Rocketry Planet

SHIPPENSBURG, Pennsylvania USA — While many of America's youth spent their winter and early spring shoveling snow, playing video games, texting their friends and simply trying to stay warm, one Pennsylvania university student was spending his time dreaming of ways to overcome outstanding odds.

At the top is the 2011 ATK Web Design Award. At the bottom, Lucas Kalathas, second from right, a student at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, receives his 2010-11 NASA Student Launch Projects Best Web Design award from Steve Cash, left, manager of the Shuttle Propulsion Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; Digna Carballosa, second from left, deputy director of the Marshall Center's Office of Human Capital; and Jim Halsell, vice president of Space Exploration Systems for ATK Aerospace Systems of Salt Lake City, Utah. Photo: Doug Stoffer.

After learning the ropes in the Team America Rocketry Challenge, a model rocketry competition for students in grades 7 to 12 designed to foster interest in aerospace and engineering careers, Lucas Kalathas of Shippensburg wanted to reach for the next gold ring of rocketry contests: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's University Student Launch Initiative (USLI).

As it turned out, Kalathas couldn't find anyone at Shippensburg University, where he is a senior majoring in physics with a minor in math, who wanted to join him on his excellent adventure. So he did the obvious thing: he decided to go solo.

In December of 2010, NASA chose Kalathas' "one man band" as a finalist, awarding him a $5,000 grant to fund his USLI project. He would compete all by himself against 43 other teams consisting of more than 500 students from 33 different schools.

Along with designing and building their own rockets and experiments, planning and sharing their enthusiasm of science, math and rocketry through various community outreach efforts, teams also designed and maintained their own web sites, documenting their projects, their experiences, while tracking their successes and failures.

When the students descended on Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama, this past April 17th for the flight contest, over 40,000 viewers would watch the event live via streaming media video service from UStream, a web chat simulcast also hosted on Rocketry Planet. Before the day was over, 39 rockets would take to the air, a fitting close to the 10th anniversary of the USLI contest.

When it came time to hand out awards, soloist Lucas Kalathas was honored by ATK Aerospace Systems, one of the event's sponsors, for Best Web Design. According to the NASA press release, "One-man 'team' Lucas Kalathas from Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania—who built his school's rocket and payload, designed its website and conducted all outreach activities and design and launch reviews himself—won the award for the best rocketry website: http://www.shipusli.com."

On behalf of NASA and ATK, Kalathas was presented his award by Steve Cash, manager of the Shuttle Propulsion Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama; Digna Carballosa, deputy director of the Marshall Center's Office of Human Capital; and Jim Halsell, vice president of Space Exploration Systems for ATK of Salt Lake City, Utah.

When tasked with creating his web site to document the university's USLI project, Kalathas turned to Darrell Mobley, owner of uHostMe Internet, an Internet services company that specializes in small-to-medium businesses, particularly those in the niche hobby rocketry market. uHostMe Internet provides web hosting, web design, domain names, SSL certificates and a number of other Internet-related services, and is the primary sponsor of Rocketry Planet, as well as the High Power Rocketry Strength of Materials testing website, rocketmaterials.org.

"After being a Rocketry Planet member for over 4 years and knowing Darrell, choosing uHostme was not a difficult choice," Kalathas said when asked about his award. "Darrell has helped me with every step of the process, even when I didn't know all of the details behind the scenes."

Mobley recommended an open-source content management system named Joomla, one of the most popular PHP-based CMS packages in use on the Internet today. CMS-based web sites store the content data of each of the site's pages in a database. When a page is requested by a viewer clicking on its hyperlink, that content data is retrieved from the database and wrapped with a pre-defined template in real-time.

"CMS systems are the way to build web sites today," Mobley said of his recommendation to Kalathas. "With the content saved in the database, all you have to do to change the look-and-feel of a CMS-driven site is install a new template."

Open source software packages also come with large communities of programmers who develop plugins that extend the functionality of the base CMS package, adding features such as photo galleries, discussion forums and other popular social functions. By recommending the right tools to meet his needs, and helping to install and configure them, Mobley was also helping Kalathas' stay focused on the rocket project instead of tying up his time trying to create a website from scratch.

"Darrell allowed me to focus on my project when it mattered and gave me all of the options I could ask for," Kalathas said, describing how uHostMe Internet met his specific needs, which in turn simplified his task of creating and operating an award-winning website. "The provided services were quick and efficient - far better than any web hosts I have had previously. My website was very easy to edit, quick to learn, and most importantly, effective in its goal."

Kalathas signed up with Mobley expecting to get help with a web site and instead walked away with a prestigous award. Along the way, he learned that uHostMe Internet's personal service is what separates it from the other companies in today's web hosting and design market.

"The web hosting business today is nothing like it was when I started out," Mobley added. "Today, customers are inundated with advertisements for 'unlimited everything' purported to cost next to nothing." What those ads don't tell potential customers is that their web site will be squeezed onto an individual web server "appliance" with thousands of other web sites—all competing for the next CPU processing time slice—which results in poor overall performance for everyone.

"As a small business myself, I can't operate under those unrealistic conditions and such thin margins," Mobley said, "so I have to place my products at a price point I feel is reasonable and then counter the big box web hosts with personalized service. So far, that's been working well for those who've signed on."

When Mobley learned of Kalathas' Best Web Design award, he was slightly taken back—not at Kalathas' award-winning web site design, but that it happened within the online community he's worked to create through uHostMe Internet and Rocketry Planet.

"I am extremely happy for Lucas, a very talented young man who is most definitely a rising star in the rocketry and aerospace arena. I know Lucas credits me with part of his success in winning the ATK award, but I didn't do anything for him that I wouldn't do for any of my other clients. My goal is to help everyone achieve more. When my name goes on it, it's got to be done right."

About uHostMe Internet
uHostMe Internet began serving the Small-to-Medium Business (SMB) community in 1997, providing web site design and development services to home-based and cottage industry businesses who were looking at the Internet as a means to compete with larger-scale businesses who also had larger budgets for marketing and advertising. As the Internet grew, so did the company, by adding new services targeting web site maintenance, web site hosting, e-commerce applications, credit card merchant accounts, domain name registration, SSL certificates and search engine optimization for new and existing web sites.

uHostMe Internet's data center is centrally located in Dallas, Texas, providing low latency connectivity throughout the United States. The Dallas Central Business District power grid offers unsurpassed 6X redundancy, directly insulated from natural disasters such as flood, hurricane, earthquake and forest fire. Our Internet connection is via direct access to over 75 major carriers, offering premium bandwidth from multiple providers with multiple diverse entry connectivity points. Featuring UPS battery backup, N+1 CRAC datacenter cooling systems, and a diesel generator, our data center offers full-time, US-based support staff. The Cisco-powered network center with its 120Gbps routing core relies on dry-pipe/Halon fire suppression, state-of-the-art video surveillance and multiple level facility security.

Website: http://www.uhostme.com/

Reader comments:

#1 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Good things happen to those who wait ... and also put in some good effort!

Congratulations, Lucas! Congratulations, Darrell!

aerostadt on 04-26-2011 11:03 PM

#2 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Congratulations again Lucas!

I was just wondering were you able to get course credit for the USLI or if it was a senior design project?

Thanks,
Jason Brown

Rocketace29 on 04-27-2011 07:55 AM

#3 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Thank you aerostadt.

Thanks Jason as well. I asked about course credits as an independent study class however I never got it fully approved (problem with my less than helpful faculty member)... so this project was just for fun.

lkal32 on 04-27-2011 08:49 AM

#4 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Congrats, Lucas! It was a pleasure reviewing your work and getting to know you this year. I'm glad that you will be coming down to Huntsville for grad school!!

-Eddie J.

RocketJumper on 04-27-2011 11:04 AM

#5 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Lucas,

Congrats on the whole project, man. It was great to meet and you the other week. Keep building on top of this, it's just a start.

Doug K

dknight on 04-27-2011 08:53 PM

#6 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Quote:

Congrats, Lucas! It was a pleasure reviewing your work and getting to know you this year. I'm glad that you will be coming down to Huntsville for grad school!!

-Eddie J.

Eddie! Thanks you. And thank you for your effort in the competition this year. It went great and a lot of that is because of your work. Hopefully I can see you again sometime in the near future. Are you part of a club near Huntsville?

Quote:

Lucas,

Congrats on the whole project, man. It was great to meet and you the other week. Keep building on top of this, it's just a start.

Doug K

Doug, was awesome to meet you as well. Thank you - I am working on my L3 right now and then it is on to school and hopefully a co-op

lkal32 on 04-27-2011 09:07 PM

#7 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Lucas

Congras on a first rate showing of raw determination.

H_rocket on 04-27-2011 09:18 PM

#8 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Lucas - glad to hear of your continued good work!

From your former Battle of the Rockets "judge".

bsexton on 05-02-2011 04:14 PM

#9 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Thanks Al.

Also thank you Bruce. Bruce - I didnt get to see you at this BotR... I couldve used an additional hand searching for my H flight this year. It went a tad too high

lkal32 on 05-02-2011 05:34 PM

#10 Re: Article: USLI finalist Kalathas earns ATK’s Best Web Design award

Quote:

Thanks Al.

Also thank you Bruce. Bruce - I didnt get to see you at this BotR... I couldve used an additional hand searching for my H flight this year. It went a tad too high

I couldn't make it to BotR this time and I was looking forward to seeing you defend your title!

bsexton on 05-03-2011 04:24 PM

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