by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
As a child, the president of Sandia National Laboratories did not understand engineering.
"I lived in a small town, so I had this vague idea that an engineer had something to do with trains," Thomas Hunter said. "I had no sense of what an engineer was or what an engineering education entailed. But I did know what Sputnik was."
The Soviet satellite sparked Hunter's interest in aerospace engineering, he said.
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Hunter spoke at the opening of the 24th annual Space Technology and Applications International Forum at the Hotel Albuquerque on Monday.
The forum, sponsored by UNM's institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies, is a chance for aerospace professionals to gather and discuss their field.
The title of this year's conference is "Space Renaissance: Inspiring the Future."
Hunter said it is important for the U.S. to encourage children to pursue careers in engineering.
"Science and technology is an important economic commodity," he said. "Our society has not embraced technology in the way that it should. We have not embraced it as a way to move forward and make our society better."
The forum included a competition for high school students to design laboratories that could be used on the moon.
Sam Pedrotty, a student at Albuquerque High School, designed an inflatable, nuclear-powered laboratory called the Erudition.
"That might not seem like a good idea, but all the materials I have in it are really durable," he said. "It could withstand micrometeorites, radiation and all sorts of other stuff."
Pedrotty said he has wanted to be an aerospace engineer since he was 6.
"It's just a lot of fun," he said. "I've wanted to do it for pretty much as long as I can remember. It's just something I'm drawn to."
He's not sure how to convince other people to become engineers, he said.
"If people aren't already wanting to do it, I don't really know if there's anything you can do about it," he said.
Although it's important to have good engineers, social scientists are also valuable, Hunter said.
"The impact of what we do and what I've done in my career is always limited by society," he said. "Technology and its interactions with society are becoming increasingly more complex, and the social sciences are a good
framework for thinking about those implications."
Thomas Bowles, the science adviser to Gov. Bill Richardson, said New Mexico is in a good position to reinvigorate the space industry.
The spaceport and national labs are important tools, he said.
"We have a very visionary governor, and we have the resources to make things happen," he told the audience. "Hopefully, you'll come back soon, and hopefully, some of you will move here to take advantage of those resources."
Joseph Cecchi, dean of UNM's School of Engineering, said universities need to be more flexible about teaching students.
"If we're going to teach students to be innovative, it seems like we should be innovative in the way we teach them," he said. "For all the pronouncements universities make, we're still kind of mired in the way we did things 50 years ago."
