Neil Taylor

 
  Hi! I’m Neil Taylor from Statesville, NC. I’ll be a Junior at University of North Carolina – Charlotte in the Fall. I’m working on a BS in Electrical Engineering. I just received my Associate of Science from Mitchell Community College this spring. For LPSA, I will be working on the project "Dust Mitigation of Mirror Surfaces using SPARCLE" with my mentor, Mr. Fred Minetto.
    I just got back from the NASA University Student Launch Initiative (USLI) Level 2 competition that was held at NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. I was the payload / recovery manager. I'm signing the nose before our flight in the above picture. Our core rocket team consisted of myself and just three other students (I think everybody on the team got to be a manager of something!) We all pulled together and basically built every part of the rocket ourselves with the exception of the nosecone. We laid up the carbon fiber tubing by hand, built custom timer circuits to deploy our spring ejection system, and did all of the machine work in my shop. Our tiny Mitchell team flew with University of Alabama – Huntsville and Mississippi State off of a sounding rocket launch rail on May 21st. I’m happy to report that all the flights were successful and our rocket was recovered, thankfully still in one piece and floating, out in the Atlantic Ocean.
    I guess I’m considered a non-traditional student, returning to school after working for fourteen years as a professional Harley Davidson motorcycle technician. I managed to do about everything in my career as a motorcycle tech, working as lead shop technician, service manager, and race mechanic. I tuned the electronic fuel injection of our drag bike to win two national championships and even built my own road race bike from spare parts that finished second at Daytona International Speedway. I also work as Technical Editor of the motorcycle magazine, Ironworks Magazine.
    My interests are pretty varied. I’ve always been interested in space and space flight, and I have had the pleasure of watching the launches of STS-102 and STS-130. I was also a National Community College Aerospace Scholar (NCAS) and got the opportunity to travel to JPL for a three day workshop. One of the coolest parts of that trip was sitting in on an actual Mars Exploration Rover (MER) planning meeting. My wife and I are travelers, and have been almost everywhere in the continental US, sometimes in a car, sometimes on a bike. I like tinkering with electronics and I’ve got a bunch of gadgets in various stages of completion like a bench top EDM machine, Arduino powered GPS dog logger, etc. I enjoy riding motorcycles, camping, hiking, and canoeing; just about anything and everything outdoors related. I’m also an avid reader (you’ve got to do something when it rains!) of history and fiction.
   I'm really excited to be a part of LPSA. I'm ready to break new ground at Goddard and contribute my all to Mr. Minetto and our project!