I am a bit of a space fanatic and, lately, I've been letting it show a bit. I attended a conference on National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges that included a big session on space stuff. A big hot shot from NASA was there and I really enjoyed hearing him talk and talking to him some afterwards. Then Anita and I went to see Hubble 3D. It showed great footage from the recent space walk to fix the Hubble and showed some great deep space images including a (CGI-enhanced) fly through of the Orion Nebula. The 3D effects were cool, but I'm not really sold that it was that much better than a high definition 2D movie.
At the conference on Grand Challenges, they only addressed a couple of the challenges. I attended sessions related to the challenge, "Engineer the tools of discovery", into which they shoehorned both space exploration and biological research. Relevant web links are,
Grand Challenges website: http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/challenges.aspx
The challenge involving space: http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/8965.aspx
At the conference, they also discussed computer technology issues (apparently just because this is Seattle and people around here know computers). Nowadays, I do supercomputing, so it was interesting to me to learn about the giant cross-country data pipelines they're working on.
Mike Griffin was NASA chief from 2005 to 2009. His resignation was accepted by Obama. (NASA chiefs always resign. If the new president wants them, he rejects their resignation. Unless they write another resignation saying, "no, really, I quit!", they stay on.) Recently, Obama has shaken up the space program by rejecting the Bush-era plan called Constellation which had set NASA's sights on the Moon. Griffin is, not surprisingly, pissed about this. IMHO, Obama is screwing up cancelling yet another NASA program. NASA is plagued by programs in which billions are spent and then the program is scrapped. Let the poor agency have some continuity!
Griffin's talk was about "systems engineering". Some of the things he hit on in the talk or in the Q/A afterwards were
- A book by a guy named Pirro (sp.?) called Normal Accidents. In systems engineering, you shouldn't focus on what is going to go right. You should focus on what can go wrong. Some accidents/errors can be predicted.
- He said: "All these damned requirements are causing high costs ... But desire to control costs has driven requirements." Requirements were something that drove me crazy as an engineer at Aerojet. So many requirements. You can hardly look at the hardware without getting a form signed. Certainly you can't make a common-sense change to a test procedure without running the gauntlet.
- Related to the concern about requirements, he related an anecdote in which a banker is talking to his son and says, "Son, sometimes you have to rise above principles."
- At Aerojet, we used to talk about Rube Goldberg designs which are overcomplicated contraptions put together of many disparate parts that end up doing some simple thing. Griffin cited it and mentioned that the saying comes fro Boy's Life. Wonder if any readers have heard of it before...
- "The only way to make complex decisions efficiently is by benign dictatorship." Yes, this is what we need for NASA. And the benign dictator must not be replaceable by each new president! Think we should choose head of NASA like we do supreme court justices.
- 2 million people died of scurvy until captain Cooke gave crew sourkraut. Exploration is dangerous. Griffin brought this up in response to a question about the danger of going to Mars. Everybody these days is afraid of the tiniest bit of radiation. There might be some radiation danger in going to Mars, but the danger is insignificant compared to the risk taken by millions of sailors in the age of ocean exploration.
- NASA has gotten more money in the last 15 years than the 15 years of Apollo in inflation adjusted dollars. This is an impressive figure. We (the US via NASA) have done some pretty cool stuff in space. But this fact does hint at the inefficiency of big, bureaucratic, "failure is not an option" NASA.
Now for the 3D Hubble IMAX show. Robots cannot possibly replace people in space when it comes to doing complex jobs. These astronauts depicted in Hubble3D were doing things that regular mechanics might do: leaning into funky positions and stretching to extract resistant bolts. They had to resort to brute force sometimes, breaking parts off when they just wouldn't come off by usual means. (The near-earth space environment isn't easy on machinery.) Imagine trying to design and program a robot to fix your car. That kind of robotics is not in sight. Anyway, the 2009 mission improved Hubble's resolution dramatically. It has a fancier wide field camera than before, and several other failed components were replaced.
In a breathtaking sequence, the viewer is taken from the Solar System through the light-years of space into the Orion nebula.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Nebula
There, viewers were shown a giant star at the center of the nebula. The star blasts the surrounding matter with interstellar wind, and often triggers star formation from clumps of gas. The clumps of gas, called proplyds can look like teardrop shapes in the wind.
This clump of gas in the Orion Nebula, imaged by the recently upgraded Hubble, is called a proplyd. It is described as a protoplanetary disk.
Hubble3D tried to engage J.Q. Public by harping on the theme that our space program (including NASA hardware like Hubble) is unlocking the secrets of the universe and, specifically, helping us home in on other life in the universe. I think it would be cool to find other life, don't get me wrong. But I think that our space program should be about using space to directly benefit humanity somehow. Granted, it's hard to see how ... just like it was hard to see how exploring the ocean would impact humanity. Further granted, discovering other life might benefit humanity in various ways. (E.g., we can ask them how to pull our heads out of our ass.)
My next space fix will be next Tuesday when Anita and I go to another lecture in the Seattle National Geographic Lecture series called Exploring Mars: Rovers of the Red Planet.
Posts
3 comments:
Sounds like you've had some interesting space input lately. I never realized that the NASA chief resigns with each new administration (and I'll bet the resignation is usually accepted). True, would be nice to have a little continuity.
the nasa dude should have credited dr. linde.
twas not captain cook who discovered that certain frutis cured scurvy but i have no doubt that when he found out he was surportive.
cook was a most humane captain and did try to stock fresh provisions for his men which certainly helped but he did not understand why.
it was scotish navel surgeon james lind who did a small randomized study of men w scurvy, either on or off of fruits finding that the fruits produced the cure.
of the millions of deaths, very few officers died of scurvey since their private provisions were fresh and the rest of the crew got old, stale, rotten provisions, naturally low in vitamins of all kinds.
lind found magic in oranges and limes.
see the book Limeys x david harvie
steve
I see. Cook seems to have been one of the first to use something with vitamin C: sauerkraut. But he boiled it removing most vitamin C. He did various other things to keep sailors healthy. Lind was the first dude to prove that citrus fruit would prevent scurvy.
Post a Comment