Seth Gordon knows the future doesn’t always live up to expectations. He returned last weekend from a family trip to Disney World, where Tomorrowland is a collection of decades-old visions of the future that didn’t pan out. Only one ride — the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, one of the least popular ones — even vaguely resembles 21st-century reality.
Gordon, a rising junior at Walt Whitman high school, has his own vision for the future, one that won him $200 and first place in a national essay contest about challenges for engineering in the 21st century sponsored by the National Academy of Engineering.
First place was a pleasant surprise. "I never actually seriously considered I might win," Gordon said.
His essay describes a theoretical scenario 30 years from now, in which a space plane is launched using an electromagnetic launch system.
Gordon’s idea, he said, was in part inspired by watching "Gundam SEED," an anime TV show.
The electromagnetic technology Gordon described in his essay already exists, but it’s not yet used to launch spacecraft. The maglev (magnetic levitation) train is already a reality in China, and powered several trains in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.
Electromagnetic systems have also launched small projectiles at high speeds, but they have not yet been used for spacecraft.
Is it possible that the technology described in Gordon’s essay will one day be feasible? Gordon thinks it won’t happen in the near future, but may happen in the next 50 years, and that it is mostly a matter of making it economically feasible. "It will take awhile, but we’re actually coming very close," he said.
"ENGINEERING AS A whole has always been fascinating to me," Gordon said. He first became interested in engineering and aircraft when he received a Lego kit as a 6th or 7th birthday present. He has since moved on to more advanced design, as a member of the Explorer Post 1010 rocketry team, which went to the Team America Rocketry Challenge last month.
Everybody on Gordon’s mother’s side of the family is an engineer. His mother is a tenured professor of engineering at Stanford University. Gordon said his greatest influence was and is his grandfather, who died last year after a long battle with lung cancer.
A trip Gordon once took to the Wright Brothers National Monument in Kitty Hawk, N.C., gave him perspective on the rapid rise of aeronautical technology — the entire distance of the Wright brothers’ first airplane flight is similar to the wingspan of a present-day 747.
"It gives you an idea of how [far] we’ve come in 100 years," Gordon said.
Gordon took chemistry and physics classes as a sophomore last year. He was especially fond of his physics class taught by Kismet Talaat, and a mathematics class taught by Susan Wildstrom.
Although he has more than two years to go before he starts college, Gordon has already narrowed down his potential college majors — it will either be aeronautical engineering or mechanical engineering.
To see Gordon’s essay, and those of the other contest winners, visit www.engineergirl.org/?id=5285 .