NASA's new plan for talking at us, part I

by guest blogger Ken

There's a lot of interesting stuff in NASA's new "Strategic Communications Framework Implementation Plan" that I grabbed over at NASAWatch. Unfortunately, it is a 79 page .ppt, which makes the prising of any real information out of it difficult (but it sho 'nuff looks clever), though I did notice quite a few interesting details as I waited for the dial-up download of 2.4 megs.

Things get interesting on page 7, the 'Brand Balance Sheet' (which is really the first part of a SWOT analysis, but whatever). Strengths are noted as Near Universal Awareness (no duh, Sherlocks), Enormous Public Appreciation, High Support, and Wide Appeal. Weaknesses are noted as Little Specific Knowledge, Lack of Relevance, Low Excitement, Disconnect from Activities, and Lack of Current Context, with the admonition that the NASA should focus communications resources and measure on a regular basis the first three of those.

Personally I think that all five of the weaknesses should be addressed, especially the last, Lack of Current Context. The reason that I 'no duh'ed the first strength is because NASA awareness is global. It wasn't the U.S. that put humanity on the Moon, it was NASA, and that brand name carries an enormous amount of good will everywhere in the world. But the 'Lack of Current Context' is huge, as it is the underpinning of the Lack of Relevance and Low Excitement.

Slide 8 breaks down the rough demographics, noting that the "base" of support is the 45-64 year olds, labeled "The Apollo Generation", with men more biased to exploration than women. This demographic more or less aligns with the Baby Boomers.

The other audiences are:
18 - 24 year olds, who have little or no frame of reference for the space program. This demographic aligns with Gen Y
25 - 44 year olds, whose frame of reference is tragedy. Boy, ain't that the truth- Challenger -and- Columbia. This is of course Gen X. (For the record I am at the front end of Gen X)
65+ years old is when the interest starts tapering off. This demographic roughly corresponds to "The Greatest Generation" and the "Tweeners" (the 1940s version of Gen X).

What are the Key Metrics by age? It's a little hard to tell because the chart in the Appendix either has an error or is divvied up funny. For Moon excitement, the results were as follows:

Somewhat or Very Excited
65+: 36%
45-64: 49%
18-34: 52%

Only Slightly or Not at All
65+: 63%
45-64: 51%
18-34: 47%

For Mars, the results are a lot closer to the Moon than has been the case in Gallup polls. Here:

Somewhat or Very Excited
65+: 37%
35-64: 47%
18-34: 55%

Only Slightly or Not at All
65+: 63%
35-64: 52%
18-34: 45%

So one of the break points is either 35 or 45, but either way Gen X is getting hosed, like usual. Either way, it doesn't correspond with the breakdown given in the body of the report, so I'm not sure what real lessons can be drawn from the data.

I think another aspect of the lack of current context is shown on slide 14, which grouped the responses to what people thought NASA did:
-Space Exploration (27%)
-Space, Space Program (17%)
-Research or Experiments (17%)
-Space Vehicles, Satellites (14%)
-Science/Technology/Products (13%)
-Spend too much $$ (6%)
-Aerospace/Aeronautics (4%)

I would like to see item #4 broken out, as apparently few people really see launching as NASA's business. This is a very, very interesting little tidbit, especially in light of the fact that the ESAS launch architecture is basically eating NASA's lunch right now. Also interesting is slide 15, where folks are asked if they'd heard about NASA in the news recently (the surveys were done in Feb. 2007), what it was (50% said astronaut scandal), and whether it left a positive/negative/no difference impression. 75% of yeses said no diff.

Next they go into the general impressions of NASA vs. different organizations, with NASA of course coming out very well (76% fav, 39% very), though beaten out by the CDC which had a lower unfavorable rating. 71% thought NASA should continue with Space Exploration, but only 53% saw NASA as relevant in some way, shape or form in their everyday lives.

Slide 20 then flips that last result on its head. After taking the initial response, the surveyors then 'exposed' the responders to technologies that NASA has played a role in developing (notice - not 'spinoffs', but rather a role in development, which is how I spin it at public events) and then asked the question again, to which a full 94% expressed a sense of the relevance of NASA, with extremely relevant jumping from 16% to 65%. That's huge! This is a strategy that directly addresses the question of Lack of Current Context. People aren't seeing the good work that comes out of NASA -now-, so they have nothing to put in the context of relevance. This is exactly why I try to distribute 'Spinoff' booklets and CD at outreach events. People love the technology. They like being informed about it. They like it being free information.

The two biggest drivers for the big swing to relevance? Smoke Detector technologies (I'm guessing the sensing intruments) and Advanced Breast Cancer Imaging technologies, though Heart Defibrillators and Weather Satellites helped,as did Remote-Controlled Robots, GPS (Say what?), Cordless Tools (one of my favorites, from the battery technology to deliver torque they had to develop for the Apollo tools), Satellite Radio & DirecTV (say what?).

Given the technologies just listed, which I can see as being very misleading to a member of the general public, I really have problems with slide 23. What, are people going to think that NASA developed Dish TV? Well, yeah probably. Slide 23 asks, on a scale of 0 - 10, when thinking about NASA and all its activities (GPS! XM Radio! DirecTV!), how much of a contribution do you think NASA makes to the US economy?

Initially, those rankings at 7 and above were 41% of the total, breaking down as 13/16/5/7 from 7 to 10 (which is 'Extremely large' contribution). Once informed, the total at 7 and above was 75%. That's an 83% increase! It broke down as 13/23/14/25. Most of this shift came from 5s (20% to 8%), 4s & 3s (both 8% to 2%), and 0s (10% to 3%).

It's the shift in the 10s, from 7% to 25% of respondents, that raises the red flag in the back of my brain about how people are understanding the technology message they just got. If people were really seeing NASA as playing a role in the development, but not actually running it, I think the shift would have been more to 6s (which stayed constant at 8%), 7s and 8s.

I think NASA has to be really careful how they play the technology card, as it could create a backlash if misplayed as 'NASA is responsible for...' instead of 'NASA helped with...and here's how'.

Moving forward to my personal interest, we get to slide 27 and 'Moon Mission Awareness'. A full 36% of respondents had heard nothing at all, which is abysmal, and a full 58% said eh, Some/Not Much, while only 6% had breathed the Moon dust and responded A Lot. Once informed of the fact that yes, there is the intention to go back to the Moon, a full 30% said 'Yeah, and...?" (okay, Not At All Excited). A full 53% said 'That's cool' (Somewhat/Only Slightly Excited), with a big jump to 15% of those excited about a return to our Moon.

Looking at the Reasons to Explore Space (slide 29), technology was the big Very Strong at 52% and total Strong of 80%, Inspiration and encouraging students was second at 37% Very Strong/78% total Strong, Setting Up a Moonbase for Useful Tasks was just behind at 37% Very Strong, but only 77% total Strong, and Moon for Development of new Energy Technologies pulled in a strong fourth at 35%/70%. Pulling up the rear were Explore Space to Stimulate Economy/New Jobs at 33%/72%, Satisfaction of Curiosity at 30%/70%, Flags and Footprints at 30%/65%, and Learning to Live Offplanet was 29%/57%.

Wait, there's more! Moon for Technology Testbed - 27%/70%, International Peace - 26%/64%, US Leadership in Exploration - 25%/62%, and Further Exploration of Moon for Knowledge Advancements and Improved Earthly Lives was at 21%/51%.

Slide 32 again touches on the Lack of Current Context. In focus groups, Credible Information is grouped as 'Preexisting belief that NASA plays major role in technology' and 'Preexisting belief that NASA work has led to major everyday contributions'. Under New Information is the factoid that 'Little, if any, specific knowledge of how NASA contributes or what it has done'. I don't understand how the slide is laid out, but that last point is critical, and again reinforces my concern that the people aren't understanding the contribution when associating technology with NASA.

The next slide reveals some underlying attitudes and disconnects.
-Participants not necesssarily for or against Moon/Mars missions, just wanted to know 'Why do these missions?'
-Leadership, legacy and public inspiration seen as less-persuasive reasons, especially for Moon.
-Most agreed international partnerships probably beneficial, but sceptical would happen.

The Take-Away from the surveys is shown as follows:
1) NASA's overall public image remains high and a large number of Americans believe continuing space exploration is important
2) However, fewer Americans rate NASA as relevant to their daily lives and perceptions of NASA's economic contribution vary
3) Telling people about specific NASA-related technologies has a tremendous impact on both relevance and economic measures
4) Among messages tested, there were no "weak" reasons for continuing space exploration, though some reasons were stronger than others
5) When talking about NASA programs and activities, framing NASA communications in terms of relevance and benefits is most effective

Since I took so long putting this together, Jeff Foust has done his own critique of "NASA's new outreach plan" over at The Space Review. I'm not going to critique his critique, but he also noted the big swing in the relevance factor, calling it staggering. He doesn't dwell much on the studies, just hitting on the highlights (making it an easier read), but I do appreciate the ISDC shout-out in the article. The bulk of the article discusses the Message Architecture and New Message Platform, which I'm going to visit in the next post.

Safely in Utah

Just wanted to let everyone know that I made it out to Utah today. I'll be defending my thesis on Tuesday, so I've got a couple of days to put together my presentation, and polish up the thesis a bit. I'll be out here till around the 7th or so, with the hope being that after the defense, I can take care of any needed paperwork, as well as possibly getting the final thesis revision polished and submitted to the Library. If all goes well, I may head home with everything signed off for graduation in August.

Tiff and the boys have been gone for the past two weeks being up with Tiff's parents in Oregon, and they'll be driving down with my sister Monday to meet up with me. It'll be really nice to see them all again--"baching it" is so overrated.

On a thesis related note, last week I stumbled on one last piezoceramic ring while digging through an old box of receipts, and was able to get the nozzle machined to match. Mike Massee and Charles Pooley came over to help me run the last experiment. The results were mixed, but generally positive. We were able to get the jet to modulate, but the modulations appear to have damped out after a short distance:





This was with glycerin at about 500psi feed pressure, and about a 120-150V driving voltage just below the electrical resonance point. The good news is that it is very clear that there was jet modulation going on. It just would've been better had it broken up into droplets. In hindsight, it appears that by using a fluid as viscous as glycerin, that the viscous effects dominated the inertial ones enough to cause the jet to resmoth. Water on the other hand (as you could see from my previous post) caused an unsteady enough "steady" jet to make measurements difficult. Maybe I could've split the difference and tried a water-glycerin solution.

Anyhow, while it wasn't ideal, and while it definitely points to the need for some future model refinements, it did validate part of the concept, and some of the observed behavior matched the expected trends, even if the amplitudes were off in magnitude....

Anyhow, that's a lot of data for me to finish absorbing and wrapping into my thesis, but wish me luck!

Being Had: Lies, Darned, Lies, and ASBL Misrepresentations

Ok, that's what I get for posting on something before thoroughly vetting it. It really looks like the anonymous commenter was right. I didn't have too much time to research this out (as my thesis is more important at the moment), but taking a brief glance through the NPRMs on the SBA site, it looks like the American Small Business League was blatantly misrepresenting the situation. The allegations of NASA counting large business contracts as small business contracts is probably bogus as well. Basically, ASBL claimed that NASA and other federal agencies had mad contracts with Fortune 1000 companies, and then lied about their status in order to make their small business contracting goals. What is more likely the case is that they found several instances of long-duration contracts where the contracting firm started out as a small business, but was acquired by or became a large business before the contract ran out. If that's really the case, that's nowhere near as outrageous as ASBL was trying to make it sound.

If people want to dig into this a little deeper, let me know what you find, but as of right now, consider this a formal retraction of the previous post, and an apology to NASA for what looks like invalid accusations on my part. I'll try to make sure I do more due-diligence in the future before just repeating stuff like this.

Lies, Darn Lies, and NASA Small Business Contracting Statistics [Retracted]

[Update: I probably should mention that an anonymous commenter claimed that this story is a big misrepresentation by the ASBL trying to win lobbying points for its clients...it's possible, but I'd really like more data either way before going further. Does anyone have any information about if NASA really has been counting contracts with Fortune 1000 companies as small business contracts? Also, does anyone have a link to the relevant SBA policy that the ASBL is blasting? I'm sure they've got plenty of reason to misrepresent some things, particularly the nature of the policy released. However the allegation that NASA has been counting large business contracts towards their small business contracting statistics is either true or not. Can anyone shed some more light on this?]

[Update2: I'm retracting this post. After taking some time that I didn't have to do some high-level due-diligence, I think the ASBL was blatantly misrepresenting the situation. I expected them to be biased, but looking at the regulations that they're griping about, it looks like they badly misrepresented things. I apologize to NASA for being taken in by this--nobody deserves to be falsely accused. I'm going to leave this up here, just so everyone can see how much of a tool I was, and so that if anyone wants to do more research on the topic they have a starting point]

I saw this article over on NASAWatch.com yesterday, but was surprised how little attention it's garnered in the blogosphere. Basically, NASA (as well as several other government agencies) have been counting billions of dollars of contracts to Fortune 1000 companies like Lockheed and Boeing as "small business contracts" for some time now, in order to claim that they've been meeting the federally mandated goal of 23% procurement from small businesses. The SBA, instead of criticizing them, or any of the other federal agencies that did similar things, passed a law allowing such dishonesty through 2012. This, in spite of the fact that a similar policy had been previously dropped after receiving over 6000 objections.

What's galling is that NASA was doing this even before the policy was enacted. In other words, for at least a few years, NASA has been counting contracts to big aerospace companies as "small business contracts" in order to lie about how well they've been doing with their small business contracting goals. The sad thing is is that as I understand it, they aren't actually legally required to meet those goals, but they felt it necessary to be dishonest anyway.

I don't have any beef with larger aerospace companies, and in fact I've got many friends in ULA, Lockheed, and Boeing. They sometimes do really useful work, and with how much expertise they have in some fields its perfectly reasonable for them to sometimes get contracts from NASA or other agencies for work. But I have a real issue when NASA or other federal agencies try to claim that a contract with a company that has thousands of employees is a "small business contract."

It's just dishonest. Though, I have to admit, I can't really say I'm shocked. This wouldn't be the first time NASA has "bent" the truth a little when it was convenient.

And the surveys say...

the 2007 ISDC was a pretty good conference.

by guest blogger Ken

The survey results have been compiled by one of our volunteers, and with an approximately 3.3% response rate amongst attendees, the feedback was as follows:

Overall the conference was pretty evenly split between good and excellent. The Kids Program got top marks, and a request for us to do it at future ISDCs. Unfortunately, our point person for that is moving to Arizona. Aaargh. Something else to rebuid.

The only Poor we really had control over was for the Art Show, but from one of the strictest graders. There were a fair number of Averages in the track programs and even one in the Speakers column. The real meat is in the comments. Some of my favorite points:

Features enjoyed most-
-NEO/B612 talk
-Children's Program
-Small groups allowed for personal interaction with speakers
-Wide variety of tracks
-Gala & exhibits
-Better display arrangements with handouts [woo-hoo!]
-New space ventures
-Space Venture Finance Forum
-author book signings, evening movies, vendors
-Paul Spudis
-Speakers [a number of times]

Features least enjoyed-
-Way too many afternoon tracks
-All tracks in afternoon, none in morning
-VIPs should spread out at meals
-Meal food
-Too few parties
-No daily coffee stations
-Cold rooms [a higher turnout was anticipated]
-Location of hotel (in the middle of a very boring area of Dallas)

I have to laugh at the last one, because Addison is where Dallas comes to party, and Restaurant Row one block away has over 100 restaurants and bars. The initial recommendation was an airport hotel that Really had nothing around it. The closest fast food was over half a mile away.

Other comments:
-Location was appropriate for senators and oil barons, not very suitable for us peasants [I predict that this ISDC was the last time hotel room rates were <$100]
-Very good effort and helpful volunteers
-Great conference. I hope NSS-NT holds it again
-I felt it was one of the best organized conferences I've been to in the past 5 years and I appreciate how helpful the workers were. They did a wonderful job!

And that, I think, pretty much sums it up. I'm pretty happy with the way the conference turned out (except for the worthless local media).

Otherwise I've just been laying low, catching up on some reading, and took a long weekend down to Austin (also known as Paradise on Earth). I love Austin, and it has been interesting watching how it changes over the years (I left during a very, very dark time in my life to go get my act together in upstate NY and have been wandering ever since, as befits an AF brat). Driving was an absolute pleasure, and I think Lamar Blvd. is my favorite street. There was none of the aggressiveness so characteristic of Dallas drivers. I can also feel a lot of good karma in that town. It's just a spiritual pleasure being there.

I've been doing a fair amount of work on the Lunar Library, primarily in catching up on the reviews of Moon stories that I'm working on as part of a larger project. The pile of unread fiction books is now smaller than the pile of reviewed stuff. I'm rapidly approaching 150 stories reviewed, and the traffic has been picking up of late.

I started the project back in January of '06, and by the end of the year about 12,000 visits had been made to the thread, or about 33 a day on average. Coming into 2007 the traffic started picking up , and I was consistently getting over 85 visits per day, with the average at times approaching 100 during surges. Since the ISDC, the traffic has picked up yet again, and it's getting closer to 200 visits per day to the thread.

Then again, I don't know to what extent there's double-counting. The phpbb forum doesn't show up on the Google Analytics of the site, so I can't gauge how the counter deals with movement between the pages. Google Analytics does show traffic through the Lunar Library, and I'm always amazed at what people are looking for. It's also interesting that a consistent 75% of traffic is shown as new visitors, though I imagine that cookie rules have a lot to do with that.

I was very pleased to find a copy of Arthur Clarke's "The Exploration of the Moon" while I was down in Austin. This copy has a jacket in really good condition (the protective plastic certainly helps), and even has the original $2.50 price tag on the inside leaf. It's 45 sections, each with a short description, from "Assembling Satellite Rocket" to "The Price...." with a short description on one page, and then a really nice B&W illustration by R.A. Smith on the facing page. The one for "The Spacesuit" is priceless for its manliness. The book details a step-by-step process for establishing a presence on the Lunar surface on the road to points beyond. I may have to write this one up for The Space Review. Since I had a coupon I got this one for a really good price.

Speaking of Moon-book arbitrage, I had to laugh when I saw the Amazon link for John Lewis' "The Resources of Near-Earth Space", which shows a best price of $1,446 [Update - Wow, it looks like it sold!]. Quite a bit more than what I paid for mine. A few of the really good titles are creeping up in price, like the "Lunar Sourcebook". Maybe there's a niche to be had as a broker of fine Moon and space-resource books.

In other business-related news, I noted the AP puff-piece about NASA wanting to make research space available on the ISS fee-free. The New Scientist Space article reflects a little bit of old-fashioned journalism and more cogent analysis. My general take is that NASA is trying once again to show how they're providing value, and I do applaud the agreement with the NIH. In my heart I support the effort, as I once wanted to be a lessor of previously-flown MDL and SDR equipment for use in on-orbit research. But as a businessperson I can see where it makes no sense for a company to put any capital into pursuing this opportunity.

Fundamentally, it boils down to transport. Not just getting the experiments to orbit, but also the researchers. I don't think that NASA is pushing hard enough for alternative U.S. transport to the station (i.e. non-National Space Transportation System),and they've already set a limit of 12 dockings per year at ISS. If you're having to use Soyouzes, that's not a lot of seat-availability for researchers, especially if the Russians are selling seats commercially. This opens up the possibility of a bidding war for the available Soyuz seats, a scenario that Sam Dinkin is probably better able to speak to than I.

So what if we do get transportation? Again, with limited dockings that means that the alt.access U.S. transport is competing with Russian tourist flights for berthing slots. Something tells me that to some extent the Russians would be dictating terms under their MOUs.

But then again, what is Bigelow offering? How are researchers supposed to get to Bigelow facilities? Word on the street is that LockMart may be working on a little something-something for him, but if so why isn't NASA looking at it? The easiest deduction is that NASA is concerned about any 'real' competition to their National Space Transportation System,and therefore is trying to stifle it.

What I would like to see is LockMart work with their ULA companions Boeing on a non-NASA orbital vehicle. Between the two of them they should have sufficient know-how, and if done right could probably even be financed through Boeing Finance Corp.

Having such a vehicle would not, in my opinion, act as a disincentive to other potential transport providers in the same way that NASA's stranglehold on the crewed launch market is a strong disincentive. Rather it would show that American industry is capable of creating a new space market outside of NASA. One that no one else in the world can match. A company or foreign government could finance an orbital vehicle as they would an aircraft, and finance the orbital facility the way they would a commercial building. That's the kind of thing that brings a tear to this investment banker's eye.

Solving the transport to orbit issue effectively unlocks the orbital micro-g research opportunities. The issue with micro-g research has never been that there wasn't enough money for it (okay, maybe a bit in some cases). The issue is, and has always been, access to the environment where the research needs to be conducted. This is what led to the effectively push-button mid-deck lockers and Spacelab drawer racks. Folks on Earth don't conduct research that way, they have scientists at lab benches running and tweaking experiments. Which I gather is the opportunity Mr. Bigelow is trying to open for us in orbit. Will BoeLockMart spring a surprise on us with an All-American capsule that wins the America's Space Prize? Will SpaceX be the one that grabs the market? Will Kistler clear the hurdle of that last 15% to completion? Will Armadillo's modular approach, funded by extreme high divers, be the solution that gets there first? And what is Blue Origin up to anyway?

Interesting times indeed.

P.S. Jon, if you're reading this why aren't you working on your thesis? ;-)

Mach 10 Butterflies

The past few weeks have been total roller coasters. Between Tiff's health problems, trying to wrap up my thesis, and what we've been up to at work lately, things have been nuts. It looks like it was very fortunate that I was able to get my thesis stuff done (for now) by Monday morning, because the rest of this week we've been in an all-out push to get XA-0.1 ready to fly. When that Gradall showed up Monday was when it really sunk in for me that we're almost there. Well, that and bolting the ACS system onto the vehicle this afternoon and watching the engine hinges move around as the vehicle hung under the tether. We were within seconds of trying to do an tethered hold-down test tonight with the ACS running (ie the vehicle is on a tether 7 feet above the test stand, with the hold-down bolt on the bottom of the vehicle chained to the stand), but with how crazy the wind was, we didn't think we'd be able to do so safely, so we scrubbed for the night.

The last time I was this nervous, stressed, and almost giddy with excitement was that first firing in front of the crowd there at the X-Prize Cup last year (both Ian and Dave said the exact same thing). I've got butterflies in my stomach, and they're hypersonic.

Thesis Update

Just wanted to let everyone know that I got my thesis sent off to my committee today. I still need to get all of them to sign off by tomorrow on it being ready for defense, but the it looks like I've made it! If all goes well, on the 3rd of next month I'll be defending my thesis, and I should have it submitted for publication by the middle of July. Once I have an electronic copy of it online there at BYU, I will post a link here. The paper came in shorter than I expected, with only 174 pages including the university pages at the front, and the reference list and Appendices at the back. I think the modeling approach I took is something I can be confident defending. I wasn't able to perform the final validation experiment due to the piezoceramic rings breaking (due to me being retarded during assembly), and it's unclear if I'll have replacements in time for the defense date, but otherwise I think I did pretty well.

I'll keep you all posted as new developments come up.

[Update: The form is in, and I'm officially scheduled for oral defense on the 3rd of July, 10am in the Mechanical Engineering Department Conference Room at BYU. I've still got to do a lot of polishing work on this paper, especially with cleaning up the format, and fixing any grammatical errors or confusing parts. And then I need to prepare my thesis defense presentation. And all this while we're doing the last few things at work before we get air underneath and a slack tether above XA-0.1...so the it looks like I'll be busy for some time yet.]

SpaceX Falcon 1.1 Post Mortem

Ok, I just spent the past two or three hours fighting with a model that was actually working just fine. I feel retarded with a capital R, so I think it's time for a break.

How many of you have had a chance to read the SpaceX post mortem on their second Falcon 1 launch attempt? It's rather interesting reading.

The sad thing is that it looks like the chain of events leading up to the launch vehicle failure may have started with something as simple as improper configuration control on the code for the Merlin engine computer.

Here's the basic sequence of failures as I can piece together from the post mortem:

1. Someone uploads some code to the Merlin 1 with some outdated tables for propellant mixture ratio control.

2. Merlin 1 runs leaner than planned at the start and richer than planned at the end, resulting in staging occuring at a much lower altitude than typically happens.

3. Staging occurs in a regime with much higher aerodynamic forces then planned for, which when combined with an extra torque caused by the Merlin 1 shutdown causes the Kestrel engine to impact with the first stage during separation.

4. The perturbation to the tank caused by the impact is larger than any of the perturbations modeled by SpaceX during upper stage tank design, and since the design doesn't have baffles, and the control program isn't designed to handle slosh on that scale, the slosh grows.

5. Slosh problems grow, eventually causing a roll to start.

6. The roll overcomes the roll-control thrusters.

7. Upper stage starts corkscrewing.

8. At some point the LOX inlet is oncover, causing Kestrel to shut down.

9. Demosat2 placed in fishing orbit.

It's a really sobering lesson, particularly for rockets with any sort of computer control. Configuration and revision controls are critical for stuff like this. We've learned some of those lessons the not-quite-as-hard-but-harder-then-we-would-like way ourselves. Just kind of amazing that a $6M rocket didn't make orbit, possibly because a few lines of code.

Thesis Photos

I just thought I'd show you some of what I've been up to lately. Before we could do the jet pulsation tests, we needed some good steady-flow tests to demonstrate that we had a system that could accurately detect jet modulation photographically, and that our steady-state jets were smooth enough for easy comparison. Mike Massee from XCOR helped me take the following set of pictures:


This was with one of my abrasive flow machined nozzles (flow machined by Extrude Hone Corporation), using the slower strobe (pulse duration 250 microseconds).

This was the same nozzle, but with the much faster Strobotac (0.5 microsecond flash duration).


And this is the same nozzle flowing glycerin, using the Strobotac strobe. Amazing what a ~650x increase in kinematic viscosity can do eh? It's hard to believe, but the glycerin jet in this photo is going somewhere between 30-35 meters per second!

For comparison, here are two pictures of a new nozzle that wasn't abrasive flow machined:



Notice that in spite of the fact that the second nozzle was much rougher with the water flow, that both of them were perfectly smooth for the glycerin flow. This is good because it means that for experimentation and verifying the pulsation characteristics, you can demonstrate the concept using a more viscous fluid first, then once you have the concept figured out, you can go back and do all the fancy manufacturing processes to your nozzles to make them flow smoother. It also shows that our photographic test rig is totally up to the task.

Unfortunately...I broke my last set of piezoelectric crystals yesterday trying to fit them onto our latest nozzle. I don't know if I'll be able to get a new set in time for my thesis defense. So for now, I'm scrambling to finish getting my paper approved for defense without being able to perform the key validation experiment...

...Anyhow, back to work...

Space Prizes Aren't a Panacea...

...but they do have a rather impressive track record. Saw that list in a comments section on space prizes at SpacePolitics.com, once again thanks to our anonymous friend.

Ok, off to bed.

110 Pages Down...

Just thought I'd give an update real quick. Last week was a blur.

Last Sunday, one of the tenants there in Mojave who stores explosives for the local mines had one of their containers explode. So we were locked out of our test area most of the week.

Then Monday, Tiff ended up having a friend take her to the emergency room in Bakersfield. It turns out she had pancreatitis caused by one of her gall stones getting lodged down in the duct leading to her pancreas. So she ended up having two surgeries last week. One to remove the obstruction, and the second to remove her gall bladder. She's doing a lot better now, and came home on Friday night.

It was a good thing my little sister ended up coming down from Utah. She was able to help out with the boys, and I borrowed her laptop so I could write my thesis stuff while sitting there in the hospital. Honestly, if that hadn't happened, I don't think there's a chance in heck I could have finished things by the deadline. As it is, it's still going to be nuts next week, but at least I was able to get a lot done last week.

Chapters 1 & 2 are done, Chapter 4 is most of the way done, and Chapter 3 is done except for the experiment I'm going to run on Tuesday or Wednesday. By tomorrow night I should have Chapter 4 done, and Chapter 5 mostly done (also waiting on those experimental results). Chapter 6 and the abstract will have to wait for Wednesday or Thursday. I currently have about 100 pages of actual real content (not counting the University Pages at the front, or the Appendices at the back). After the defense in July, I'm going to see if I can submit the paper electronically, so I can provide a link for anyone here who's interested. I'm sure you're all just chomping at the bit to learn more about piezoelectric modulation of water jets...

Anyhow, I need to get to bed.

Busy Out of My Mind

Hey guys, I'm going to be busy out of my mind as I start the last two weeks before my thesis has to be finished and ready to defend, most likely pulling 40-50 hours a week on that on top of the 40 hours a week I'm working at MSS. I was able to get a strobelight (actually the university is shipping out the exact one I had been using previously), so I should be in business again as far as that is concerned, but most of the work I have left to do (all ~55 remaining tasks) is writing, and revising some of the old stuff I've previously written. I've got a much better feel for how I want to write the thing, and it might just be possible for me to get this done.

My parents are bringing my sister down to help out for two weeks (while establishing her position as favorite auntie to two little boys), which should really help. Tiff's been having medical problems that more or less made it impossible for me to get any thesis work done during the second half of last week. She's doing a lot better now, but this is going to be tough.

Anyhow, if you guys want some bloggy goodness, Ken seems to be posting a lot of good stuff lately, and Ian over at the MSS blog has been putting up lots of eye-candy. Life's been a little big crazy, and it's going to stay crazy for a while, but the end of my thesis is finally in sight.

I'll post a brief update next Sunday (since I don't do school or work or space related stuff on Sundays).

Reflections on the ISDC

by guest blogger Ken
Co-chair, 2007 ISDC

So we didn't get as much local turnout as I would have liked, but there were still hundreds and hundreds of folks (i.e. at least 400) at the conference. The structure imposed by headquarters was that there would be no track programming in the morning against the Big Room, ensuring that it would appear relatively full. In the afternoons these same folks were distributed amongst numerous tracks as well as the Big Room. This was a bit discouraging for some of the tracks, as a larger turnout was expected, but what was really interesting was that there seemed to be about the same number of people in each track room. This tells me that we got the programming pretty spot on, as each track subject seemed to have equal appeal amongst the conference goers.

As noted in the prior update, there were a lot of, but not exclusively, palefaces. The question arose during one of the education panels, and everyone on the panel punted on it because no intelligent person wants to discuss things like race in a public, recorded forum. There is only downside in that equation. So being the complete idiot that I am, and conference co-chair, I decided to pick up the ball and run with it.

I noted that I could only speak anecdotally, but NSS of North Texas has spoken to thousands of people over the past few years that I've been associated with them. Working on the front lines you see a lot of the same cultural demographics repeated over and over. I noted that some families, upon seeing our display, will stop, drag their kids over, and won't leave until the kids ask a least one or two good questions. Other demographics will just keep cruising right on by even after seeing our display. I'm still trying to figure out strategies to hook those particular demographics. Framing the question in the context of cultural demographics also gave the panelists something to work with, so they did help take some of the heat off. It is a legitimate gripe: "Lots of palefaces - where's everyone else?"

Another gripe that does have merit is that we should have had more stuff on asteroids. This came up even before the conference, and taps into the larger zeitgeist. It's also why Rusty Schweickart got to do a TV show for the local PBS station, to talk about B612, while NSS just got a radio show (though twice as long). (a pretty good show, by the way) I keep saying that the general public is attuned to asteroids. (a) as a threat, and less so (b) as an opportunity. It's not just because they've seen 'Deep Impact' and 'Armageddon'. It's because they've slowly gathered enough information over to time to recognize that there is something there worth considering. I see it all the time in the questions that I get at public outreach events. I think this is why there is so much fuss over the recent asteroid report from NASA - NASA doesn't really want to play with asteroids, but the public wants to see asteroids as something that America does in space. If the military ends up picking up the ball on this one I worry that they may end up hiding it to help us 'feel' safe. Listen, NASA. Listen to the people who provide your salaries - the American taxpayers.

More on asteroids - I'm gettting weird results over at the Lunar Library. I added entries for all of the great free conference goodies I picked up, and the one item that is generating a large amount of traffic is 'Exploring Meteorite Mysteries', a ten-year old NASA educator guide that was handed out as part of the Moon rock certification. The reason it's weird is that it's accounting for more than half the traffic to the site just by itself, and having been up only two days at that. Lots of it through e-mail traffic. Even the Braille Moon book (Spanish-language edition) hasn't had this kind of interest. My highly-tuned bank analyst instincts are telling me there's something important here. Maybe I should have hitched my wagon to the asteroid movement instead of the Moon movement...

Let's look at the conference architecture for a moment. Over at Rand's website, there is some commentary on why the local press dropped the ball on local coverage. (Short answer: It's my fault, duh...) One comment is that space conferences aren't fun for the general public. This is something that I took to heart three years ago when we were trying to figure out what kind of program to present. I thought about the many things that I had found cool over the years at various gatherings to which I'd been. Things like financial conferences for work, civic organization gatherings like UNA and Rotaract, and space gatherings like UNISPACE III and WSC. What was the one uniting cool factor? The exhibits and free handouts. Everyone gobbled those up like candy.

This had to be balanced against the need to have people pay to see the really good stuff. Public exhibit space is nice and all, but we need the general public to fork over a few $ to help pay for everything, so they needed to be incentivized to do so. How? By dividing the exhibits into a public access area and a registrant-only area. A member of the general public could show up and wander the free tables and walk away happy with lots of goodies. They could also pay $40 and see things like the Pixel lander from Armadillo Aerospace (thanks!), or a rocket motor from Rocketdyne (not), high powered rockets (thank you DARS!), a CEV mock-up (not), a Bigelow Sundancer mock-up (not), or a LEGO Mars rover (not). The Day Pass would also have covered entry into the tracks, making it a respectable value for the money.

Was this an effective strategy? Hard to tell, as the sample size was really too small. Perhaps next year in DC we'll have a better turnout of the nice displays, and the DC press will have something of a clue as to what's going on in their city.

My proudest accomplishment of the conference? Getting Moon Rock certified. This has been something on my agenda for a while, and I wanted to make sure we had it available for our conference goers. I can't speak for Saturday's session, but Monday morning's was packed. Luckily there were some local educators as well, like the nice lady from the UTD Academic Bridge Program, and local teacher hottie Liz. Which helps lay the groundwork for the next projects.

From the chapter perspective our next 'big' project is the annual Discovery Fest at the Science Place in Fair Park. This will be our third year with a display, and I'm working with our contact there, museum hottie Summer, to get displays for some of the affiliates who were at the conference as well. I've got boxes of leftover handouts crammed in my tiny apartment, so it should be a fun event. It's also over the July 21-22 weekend, making it a perfect opportunity to celebrate Moon Day.

A project that I'd like to work on is having another Moon Rock training session for local educators. August has been recommended as the best month to do so, which doesn't give me a lot of lead time. It could be couched within a larger "Moon Fair" at, ideally, the Frontiers of Flight museum, which has a Moon rock on display. First two steps: figure out a curriculum/program, and start beating the bushes for education money. That's why it pays to develop the local networks, like the educators I noted above.

Hmmm... a Metroplex Moon Fair. I like the sound of that.