While attending Bismarck State College, I applied for a summer grant program with North Dakota Space Grant Consortium (NDSGC), and was accepted as part of the North Dakota Space Training and Research (ND STaR) program. It serves as a NASA exposure program where we developed a mock feasibility study and presented it at the end of the program. I was paired up with Mike Holmes at the Environmental and Energy Research Center (EERC).

During the grant period, I lived in Grand Forks, ND and worked at the EERC doing literary research on fuel cell systems for the integration into a crewed base space station (like a mars or lunar base). After I had a fair deal of research completed, the EERC sent me to Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, TX where I met up with system integration specialists and was able to propose my ideas to them. It was a wonderful experience and I got to go on an inside tour through the facilities at JSC.

Once I had a white paper completed, Mike Holmes and I worked on a poster presentation and a 15 minutes televised speech. I gave the speech in front of a large audience and cspan cameras. I could not have gotten as far as I did without the help of the EERC staff.

Check out the Aurora NDSGC flyer for the spring semester 2004. I’m listed towards the middle.

Also, while I was working on the feasibility study, they were able to get me a few extra bucks working in a lab with Ron Kulas reforming ethanol across various mediums to reform the ethanol into usable hydrogen. Our primary catalyst was platinum.