Author Archives: J Simmons

ISPCS 2009 – Day 1: Mission and Methods

by .
Comment

I am back in Las Cruces, NM, attending this year’s ISPCS, and just like last year each panel and each conversation leaves me with new ideas and new perspectives.  I promise to write a full report on the entire conference when I return to Dayton, but in the mean time I wanted to share the two highlights of Day 1.

First, a reflection on Mission.  One of today’s panels was a presentation by Jeff Greason about his experience serving on the Augustine Committee.  Jeff talked about a number of aspects of the committee’s work including launch vehicles, destinations, and enabling technologies.  But I was most stuck with what he had to say about the committee’s review of the reason to send humans into space, and the difference between the reason we do a thing and the benefits we get from the thing.  Jeff explained that in discussing the reason to send humans into space, we often get caught discussing the benefits (doing good science, building international relations, developing new technologies to name a few).  The problem with getting caught discussing benefits instead of the reason is that there are lots of ways to go about getting the same benefits as space flight, but none of those address the real reason to send humans into space, namely, as the committee puts it: to extend human civilization beyond Earth.

(more…)

ad astra

by .
4 Comments

So, way back last year when we were coming up with a name for Mach 30, we also decided on a tag line (something to help communicate what type of organization we are).  The tag line we choose was “Foundation for Space Development”.  It is part of our logo, and shows up as part of the page title on all of our web pages (thanks to a setting in Drupal).

Since sometime in the spring, I have wondered if there is a tag line that would more closely capture our values/goals and that could inspire us and future volunteers.  One idea that came to mind was to follow along the lines of what some other groups have done, which is to quote Virgil with “ad astra“, literally latin for “to the stars”.  Some groups simply use “ad astra”, while others use classic variations like “ad astra per aspera” (to the stars through difficulties), and there is at least one modern variation – “ad astra per alia porci” (to the stars on the wings of a pig).  All of this got me to thinking, could there be a Mach 30 twist on ad astra?

(more…)

The need for a common analysis platform in open design

by .
Comment

There are several barriers preventing engineers from sharing their work (that is the underlying analyses, as opposed to just the results). Some are cultural, such as the norm for journal article (publish equations, methods, and tools, not data files), and some are technical (using different tools, or different formulations). I believe the technical barriers reinforce the cultural ones, and are more straight forward to address, so I would propose looking at those first (this is actually a similar approach to the course of open source software, where early efforts focused on developing the tools that enabled people to share their work, including open source compilers and version control).

So, let’s take a look at one of the technical barriers: using different tools. One solution might be to use open source analysis tools (and they do exist for many specialties). Unfortunately, this would involve convincing engineers to use new tools, which at best means requiring the to learn how to use them and interpret their output, and at worst means convincing them that the tools really work (good engineers gave a heavy skepticism of new engineering analysis software). What if we turn the problem on its head? Instead of finding the one set of tools to use, we make it easy to switch between tools. I am thinking of a vendor neutral analysis description language. Engineers develop their analysis in this neutral format and then use translators to write vendor specific input files. Then if the engineers want to share their analysis, they send the neutral format file to someone who then uses a translator for the tool of their choice.

Now, I don’t imagine this would be easy. Their are many disciplines with many tools in each. But, imagine how much easier it would be to share one’s work. If anyone knows of an example of this, please let me know.

Take pics from space for $150???

by .
Comment

That is just what some MIT students did with entirely off the shelf gear.  Check out the story here, and their website here.  They go into some detail about how they did it, but I wonder if they would consider posting the full plans as an open design project.

Update 9/15/ 2009

Here is an update from Andy about this project:

“RE Pcsw from Space:  Their website has an update today saying that they plan to post a step-by-step soon and hope to have the stop action series of photos on youtube tonight.”

Also, on a technical note, “from space” is a slight over statement.  Turns out the pics are from an altitude of about 17.5 miles, or about 25% of the way to space.  However, the pics are of the edge of space (you can see the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space).  I wonder what night photos pointing down would look like (or up for that matter).

Update:   09/16/2009

This same story was picked up on the NPR Marketplace Morning report this AM.

In addition to general coolness I want to point out how quickly this went viral.  Stories about groups of people doing cool things with just a little bit of money are crazy contagious.  I think this could be an important lesson for us–when we are ready to move forward, what can we do to emphasize rather than hide our small group with a big dream identity.

Update:  09/24/2009

Here is another team’s flight report, this time in HD Video.

So, I have been thinking, what could we do along these lines?…  and I had an idea.  What about launch two just a few seconds apart so one takes pictures of the other?  How cool would it be to have pics of the mission at altitude, in addition to the pics of the Earth and space?  Any takers?

Update:  03/22/2010

Check it out, Arduino used in high altitude balloon.  The project is call the Ferret (project page).

Update:   02/07/2010

Another cool link…  Arizona Near Space Research