DESTINATION MARS

Our generation is concerned about our future on Mars. We feel that more people need to understand what the environment on Mars is like so that they can have an educated opinion on colonizing the Red Planet.

Scott Green. Hello! I am a 16 year old Junior at Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, MD, where I take many classes in computer programming and engineering. For example, last year I took C++ with Ben, and this year Ben, Dan and I will be taking AP (Advanced Placement) C++.I have been programming with HTML for 3 1/2 years. During the last two summers I have been an employee of INSPIRE, and I work from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center(GSFC) where I develop sophisticated space related web pages. I obtained a large number of the Mars images for the Destination Mars web page from the National Space Science Data Center at GSFC. I work exclusively on Macintosh computers. I received my first Mac when I was ten.

I entered the Thinkquest Contest in 1996 with a series of web pages about Very Low Frequency Radio Emissions.In 1997 I entered the a series of web pages on Mars called Footprints on Mars. In 1997 My team made it to the semi-finals. The photo on the left is of me at Rice University in Houston, TX where I accompanied my Dad while he taught at the International Space University for three weeks both last summer and this summer. While there, I went to many classes on the exploration, colonization, and terraforming of Mars which helped me create these web pages. I would like to attend the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in the future and get my Ph.D. in computer engineering. In my free time I play Varsity Lacrosse and the guitar. I have played the guitar for 5 years, and I currently play in a local band.

Hi, my name is Ben Gross and I'm 17 years old. I live in Silver Spring, Maryland and will be a senior at Springbrook High School. I heard about the ThinkQuest project from Scott and was interested in it immediately. Some of my interests are; computers and computer programing, music, swimming, bicycling, and photography. Im involved in many activities at my school. At school I have been a member of the photography club, I have ran track and swam on the swim team, I was involved in S.A.D.D. (students against drunk driving) and the ski club. I am taking AP English this year and AP C++ (Advanced Placement) along with Scott and Dan. Last year I took C++ with Scott. In the future I hope to get a job as a computer programmer.

Hi my name is Dan Helmer. I am a Senior at Springbrook High School. There, I currently take AP English and AP C++ with Scott. When I was in 9th I took Pascal, then in 10th I took AP Pascal, after which I passed the AP test and will earn college credit for. Last year a took a course called independent study in computer science where, through out a whole year you develop one or more extremely sophisticated computer programs which you decide. For that class, I re-wrote a bunch of old Atari games. This year I am taking AP C++ and hope to pass the AP exam and earn some college credit for that class also. At school I take part in the American Computer Science League and play Varsity Lacrosse.