Published in
Environment, Society, Space
Andri Snaer talks about how last night, all the lights were turned off in INSERT_ADDRESS. Then a famous astronomer talked about the night sky over the radio for people to enjoy the natural beauty of the cosmos.
I think this is a simply marvelous idea. I’ve been in several European cities when they’ve had “Car Free days”, most recently in Brussels during EuroOSCON. The idea is one day of the week that everyone will go car free, and enjoy the relative quiet and easy biking/strolling about town.
Overall, I am an idealistic technocrat. I really enjoy technology, gadgets, programming, etc. However, I also enjoy natural beauty and the environment as it is. I hope that towns here in the US start promoting these sorts of activities. I mean, what’s the worse that can happen, people actually think its a good idea and turn off their lights at night? 
Published in
Javascript, Space
For your Friday Enjoyment: CSS Solar System (is that CSS again as a recursive Acronym?)
This was done with the increasingly popular jQuery, an up-and-coming javascript framework/library. (via Dr. Nic)
Published in
Engineering, Space, Technology
This is both an interesting, and really tragic, story of how NASA engineers are learning from museum piecies (via Slashdot). I definitely think it is imperative that today’s engineers know how and why decisions were made in the past. Especially with something as monumental as flinging human beings almost 240,000 miles.
However, what is really distressing is that today’s engineers have to learn at museums. There obviously wasn’t enough documentation, recording, and continuation between generations of engineers for NASA to capture that tremendous knowledge and experience. Instead of learning from their mentors, or reading manuals, workbooks, and photographs, they must resort to figuring out what works by inspecting the actual devices themselves.
Learning by inspection can be a very good learning experience. You are forced to make connections and gain insights on your own. However, it is also very easy to miss what is important.
“Why did they use platinum wires but gold connectors?” (hypothetical question)
“What didn’t work that we’re not seeing here?”
The same thing is happening with today’s nuclear missiles. The current missiles were designed to last 20-30 years. Yet they’re still online, with testing equipment that is severly outdated. Retired engineers are brought back, sat in a room for days with recording equipment and asked to tell their stories. Today’s engineers are now realizing that when they design something with an expected lifetime of 30 years, just imagine it may be 50-70 years before it’s actually replaced.
In essence, the Apollo program must be redone. Granted they now have the relics of the past (including some lingering engineers), and new technology, but they’re doing it with a more limited budget and less gusto from the general public.
I want us to go to the moon. It’s the only place in human history that we have traveled to, returned, and never gone back. Lets try and learn from our mistakes and get this job done.
Published in
Article, Conference, Engineering, Project, Simulation, Space
I have a poster at the Space Mission Challenges in IT conference hosted by NASA JPL. Unfortunately, I was unable to make it to the 4-day conference, despite it being an incredibly large number of amazing projects.
In my place, Katie Betchold has done a great job getting my rather large 3′x4′ poster out there, hung up, and my in fact be presenting it today for the 2-minute poster precis. She is totally awesome!
If you don’t, in fact, find yourself in Pasadena, California at the conference, then you can virtually check out my poster (1.8 MB pdf). The accompyaning paper should be in a future IEEE publication available at local newstands everywhere.
The title of the paper is: “The Development and Use of Open-source Spacecraft Simulation and Control Software for Education and Research”, and primarily covers the experiences of developing Open-SESSAME spacecraft modeling and simulation framework, its use at the Space Systems Simulation Laboratory at Virginia Tech, and by various researchers around the world.
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