and Emily told us about some of the programs they had participated in, the Gateway To Space class taught by Mr. Koehler, and their team work in the program citing the TeamUp example. As we started our second segment, Emily talked about her project which initially had problems and did not work but then she worked on a solution and flew the project again a few months later to great success. We talked with Emily about lessons learned and applying them to ongoing work for a successful outcome. We talked about the various programs such as RockSat. We also learned about the company, Edge of Space Sciences that provides high altitude balloon launches for academic programs and more. As we started the third and final segment, our guests got questions about FAA needed authorizations for a balloon launch and we talked about their programs switching from film cameras to digital cameras and why they use the Canon brand. I asked both Shawn and Emily for their assessment of the future for careers for graduates in aerospace given our current economic conditions and the changes underway with our national space policy and NASA. Don't miss what both Emily and Shawn had to say about their future in aerospace. We talked about studying life sciences and human factors as part of the aerospace engineering curriculum. We also talked about the mix in their studies with aviation versus pure space engineering. You might be surprised to hear what they said regarding this question. As we concluded our program, both Emily and Shawn provided us with forward looking comments about Space Grant, studying aerospace engineering, the future for the industry. If you have comments or questions for any of our guests, please post them on the blog above. You can also email them to Chris Koehler at Koehler@Colorado.edu; Emily Logan at rocksatprogram@gmail.com; and Shawn Carroll at rocksatx@gmail.com. For more information, please visit their website at http://spacegrant.colorado.edu