Mark Bowman:  

I went to school with all the same people from 2nd. Grade at San Marcos Elementary in Mrs Moore's class and continued on with school and completed my sophomore year at San Marcos High School. Yea Knights!!! My Dad was transferred up to the Northern Monterey Bay to a small town called Santa Cruz where I completed my final two years at Aptos High School, Go Mariners!!!. Same school colors Silver & Blue. Did you ever see the movie "The Brotherhood of Justice"? It was filmed at this school. Keefer Sutherland was in it. Aptos High was really good to me I made a lot of friends there, not to gloss over the fact that I had to leave a lot of really good friends behind in San Marcos. I met and married my wife Ginger Coffing class of 77 from Aptos. We married in 1977 and just had our 33rd wedding anniversary last May. We have 3 boys Jeremy, Daniel & David. Our oldest son Jeremy will be going into the Army in November of 2010. We also have 3 Grand Daughters and 1 Grandson the Genius. After High School I attended Cabrillo College, a local Jr. college where I majored in "Administration of Justice in Law Enforcement" and was on the Campus police there. I ended up making the decision not to pursue that career line. In 1982 my wife Ginger and I with two boys and her pregnant with our third child moved to Texas. It's not the John Wayne cattle drive desert we've all seen in the movies, yes there is desert but remember California has it's deserts too. My brother Gary and I built a house there near Llano TX on Lake Buchannan and rented it for along time and finally sold it. In 1987 we moved up north from there about 100 miles to the City of Waco. Yep, a famous wild west town, Yee haw !!! The home of Dr. Pepper and Baylor University. I worked as a Dept Mgr for a large retail company until 1989 when I decided to go back to college. Our kids were now in elementary school so Ginger the great wife that I have kicked in and went back to work full time and that with some grants and loans I was able to go back to school full time while working part time. I attended Texas State Technical College T.S.T.C. Where I received my A.A.S. Associates of Applied Science Degree in 1992. In Aviation Maintenance. Graduating in the top 10% of the college with a 3.49 GPA. Please forgive my boosting on this, but I emphasize it since my high school grades were really low because I didn't care back then and I didn't see the value of a good education. After graduation I did get work with a great company called RAM Aircraft, still in Waco, TX I continued on there for 15 years as an A&P (Airframe & Powerplant) Aircraft Mechanic building some 850 new engines and repairing old ones for the highest rated company in the country on small twin engine airplanes. During that time I took some more flying lessons in an attempt to get my Private Pilots licence, didn't get it before I left, but I did build up some 50 hours of flying time and flying solo in and airplane is an experience you can't easily describe, it's just fun. The reason I got into aviation is because my real love has always been NASA. I just never thought that I would have the chance to work for them and be a part of the Space Program. Wrong !!!!!!!!! A new company chose to set up business just 20 miles from where I was working. The new company is called "Space Exploration Technologies". SpaceX is how the company is referred to. I took up another year of study to ready myself and qualify myself for this new line of work. Hard work paid off again and I was hired, I've been working there for two years now and I am part of the most amazing team of workers. We just got the COTS Contract from NASA. This means that in the next year 2011 NASA will retire the remaining 3 Space Shuttles. Our company SpaceX will be responsible for taking supplies and Astronauts to and from the International Space Station, ISS. At SpaceX we just put a satellite in orbit for the country of Malaysia, a geographical mapping satellite. This made us the first private comany ever to put a satellite into orbit for anyone. The entire mission was flawless a perfect textbook flight. And like NASA we all get Mission Patches for our work and efforts on the different missions. See my photos for a picture of the last patch. Next is one of three launches we must sucessfully pull off to qualify ours...Expand for more