Peak and De-Orbit

Keeping to my tradition in the last month I find myself writing a blog entry about two weeks late. I think it is somewhat understandable giving the pace the SSP gets in its second part of the program and especially in the last two weeks of the team project (TP).

Before we discuss the TP madness I should mention the last evening lecture we had. It was a lecture by Gregg Maryniak on the X-Prize foundation. It is the foundation that encouraged the small private space race of the early 2000s, a race which in the end led to a launch and safe landing of a small privately funded spacecraft. This spacecraft concept was then commercialized and will soon start taking tourists in suborbital flights. The X-Prize wants to see more private involvement in cutting edge engineering, the kind that doesn't only improve an existing concept, but creates new ideas and technologies, it does so by running competitions with a multimillion dollar prize in the end (10 million $ for the suborbital flight). The idea is based on the Orteig Prize from 1919 that called for a non-stop flight across the Atlantic. This flight was performed by Charles Lindbergh in 1927, he won 25,000$ for it. The X-Prize calls for a task to be done, any private organization can join a challenge, from commercial companies to individuals. When stating the task additional requirements are made, a time frame in which the task has to be done is set, technical rules that have to be met are stated, bonuses that could add more to the winning prize are mentioned, and all of it while using a minimum amount of government support for doing the task. After the first space race many more competitions where done, in a verity of engineering fields, the next big competition is the Google-Lunar X-Prize, which asks for a private spacecraft to land on the Moon and travel a distance on the lunar surface by the end of 2015. A team which has a really good chance in taking the prize is the SpaceIL team which is not only non-government, but also a non-commercial initiative that would like to use the prize money (20 million $ prize from the main sponsor Google). The lecture was such a great inspiration that I asked about the third big X-Prize competition, Gregg answer was "look for an announcement that will be made by the end of the year", so who knows, maybe I'll find myself in the same place as Lindbergh in a few years.

Raymond Orteig's call for crossing the Atlnatic from 1919

Now back to TP! The TP has four mandatory deliverables that the SSP requires, a team project plan (TPP), an executive summary, a final report and a final presentation. The evaluation of these four deliverables constructs 60% of the TP grade (which is collective for the whole group, the 40% left are given for individual contribution, but a bit more on grades later). Out of these four deliverables, three are submitted in the last week of the SSP, which makes this week very intensive.

After listening to a lot of experts and exploring a bunch of options ranging from doing what's already been done to building a Death Star for preventive attacks on other life forms the TP team concluded that we should design and describe a new global organization called EXO. The Exoplanet eXploration Organization would, together with space agencies and the scientific community, lead a global effort to find more exoplanets and better understand them. This organization will coordinate efforts worldwide in all three stages of an exoplanet research process (detect, verify and characterize) by working with space agencies, observatories, academia and amateur astronomers. EXO will introduce itself to the exoplanet and astronautical communities with a small satellite mission called UniQuE (United Quest for Exoplanets), in which it will incorporate small space agencies and universities. EXO will also perform outreach globally using both its flagship projects and other outreach designated projects, this will be done with a very wide variety of populations (kids, students, amateur spacies).  

Somehow I found myself involved in all four deliverables to some extent. It’s probably because of my dive-in personality, which, for better or worse, gets my brain thinking about multiple aspects of projects and ideas and then suggests I take part in all of them. I've just realized that I used first person descriptions to many time here, which I don't like doing (oops, did it again). But never mind about that, I found myself in the engineering team of the TP, and together with a great guy named Tom Boulton was supposed to edit the the engineering chapter of the final report. So we worked on the TPP and along the way I got interested in the way exoplanet knowledge is stored and analysed. That led me to investigating about exoplanet databases, and eventually write the database portion of the report. In a nutshell, there are plenty of databases out there (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and each has its own niche. That led me to understand that another database isn't necessary, so we suggested that EXO joined forces with an existing database and bettering it with some ideas and collaborations.

After writing the database portion, I kind of lost contact with the final report and got into working on the executive summary and final presentation together with the very gifted Christina Ciardullo. She was the SSP's (and TP's) architect in residence, but she's so much more, a thinker, a dreamer, an artist, a stubborn debater, and a great friend. Together, we worked on on the ideas and artistic concepts of these visual deliverables. It's important to mention other folks that worked on summery and presentation, and were great to work with - Chris, Nicolas, Peng, Thomas, Markus, Ciat, Amir, Alana, Saho, Richard and Jie (sorry if I'm forgetting someone). After several sleepless nights, a bunch of tense discussions, some typos and technical issues we managed to produce a great visual executive summary that presented all of our ideas. In the final presentation we totally knocked it out of the ball park, our presentation was sophisticated but simple and said everything we wanted to say. Both deliverables were design as mock deliverables presented by our newly founded EXO organization, this helped present our ideas of what EXO could do in an original way that was understandable to someone that wasn't with us in the thinking process.

The YouTube video of our final presentation

And then, in an instance, it was all over, we did not have any other obligation to the SSP, we were free to relax and think (or not) about whatever we wanted. We were left with the great memories (more about that later) and some copies of our work. In addition to final presentation recording, we each got copies of our executive summary that together with our final report will be published in the ISU website (in this link at some point in the future) and our work will be presented in the International Astronautical Congress in Toronto on September 2014. We were also left with the mock website that we made for the final presentation, it's a bit rough around the edges, but has some great features like Christina's breathtaking intro movie (watch it with sound please).

Our executive summary, it should be available online in the ISU library website 

As instant as the TP ending was so were the celebrations, we had some pints in the ETS pub, and then everyone continued to an evening of wining, dining and clubbing. It was a great opportunity to see everyone unwind and enjoy before the farewells begun. The next day was the closing ceremony, we had a relaxed morning, packed up our stuff and got dressed-up for the closing ceremony. It was a great ceremony,it had some (too many) speeches, a great speech by Bob Richards (one of the ISU founders), an explanation on the next SSP in 2105 in Athens, Ohio (I really want to go there too) and a (120+ participant long) diploma hand-out. Our diploma hand-out was a bit different from those done in previous years because we also got our ISU pin at that time (usually that's done in the beginning of the SSP), but that felt really appropriate, a real welcome to the ISU family (after the pin-mania swapping that we had during the program).

Closing ceremony picture, we started our journey under our national flags and finished it united under the ISU insignia

The ceremony ended and the parties resumed in the beloved Soiln Hall basement and courtyard. But even during that night people started leaving and a sad series of goodbyes began. The next day had lots of tears and promises for meeting in the next IAC or in SSP16 in Israel. Folks stayed to tour Montreal and the rest of North America, some even organized visits at the newly made friends' home towns and work places (I'm especially jealous at the guys that organized a NASA centers tour), others went straight home back to their lives. And I left for Ann Arbor, Michigan, to meet my brothers, sister in-law and nephew to ease my de-orbit back to routine.

I don't want, or feel the need, to conclude the SSP experience, I think it was an important part in a journey I'm doing that will hopefully, eventually, take me to the skies (sorry for being tacky). The only thing I will say is - do it! if you have the chance to participate in a SSP, do it, join this amazing family of space crazed folks and boost-up your way to what ever destination you heading to.

SSP14 Participants and their mark on one of Solin Hall basement walls (by Richard Blake)