Hello all,

I am a high school physics teacher and grad student. My students
have become good proposal writers and have quite some success
getting their experiments sent to space
(http://www.columbus2space.org).

As a grad student, I am part of consortia of university students
trying to get a piggyback spacecraft to the Moon and then to Mars.

These kinds of opportunities for students (both K-12 and university)
are becoming rare. It seems like the value of inspiring/training
the next generation is lost in deadlines and budgets.

There is a good proposal stated in an open letter to Mike Griffin,
NASA Administrator, that I found through NASAWatch.com. The idea
would be for NASA and DOD to include room for small student
satellites (called CubeSats) to be attached as secondary payloads.
These things are only 1kg in mass, and will come down relatively
quickly if they are released into LEO. Here is the link to the open
letter:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1009

Ever upward,

Luther Richardson
lrich@...