In the last post I said, 'And the hands are raised and you hear the shouts, "Fund me, fund me!"'
Kendall noted that I was getting good at being cynical about the space program in general, and funding in particular.
I mentioned that I should sit with the audience and see what it is I am saying behind the foot lights.
Maybe I wave my arms too much and come across with an attitude that says,.
"SEE ME, SEE ME, HEAR WHAT I HAVE TO SAY AND BE AMAZED!" :-)
Sorry about that. Looking at how missions do finally get implemented is worth noting but takes more research to uncover.
(All those negative sound bites are so easy to copy.)
Does one report it took a long time to get the mission approved or that dedication and persistence, with the ability to adapt to changing requirements, triumphs?.
Many years were spent getting NASA to okay the Kepler mission but Bill Borucki wouldn't give up.
- LRK -
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The idea of using transits to detect extrasolar planets was first published in 1971 by computer scientist Frank Rosenblatt. Kepler’s principal investigator, William Borucki, expanded on that idea in 1984 with Audrey Summers, proposing that transits could be detected using high-precision photometry. The next sixteen years were spent proving to others—and to NASA—that this idea could work.
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After revising, testing, publishing, and proposing for nearly twenty years, Kepler was finally approved as a Discovery mission in 2001
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Had Bill not kept up the good fight I wouldn't have gotten to write a bit of LabView code to control some of the components on the tester that was built to show you could extract information about the slight dimming that would be caused by a transiting planet.
- LRK -
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“To prove we could reliably detect a brightness change of 84 ppm, we needed a method to reduce the light by that amount. If a piece of glass is slid over a hole, the glass will reduce the flux by 8 percent—about one thousand times too much,” Borucki explained. “Adding antireflection coatings helped by a factor of sixteen, but the reduction was still sixty times too large. How do you make the light change by 0.01 percent?
“There really wasn’t anything that could do the job for us, so we had to invent something,” said Borucki. “Dave Koch realized that if you put a fine wire across an aperture—one of the drilled holes—it would block a small amount of light. When a tiny current is run through the wire, it expands and blocks slightly more light. Very clever. But it didn’t work.”
“There really wasn’t anything that could do the job for us, so we had to invent something,” said Borucki. “Dave Koch realized that if you put a fine wire across an aperture—one of the drilled holes—it would block a small amount of light. When a tiny current is run through the wire, it expands and blocks slightly more light. Very clever. But it didn’t work.”
“So Dave had square holes drilled,” said Borucki. “With a square hole, when the wire moves off center, it doesn’t change the amount of light. To keep the wire from bending, we flattened it.” The results demonstrated that transits could be detected at the precision needed even in the presence of on-orbit noise.
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The Mars rovers might not have ever made it to Mars if Steve Squyres hadn't persisted and found ways to overcome the obstacles.
- LRK -
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Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet
By Steve Squyres
Scribe
422 pages
ISBN 1401301495
1401301495
AUD$49.95
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington is one of the great museums of the world. It is awe-inspiring to see artefacts from the 1903 Wright Flyer to the original Apollo 11 command module. They demonstrate a tradition of brilliant, painstaking design and engineering in the face of environments hostile to man and machine.
Steve Squyres, the scientific principal investigator of the team that proposed, designed and built the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, is proud to be part of that tradition. But there were plenty of problems along the way. Before the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project, Squyres had painful years of rejected proposals, starting with one in 1993 for a camera to go on the Mars Environmental Survey Pathfinder. When the MER team finally did receive approval from NASA to construct the rovers, the time frame was almost impossibly brief, with immense technical problems to surmount.
Then, in 2003, when a lastminute problem emerged just before the start of the launch window, it looked as though the launch of Spirit and Opportunity might be delayed until the next good window in 2005, or even permanently. And while Squyres was arguing for the launch to go ahead, an important NASA official told him, depressingly, “I think they’d look pretty damn good over in the Air and Space Museum.” That particular problem – as with all those that had preceded it – was finally solved by the hardworking team, but more just kept on coming.
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I would imagine that most missions have their own set of problems and that solving them is what engineers like to do.
And if you read Alan Binder's book you will note other kinds of problems, not so easily fixed by engineers..
- LRK -
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Lunar Prospector: Against All Odds [Paperback]Alan B. Binder (Author)
Lunar Prospector, Against all Odds is the Principal Investigator’s highly personal account of the triumphs, defeats, dirty politics, and ultimate success enjoyed and endured during the 13 years it took to accomplish the Lunar Prospector mission. Like the mission, Lunar Prospector, Against all Odds answers to the American taxpayer, but this time spotlighting the incompetence and self-serving activities of the NASA bureaucracy and accompanying aerospace industries. Together, they waste a large portion of the $13 billion yearly federal government budget to execute America’s space program.
The Lunar Prospector mission was the only NASA funded space project that was conceived and managed by a scientist rather than a NASA bureaucrat or engineer — a venture initially developed outside NASA that proved when missions are properly conceived and managed, the cost of space exploration can be cut by a factor of 10.
Lunar Prospector, Against all Odds shines light on the faltering American space program, however, it also provides new hope and vision — one for transforming the tired space industry into an efficient, commercially based, and profit-driven program that eliminates the federal government handouts which so lucratively line the pockets of the huge aerospace industry.
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Having played a small part in helping NASA Ames Research Center provide Lunar Prospector data to be displayed on a web site and being a passive watcher of the daily goings on, I would beg to differ with some of Alan Binder's portrayal of the Lunar Prospector mission.
As I mentioned, maybe I should sit with you and see what it is I am saying behind those foot lights.
Please feel free to give me a nudge, nudge, and let me know what kind of arm waving you would like to see.
Thanks for looking up with me.
- LRK -
List of proposed missions to the Moon
There are several future lunar missions scheduled or proposed by various nations or organisations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
NASA Ames Academy for Space Exploration
The 10-week summer Academy runs from the 2nd week of June through the third week of August. Transportation and housing will be provided by NASA in addition to a $4k stipend from your Space Grant for the summer.
NASA Ames Academy is a Diverse Summer Program that Focuses on Leadership, Team Building, and Provides Direct Contact with NASA Research in Advanced Science and Engineering.
Applications are accepted October through January for the following summer's Academy Program.
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- LRK -
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.
BlogSpot: http://
WordPress: http://lrkellogg.
RSS link: http://
Newsletter: https://mailman1.
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BlogSpot: http://
WordPress: http://lrkellogg.
RSS link: http://
Newsletter: https://mailman1.
==============================
This list of manned Mars mission plans in the 20th century is a listing of formal proposals, studies, and plans for a human manned mission to Mars during the 20th century. It is limited to serious studies done with engineering and scientific knowledge about the capabilities of then current technology, typically for high-budget space agencies like NASA. Mission profiles included manned flybys, manned landers, or other types of Mars system encounter strategies. For later plans see Manned mission to Mars.
Many mission concepts for expeditions to Mars were proposed in the late 1900s. David Portree's history volume Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950—2000 discusses many of these.[1] Portee notes, every 26 Earth months a lower energy Earth to Mars transfer opportunity opens,[1] so missions typically coincide with one of these windows. In addition, the lowest available transfer energy varies on a roughly 16 year cycle, with a minimum in the 1969 and 1971 launch windows, rising to a peak in the late 70s, and hitting another low in 1986 and 1988.[1] Also of note, the Mariner 4 Mars flyby in 1965 provided radically more accurate data about the planet; a surface atmospheric pressure of about 1% of Earth's and daytime temperatures of -100 degrees Celsius (-148 degrees Fahrenheit) were estimated. No magnetic field[2][3] or Martian radiation belts[4] were detected. The new data meant redesigns for planned Martian landers, and showed life would have a more difficult time surviving there than previously anticipated.[5][6][7][8] Later NASA probes in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s confirmed the findings about Mars environmental conditions.
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Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950—2000
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There are several future lunar missions scheduled or proposed by various nations or organisations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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NASA Ames Academy for Space Exploration
The 10-week summer Academy runs from the 2nd week of June through the third week of August. Transportation and housing will be provided by NASA in addition to a $4k stipend from your Space Grant for the summer.
NASA Ames Academy is a Diverse Summer Program that Focuses on Leadership, Team Building, and Provides Direct Contact with NASA Research in Advanced Science and Engineering.
Applications are accepted October through January for the following summer's Academy Program.
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -
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