Help Us Plan Our Space Mission (Seriously)

I'm excited about my graduate class next semester. I'll be taking the capstone course of the Space Systems graduate program at Florida Institute of Technology. The capstone course brings together everything you've learned in the program to plan an actual space mission. I've been selected for one of the teams next semester.

There's only one problem. We don't know what the payload is and where we're going! ;)

We could wait for the faculty tell us or we can come up with our own mission. So I'm throwing this out to the space tweeps out there. Are you a scientist with an idea for a spacecraft and a destination? Have you always thought to yourself "That would be a good mission.", but didn't have the resources to plan it out? One constraint is to keep it within today's available technology. In other words, nothing that requires warp drive, etc.

As a team we will come up with an entire plan. We'll pick the rocket, launch location, trajectory, etc. We're full service! ;)

The project starts the first week in January 2010. Please leave a comment on this post or e-mail me using the link on the right. You can even contact me on Twitter using @dborzillo.

"You are now free to roam about the solar system."

To Boldly Go Somewhere

Tonight (hopefully) the space shuttle will blast off on another trip to the international space station. America's space pick-up truck (my pet name for the space shuttle) is scheduled to retire next year according to the schedule. Soon it'll be up to President Obama's administration to decide how NASA should continue manned spaceflight.

President Obama's administration had asked for a review of NASA's plan for human spaceflight. The US Human Space Flight (HSF) Plans Committee was formed with an impressive group of members. It includes first US female astronaut Sally ride along with members from industry and academia. The HSF committee will not tell President Obama's administration what to do. They will only give options. They've presented some of what they will present and it doesn't look good.

Last year I talked a lot about what then candidate Obama could do (or not do) for NASA. It became a popular topic on this blog (here's an earlier post as an example). My quick analysis...

• We didn't send people to the moon for science. Although we ended up doing science expirements on the moon, we went there out of fear that the USSR would dominate space and use that dominance to threaten the US and its allies.
• Sending people into space is dangerous, even after all the missions by all the countries of the world for the past half century
• Man has a need to explore.
• The Chinese have launched several manned missions and India is on track to launch their own manned mission in the comming years.
• We're in (or comming out of) a recession
• The end of this article from the Huntsville Times states:

Last week, during a speech in Huntsville, new NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told a gathering of defense and aerospace leaders that he did not see a drastic change in the American space program. However, he did underscore that the three top priorities handed down to him by President Barack Obama were environmental research, technology innovation and space exploration, in that order.

I wouldn't hold my breath on any exciting new moon/Mars/Venus manned mission anytime soon. I would expect a decision on more environmental research satellites later this year. A consolation might be that most launches will be supplied by private space companies. That will give these space companies the ability to establish products and services that could turn a profit and fuel spin-offs like space tourism.

Thinking Cap

Check out this 60 minutes video below. I bet people will look back and wonder how we ever got things done "the old fashion way" of using our hands with a computer...

Watch CBS Videos Online

Defying Life

I was excited to see a new SciFi series on ABC about human exploration of the solar system called Defying Gravity. The geek in me always enjoys a series that theorizes about new propulstion systems, ways for people to live in space for long periods of time, etc. There hasn't been a Star Trek series on television for years. Maybe Defying Gravity will fill the void.

After the first two episodes I was ready to give up on the series. It was turning out to be more like a soap opera with different characters flashing back in time to when they began relationships with the other characters on the show. It all made sense when I found out the producer of Grey's Anatomy is also invoved in this series. No wonder the blogosphere calles the series "Grey's Anatomy in space".

Also, I had a hard time turning off the old think-mellon about the technical aspects of the show. For example, for artificial gravity the crew wears clothing with some nano-magnetic woven fiber mumbo jumbo to keep them achored to the ground. Say what? So what about showering, going to the bathroom, etc? Is there special clothing for these tasks? So far we haven't heard anything about the engines, communciations, etc. There are a ton of challenges sending humans to Mars via Venus on a six year mission. While on the ship the crew wears a special patch behind the ear to suppress sexual urges (I can't belive I'm writing about this on my blog; I hope my nephew isn't reading this). So there is one cool piece of technology that could help in long space missions.

Ok, let's put the technical stuff aside and get back to the soap opera aspect of the series...

One of the main reasons I stopped watching Battlestar Galactica was over the soap opera dynamics of "boy meets girl", "boy wants girl", "girl thinks she wants boy", yadda yadda yadda. Show me more toaster Cylons with that flasy red eye thing going on.

Frustrated with how science fiction has become more for those wanting romance, I was trying to figure out how to spend a Borders gift card. I found a book I'd been wanting to read for a while called Riding Rockets by former NASA astronaut Mike Mullane. I thought I'd found my cure for my SciFi frustration. I was excited to read an astronauts biography about his experiences in the space program. Alright, here we go. No soap opera stuff here. It's all rockets, apogee, perigee, you name it. Let's get talking about astrodynamics.

Without giving too much away (because you should read it for yourself if you're interested) I was amazed to read about stories that really aren't too far from what's being portryaed in ABC's Defying Gravity. It made me stop and think about things. Besides the stories in Riding Rockets I thought about Lisa Nowack. She was the NASA astronaut who became involved in a wacked-out love affair with another with another NASA astronaut. She became so jealous she drove from Houston to Orlando to confront her lover's girlfriend. Or is it mistress? I get so confused about these things. Anyway it's complicated and NASA had to do a lot of PR damage control.

So while soap operas aren't my thing they do prove one thing about life in the real world. We're complicated beings. We all have hurts, hangups, frustrations. Series like Battlestar Galactica and Defying Gravity seem to be stretching the net of SciFi to more than just propulsion and life support systems. It's no wonder that the SciFi channel has changed it's name to SyFy. The new name still sounds the same, but it's different enough to attract non-geeks (like cool people) who would want to watch series about people in relationships with a bunch of cool technology available.

So let's see where Defying Gravity takes us. Hopefully we won't be left hanging.

Hello World

tap tap tap....is thing on?

I know I haven't blogged for quite a while. 2009 has not been a dull year. A lot has been going on. I keep thinking of things to post on this blog and then I never get around to it.

Many of you have been following our adoption journey on Facebook and in the "analog" world. We thank all of you for your support and encouragement this year.

As for tech stuff, I'm learning about cloud computing. The more I learn about working in "the cloud" the more I'm convined it's here to stay. You don't have to worry about hosting your own web or application server and keeping it up and running. Plus, with cloud computing you can scale from 5 users to 5000 users anytime. If you think about it Gmail, Google Docs, etc. are all examples of what cloud computing can do. With wireless access practially everywhere you're no longer confined to the files and applications on your computer.

Also, I'm only 5 classes away from getting my graduate degree. I can't believe how fast the time has been flying by.

Ciao