Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V10_2/V10_239.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #239

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 239

Today's Topics:
               Re: Solar power
            Hubble Space Telescope
              Re: Advice?? (asking for)
              Re: Advice?? (asking for)
            Re: Moon Colonies / Ant Tanks?
  Working for NASA at the PhD Level (was Re: Advice?? (asking for))
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 Nov 89 10:47:50 GMT
From: voder!dtg.nsc.com![e-mail]  (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head )
Subject: Re: Solar power

[e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
> The collecting area has to be big.  This means either big panels or a
> concentrating mirror.  Big panels are heavy, and concentrating technology
> of that sort (as opposed to small concentrator lenses to run souped-up cells
> at high temperature) is not well developed yet.
> It's basically just a function of collecting area.  To get the same power
> output twice as far out, you need four times the area, courtesy of the
> inverse-square law.

'Course, a gravitational lens composed of massive (really massive), cheap,
orbiting-with-you rock - galactic size will do - could save a few square
metres of mirror; haven't done an exact cost-benefit analysis though :-)
--
...........................................................................
Andrew Palfreyman    a wet bird never flies at night        time sucks
[e-mail]    there are always two sides to a broken window

------------------------------

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From: [e-mail]
Subject:  Hubble Space Telescope

  I recall reading somewhere that the Hubble Space Telescope would be able
to resolve continents on planets orbiting distant stars.  Is this a piece of
fanciful reporting, as it would seem, or is there actually some basis in
truth?

Andrew J. Greenshields [[e-mail]]
Widener University
Wilmington, DE.

------------------------------

Date: 12 Nov 89 19:13:43 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Eugene Miya)
Subject: Re: Advice?? (asking for)

Far too many groups to cross-post to.......
>Entering the space program as a career.

You should stick with studying astronomy and physics, you can always go into
other scientific areas. 8)

In my case, I decided I wanted to be a scientist in 4th grade (specifically
astronomy).  At the time the space program was on a roll, a friend's father
worked at JPL and be brought back fact sheets on Surveyor (he worked there
for Huge Aircrash), little did I realize I would end up working in one
of those buildings (264).  By 6th grade I realized that the world would only
support about 800 astronomers, now and in the future.  So I went nuclear
[only to discover in college that there were flaws in this industry (early
70s), fortunately I started hacking on the ARPAnet 8)].  After dropping
out of grad school I did get an offer to return to get a PhD in astronomy
from Santa Cruz, a child's dream come true, oh BTW, you can return to
computing after you get it.  True.

You see the space program doesn't need astronomers specifically, in fact
there are very few jobs of with require this.  It needs generalists
with a few specialists.  The reason is that you will work in interdisciplinary
teams in many cases.  It is your flexibility which is important (for
budgetary reasons as well as problem solving).

What the space program is very poor of, in contrast to industry 9),
is training.  Expect to hit the ground running.  You also have to ask
yourself what else you value: a home, a family, etc. because will become
increasingly difficult to do this in the Government sector.  You can
become a contractor or an academic and "close encounter" space, but
you have to remember space != astronomy.

But you get to play with some fun tools, meet a few interesting people,
have fun on some interesting (hard) problems, etc., etc.  As far as working
on projects go: perhaps 1 in 10 proposals gets funded.  I used to work
on all those neat sounding plans.  There just isn't enough money to
fund them all.  Expect layoffs.  Now, with major demilitarizations
and de-politicializations, who knows.  We have to direct our money into
new areas, hopefully it will go into science and research and some into
space.  But this requires a re-alignment of our social priorities.

Anyways, I've not said too much about jobs specificially, and the calendar
is turning so that cron should post my yearly reminder about summer
space program jobs in December [i.e. prepare resumes, etc.] but I send that to
misc.jobs.misc [sure it screws those people who read space as email,
but that is the appropriate forum for employment].  I won't give you a pep
talk, but I was one of the people who made it into the system after
watching those boosters go up with little capsules.  Your netural odds
of getting a job are slightly better than those with net access (you
"know" how to use a computer), but that ain't enough, the vast majority
of those hired MEs, EEs, chemists, physicists, astronomers don't have
net access.  So just study, and BE EXCELLENT.

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, [e-mail]
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
  "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
  "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
  {ncar,decwrl,hplabs,uunet}!ames!eugene
          Support the Free Software Foundation (FSF)

------------------------------

Date: 9 Nov 89 01:50:33 GMT
From: island!grenada!everexn![e-mail]  (Mike Higgins)
Subject: Re: Advice?? (asking for)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Amy Antonucci) writes:
>to get on the right track so that I may be involved in the space
>program as a career.
> ... I'm a freshman at Penn State, and I've chosen an astronomy-physics

I'm talking to people in the Physics/Astronomy department at Sonoma State,
and they are trying to encourage students into the Astronomy track.  It seems
that the number of missions being launched now or planned for the future are
going to start returning data in comming years, but qualified students are
not ENTERING college fast enough to meed the expected demand!  So if this
was you desired major, I'd say stick with it!  You will be in high demand
when you graduate!

Mike Higgins                                       "Never trust a machine
...ucbvax!cogsci!well!fico2!everexn!mike            you can't program"
So many newsgroups...  so little time...

------------------------------

Date: 13 Nov 89 05:06:13 GMT
From: uceng![e-mail]  (daniel mocsny)
Subject: Re: Moon Colonies / Ant Tanks?

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Roger Arnold @prodigal) writes:
> When I see an educated person talking

You assume much. :-) Oh, perhaps by some lenient measure the person in
question (presumably me) satisfies the definition of "educated," but
in comparison to the scale of potential knowledge, not to mention
necessary knowledge, he is yet a child.

> about how difficult it would be
> to live in space, and how fundamentally expensive, my reaction is half
> amused, half bitter.  The thought I have is that this person has no
> idea of the complexity and the power of the infrastructure that
> supports modern technological society.  Because in comparison to what
> we already have, the new infrastructure needed to make life in space
> cheap and easy is very small potatoes.

While perhaps no one individual fully grasps the complexity and power
of the infrastructure than undergirds her own industry, I think that I
have at least a fairly reasonable grasp of the situation here. My
emphasis on "Information Power" results entirely from how I view the
underlying complexity of the modern technological civilization. To
pack the necessary infrastructure for survival in space into a few
convenient launchers, much of the payload is going to have to consist
of information (or devices for receiving and implementing "virtual
payloads").

> Look at it this way.  Over here, you have our current civilization.
> Over there, you have a space based civilization.  It has the
> infrastructure needed to build habitats and process lunar and
> asteroid resources.  It enjoys the benefit of abundant and easily
> utilized solar energy and controlled gravity environments.  Existence
> proves that our current civilization represents a viable point in
> "civilization space".  Analysis can make a good case that a mature
> space based civilization is also viable.  (You may not agree, but
> grant it here, for the sake of argument).  The problem is that between
> here and there is a gulf that we haven't seen a way to navigate.

My skepticism would decline considerably if I were to observe a viable
solar-based terrestrial (sub-)economy. (Note: I suggest we build one
here, as a good practice for going to space.) If you want to tell me
that living on the Moon or asteroids is inherently easier (given
comparable infrastructures) than living on the Earth without
petroleum, I simply can't believe you. Eliminate petroleum today, and
our civilization collapses immediately. Phase it out in ten years,
maybe possible and probably worth a try at least in selected
sub-economies, but would we have declines in real income?

Our terrestrial economy depends on exploiting differentiated mineral
and biological resources that are conveniently located and usable
after a manageable amount of processing. The farther away a resource
is from its end use (in terms of both distance and processing steps),
the more "Information Power" we must expend to make something useful
of it. (Ultimately, since all resources are inherently free, the only
real costs are (1) the cost of hiring people to process information
(i.e., to think and to perform manual skills driven by their brains),
and (2) the lost value due to pollution.)

The cheapest possible product is one which is right next to you and
already in usable form, such as an edible plant in your front yard.
The only "Information Power" you need is the ability to see the
product and pick it up. Expensive products are those that require
the attentions of more people, or else those that cause numerous
unwanted side effects.

While the Moon and asteroids no doubt contain deposits of valuable
minerals, they obviously lack the same breadth of nearly usable and
proximally located resources to be found right here. That means life
in space will be inherently more expensive than life here, meaning
that we can't live there until we are richer. And the only way to get
richer is to increase our labor productivity.

> Development in computers has been so dramatic and rapid because, at
> every step in that development, there was a sufficient market
> providing sufficient economic incentive to undertake the next step.

You overlook the favorable laws of physics that made such development
inherently possible. All we had to do was discover the appropriate
tricks. Space travel and heavy industry appear to suffer from inherent
theoretical limits on how materially and energetically efficient they
can become. For example, the process and transportation industries are
already mostly within one or two orders of magnitude of their
theoretical limits, and probably much closer to their practical
limits. They have been for decades.

The spectacular progress in micro-electronics has no parallel in the
transportation or process industries. This is not because the people
working in heavy industry are unusually incompetent, nor because of
some failure in the free market. Rather, moving bulk energy and
materials is unavoidably harder than moving bits.

What does this have to do with space? Industries and economies that
are not spectacularly profitable in an environment with more
advantages than anyplace else in the solar system will not work
elsewhere. The only way to overcome the expense of an inherently
hostile environment is to increase the productive ability of each
individual. This translates ultimately into giving the individuals
more Information Power. Of course we will do this anyway whether
we go to space or not. But if you want to get something viable
going upstairs, that is the place to start.

> If an alien civilization had wanted to permanently stifle our
> development of computer technology, they could have done so by
> selling us, starting in the early 50's, as many computers as we
> wanted with mid-60's price/performance.  They would have looked like
> fantastic bargains at the time.  Even if a few visionaries realized
> that they were orders of magnitude below what was theoretically
> possible, those visionaries could never have mustered the resources
> to sustain the development needed to surpass them.

Pity the poor aliens if they should happen to land in Japan.

Remember that every child grows up in a world where *everything* is a
fantastic bargain compared to the cost of learning how to go about
building the stuff. Nonetheless, enough of us do decide to take the
trouble.

> I don't know if it was sneaky aliens who provided us with military
> rockets to stifle our advancement into space, but the end result
> has been the same.  Makes an interesting story line, no?

Needs a bit of work, but it shows promise. But I can think of easier
ways to keep us down on the farm. A cheap, fantastically effective,
but slowly debilitating euphoriant. A symptomless, slow-onset, fatal
sexually transmitted disease. A couple of well-placed asteroids.
Usenet.

Dan Mocsny
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 12 Nov 89 22:53:54 GMT
From: rochester![e-mail]  (Brian Yamauchi)
Subject: Working for NASA at the PhD Level (was Re: Advice?? (asking for))

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Eugene Miya) writes:
>
>After dropping
>out of grad school I did get an offer to return to get a PhD in astronomy
>from Santa Cruz

>You see the space program doesn't need astronomers specifically, in fact
>there are very few jobs of with require this.  It needs generalists
>with a few specialists.  The reason is that you will work in interdisciplinary
>teams in many cases.  It is your flexibility which is important (for
>budgetary reasons as well as problem solving).
>
>What the space program is very poor of, in contrast to industry 9),
>is training.  Expect to hit the ground running.  You also have to ask
>yourself what else you value: a home, a family, etc. because will become
>increasingly difficult to do this in the Government sector.  You can
>become a contractor or an academic and "close encounter" space, but
>you have to remember space != astronomy.
>
>But you get to play with some fun tools, meet a few interesting people,
>have fun on some interesting (hard) problems, etc., etc.  As far as working
>on projects go: perhaps 1 in 10 proposals gets funded.  I used to work
>on all those neat sounding plans.  There just isn't enough money to
>fund them all.

I've always been very interested in space exploration (well, at least
since kindergarten :-), and I'm currently in grad school working for a
PhD in computer science (specifically, behavior-based robotics /
active vision).  When I get my degree (probably around 3 years from
now) one of the options I'm considering is going to work for a NASA
research center such as Ames or JPL.

Unfortunately, I've also heard a lot of "bad things" about working for
NASA (both on the net and off).  One comment from a friend of mine
whose father works at Ames was that there is a mix of outstanding
people who really want to be there and mediocre people who couldn't
get a better job in the private sector, and that the mediocre often
get in the way of the outstanding.

It also seems like the government bureaucracy could cause problems.  I
find the bureaucracy in academia and the private sector bad enough --
Is NASA much worse, or about the same?

I'm interested in hearing from people at NASA what their experiences
have been like.  Feel free to post or send e-mail -- e-mail responses
will, of course, be kept confidential.

My perception of NASA research is as follows (I'd like to know how
close this is to reality):

Basic Research (robotics, vision, AI, propulsion, ME, EE, physics, biology)
--------------

My guess is that this is not too different from doing research in
academia or at a corporate research lab like Bell Labs or IBM Watson,
except that the research is oriented toward developing the
technologies for space exploration.  Are there any significant
differences that I should be aware of?

Space Exploration (robotic space probes, manned space missions)
-----------------

I'm a lot less clear on how this part works.  What roles to PhDs
(computer scientists, in particular) tend to play in the actual space
operations? -- design? management? programming?

Do project concepts tend to flow bottom-up or top-down or a
combination of both?  In other words, suppose you get an idea for a
robotic space probe to fly to the asteroid belt, land and sample a
number of scientifically and/or economically interesting asteroids,
and return the samples to Earth.  How do you translate this idea into
reality?

My best guess is that you would contact experts in the various related
fields (engineering, computer science, planetary science) and do an
initial study showing that your idea is possible, then try and
convince upper-level management-types that your idea is worth funding.
Assuming the management-types are convinced, then they have to go to
Congress and convince the politicians to fund your project.  Then,
depending on the shifts of the political winds, the abilities of the
managers to play Machiavellian political games, and (just maybe) the
worth of your idea, your probe gets funded (perhaps after years of
political wrangling).  Then it goes to the various contractors who
actually build it and deliver it to NASA.  Then your launch gets
delayed :-).  Finally, your probe gets launched on its way towards the
asteroids (5? 10? 15? years after your initial idea).

Is this too pessimistic, too optimistic, too naive, too cynical, or
just about right?

_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi                University of Rochester
[e-mail]        Computer Science Department
_______________________________________________________________________________

------------------------------

End of SPACE Digest V10 #239
*******************