Historical note: does anyone want a hovercraft? This fucking thing is still in my garage.
Jess, Claire, and I worked on the hovercraft yesterday. On Friday I added some metal to the motor mount to keep it from sagging in the front, then yesterday we installed the motor to the mount, put the mount on the body, and installed the propeller. It turns out that the sagging motor mount may have been intentional (which would explain all of the hammer marks on it) because with it straightened out, there is some interference between the propeller and the velocity stack. So I'm going to have to pull it off and move the motor mount back about 1/8" to account for that.
We also tackled the "hood" (trunk? motor cover?); it's kind of flimsy and was pretty broken. We put together an aluminum frame for the bottom of it that should make the hinge attachment work and keep the whole thing stiffer and straighter.
The plan right now is to get the motor mount fixed, get the cover fixed and mounted on the body, then I need to work on the motor a bit: electric starter, alternators, kill switch, etc. I guess do something about the driver's seat too. Once it hovers well, the next step will be thrust.
I want to push on this pretty hard in the next few weeks; if it gets to the point where it works reliably, I want to see if I can talk the people at work in to letting me interface the Epoc headset with it so that we have something to show off at work. *that* would generate some interesting discussion with the safety folks ...
Historical note: I think this was my Nokia N97.
I'm in the process of backing up all of the stuff from my cell phone, so I can erase its contents and send it back to Nokia for repair. The little sliding "lock the keypad and touchscreen" switch broke off. Grumble. I've been getting around it for a couple of weeks; I can unlock the screen by opening and closing the keypad, and then lock it from a menu that comes up when I hit the power button. It's pretty inconvenient, and given the failure mode of my last Nokia (the little ribbon cable that connects the screen to the body of the phone broke) I feel like I should be careful of how much I open and close the screen. Is that really the sort of thing I should have to think about in a $600 phone? Ugh.
First day of spring! It was 37°F outside when I woke up this morning. Hrmph.
Work at NASA continues, despite all the hoopla and hand wringing. This week we have crew members coming over to the low-fidelity Orion mockup to test out some Rotational Hand Controller (RHC) prototypes. One of the prototypes is a super-expensive mockup made at Langley that's electrically functional and has the correct translation, which is kind of cool, except that the body is a very old design and not really representative of what we're planning on doing. The next one is a stereolithed model that's volumetrically equivalent to the current baseline proposal, but I've made models of all the buttons and put them on Velcro so that we can move them around and try different places (in particular there's a lot of question about where the launch abort button is going to go). Then there's a third mockup that is like the baseline but a bit bigger to accommodate some proposed SCRAM (Safe Crew Return After Malfunction) switches that will give some manual overrides for roll control during a Bad Day. That may change too, but it's rough because Pencils Down is coming in a few weeks.
So that's exciting. Also exciting is that I'm working on a pile of proposals for us to get funding to pursue next generation HMI technology. This is sort of an independent path from Constellation, so if we do get money it stays there even if Constellation does get the axe. If it doesn't, then some of what we do might end up in the Lunar Upgrade or later revisions of Orion. Or if there's no Orion, it will more than likely end up in whatever crewed vehicle comes next.
It's really interesting stuff. The current Orion cockpit is actually kind of old school; it's not much more advanced than the Shuttle from an HMI perspective (the avionics themselves are actually really fantastic and there's lots of cutting edge stuff there). What we want to do is look past the current level of stuff and get into the really amazing stuff that will still be powerful and robust in 10-15 years. We have lots of great ideas, and a lot of it is going to involve industry and academic cooperation, which is a great bonus. Here's hoping we get to pursue them!
Saw Alice in Wonderland last night. 3D, even. It was a gorgeous movie; the scenes of Wonderland were visually stunning (the Red Queen's castle was particularly great). Good enough to forgive some of the CG bloopers (there were a few). They also made a really good treatment of the story (The what? Who sees a movie and cares about the story?). Totally recommended.
I saw it in 3D; in general I think the 3D thing is a bit overhyped and I really don't care much about it, and in the past those things have given me a headache. In this case it worked though; at some points it seemed like they made things swoop out at the audience just because they could, but in general it was pretty smooth.
Before the movie they had a preview for the NASA Hubble servicing mission movie. I do want to see the movie and I'm sure it will be very interesting, but the preview was done up like one of those space disaster movies, where "they had one chance for success" and they were making it sound like the lives of everyone on the planet depended on it. That was sprinkled with a few shots of mundane astronaut activities, like getting into launch suits and stuff. Maybe it's because I work at NASA and see what goes on with this stuff, I dunno. I mean I get really excited about these missions, but not "Bruce Willis and a bunch of oilmen" excited.
I'll still go see it.
... and I'm actually kind of excited about the new direction that we're getting. There are two parts that bother me:
Overall I have good feelings about this. People keep asking the same questions to different people, and the answer is always "we don't know yet" ... I'm not sure when people are going to figure out that the answer won't change until congress decides to let it.
Historical note: this post marks the beginning of the era of posts that I specifically wanted to save when bringing up a new blogging platform. I don't agree with everything here - at this point in my life I view the Constellation program as a boondoggle that merely served to demonstrate that NASA will never again accomplish anything worthwhile. I also spoke more eloquently on several of these topics in later posts. But starting at this point, I started becoming the person who I, as a 40-something adult, recognize as being myself. For whatever that's worth.
There's a lot of emotion (and some hard feelings) about the president's FY2011 budget proposal for NASA. A lot of smart, dedicated people have worked for a long time to bring the Constellation program as far as it has come, and many of those people are understandably upset that the president has called for the program to be canceled outright.
The bad feelings aren't about people losing their jobs. I'm sure that's a concern for many, but there's something else, something much deeper. Engineering isn't just the practice of cobbling something together from a collection of pieces and ideas - it's a creative endeavor, an art, and just like other artists and artisans, engineers put a lot of time, effort, and energy into their creations. Yes, creations - an engineer designing a spacecraft (or other complex engine) puts blood, sweat, tears, and a little bit of their soul into their project; their child; their creation.
Robert Crippen gave a fine example of this bond during the Columbia Memorial Service held at Kennedy Space Center in 2003. Columbia "struggled mightily in those last moments to bring her crew home once again. She wasn't successful. [...] Columbia was hardly a thing of beauty except to those of us who loved and cared for her ... She, along with the Crew, had her life snuffed out while in her prime." Columbia wasn't a piece of equipment used by astronauts to do their jobs; she was another one of the crew, struggling against an injury that she would eventually succumb to.
The Space Shuttles are not mere machines; they are beloved members of a team of thousands, who dedicate their lives to the awesome feat of lifting humanity from the surface the planet and bringing them safely back. And like the human team members, each spaceship has its own strengths, weaknesses, quirks, failings, and triumphs - each has her own personality that is endearing to her friends, if baffling to outsiders. Sounds a bit like you and me.
And so it is with the Constellation program. The Ares rockets and Orion capsule are still in their infancy - not yet whole; not yet capable of achieving the high expectations that their heritage suggests and their creators are striving to help them achieve. And now, along with the Shuttle fleet (NASA's best and brightest children, all grown up) they are in danger of being snatched from us, relegated to history books and dusty museums by an uncaring public that can never understand the mistakes that they're making; the grief that they have caused us.
Why should we allow this to happen? What person would turn away as their pride and joy is taken away?
This is the heartbreak of engineering, one of those things they don't tell you about in college: the destinies of our creations are not always under our control. For the Constellation program, Destiny is page 18 of "Terminations, Reductions, and Savings" in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget, just after Coal Tax Preferences and Commodity Storage Payments; just in front of an Economic Action Program and some Election Reform Grants.
And insult is added to injury: "By early 2009, [...] the program was behind schedule, could not achieve its goals without multi-billion dollar budget increases, and was not clearly aimed at meeting today's national priorities." So now we're at fault: we're late, over budget, and not making what the nation needs; we're such bad parents that our child is being taken away! The pain turns to anger. Whose national priorities created the program in the first place? Why was the program never properly funded? Why were engineering decisions made by incompetent senators and administration officials, instead of the qualified engineers at NASA? And what makes the current crop of incompetent senators and administration officials more likely to make good decisions? Why can't they just leave us alone to do our work? And just what do they mean by "bold new approach" - by "lacking in innovation" - how was Constellation the "least attractive approach to space exploration?" That's my baby - my work - that you're bad mouthing!
This is the moment where we all need to step back. Take a few deep breaths, and clear our heads a bit.
Another fundamental aspect of engineering is that when faced with a problem as complex as safely leaving the planet, going to another one, and coming back, there is never a perfect solution. Engineering is, among other things, the art of compromise: the ideals of unlimited capabilities and perfect safety are limited by the realities of mass, volume, power, heat, radiation, physics (pesky physics!), time, budgets, politics, and many others. To get more here, we must give up something there; nothing is free. Everything is compromise, and there are many different routes that the journey can take.
Was the Constellation architecture a good compromise? Would the DIRECT approach be better, or a Shuttle-derived sidemount option, or a derivative of existing heavy launchers? Obviously, there are a lot of opinions on the subject, and many are not well displayed. Bloggers and anonymous posters abound, all with their own petty grievances and strongly felt opinions. On the internet, we may not know that you're a dog, but we do know that you're rude, arrogant, and self-righteous, and nobody wants their hard work denigrated by some anonymous clown. I too am those things from time to time, and I certainly have my own opinions on the Constellation architecture, but today I'll keep those to myself.
And it's just as well, because my opinion (and most likely yours) doesn't really matter. Fools control our destinies in many ways, and one of those ways (as we're seeing now) is by controlling the mission of NASA. The future of scientific and technological achievement at NASA isn't decided by the scientists and engineers that work here, but by politicians who don't know (or care) what we do, as long as it brings jobs and money to their districts.
So the president has created a budget proposal. The next step is for it to be dragged through the congressional gauntlet until it has been beaten and kicked into some unrecognizable kludge of pet projects and local protectionism that should never see the light of day, and that's what we'll end up with. Will that be good for us, or for the nation? I don't care to speculate what the end result will be, but I'm sure it won't be exactly what the president has proposed, nor will it be what many people want. Such is life in a republic.
One thing that does seem likely is that even if the Constellation program is scrapped, NASA's budget will grow, and other programs will be created to take Constellation's place: research and development to support future heavy-lift rocket systems; a vigorous new technology development and test program; a steady stream of precursor robotic exploration missions. It may not be Constellation, but that does sound like the kind of work I envisioned doing when I applied for a job at NASA. And for those of us who worked on Constellation, we can (and must!) honor whatever legacy it has earned by taking what we've learned and applying it to these new projects.
The phrase "I work for NASA" is one that will earn you instant respect almost anywhere in the world, and for good reason: we're smart, we're creative, we work very hard, and we produce outstanding results that other nations aspire to. As NASA's mission changes, we can rise to the new challenges that come with the new mission, and prove that we're worthy of that respect.
Well I moved a year ago and kinda fell down on the job in terms of keeping this stuff up. Yes, it's been over a year since I posted last. Why even bother? I dunno. Might as well! Anyway, it was an ... interesting ... year, and I just never managed to get to this stuff. But I'm kinda back and the site is kinda back and maybe I'll start posting here again. I transferred some of my old posts from the old server to the new service but not all of them. Still no photos, but that will be fixed eventually. Probably.