ממריאים לתוכנית לימודי החלל

אהלן!
קוראים לי דניאל ברק, אני סטודנט לתואר שני בתחום בקרת לווינים, אני מתגורר בבאר שבע עם בן זוגי יותם וכלבת חלל קטנה בשם לייקה. בקיץ האחרון יצא לי לחוות חוויה של פעם בחיים כשיצאתי לתוכנית לימודי החלל של אונ' החלל הבינ"ל. מדובר בתוכנית באורך תשעה שבועות שעוסקת באספקטים השונים של פעילויות החלל האזרחיות והממשלתיות. השנה התקיימה התוכנית במונטריאול קנדה בין ה-8.6.14 ועד ה-8.8.14.

נתחיל דווקא מהמסקנה, אם יש לכם/ן אי פעם הזדמנות תקחו חלק בתוכנית לימודי החלל של אונ' החלל הבינ"ל, או באחת מהתוכניות האחרות שלה, בייחוד אם אתם/ן לומדים חלל, עובדים בתחום החלל או חולמים חלל.

אוניברסיטת החלל הבינלאומית (International Space University - ISU) היא מוסד עם סגל, סטודנטים ובוגרים מרחבי העולם כולו הפועל ליצירת הבנה כוללת של פעילויות סקטור החלל הממשלתיות והפרטיות. ה-ISU הוקמה בסוף שנות השמונים ע"י שלושה סטודנטים בשם טוד הולי, פיטר דיאמנדז ובוב ריצ'צארדס מאוניברסיטת MIT האמריקאית. כיום ה-ISU יושבת בשטרסבוג שבצרפת ומקיימת פעילויות ברחבי העולם לאורך כל השנה. האוניברסיטה דוגלת בפילוסופיית שלושת ה-I, אינטרדיציפלינאריות (Interdisciplinary), בין-תרבותיות (Intercultural) ובינלאומיות (International). במסגרת פילוסופיה זו לומדים כל משתתפי תוכניותיה את כל הפנים של פעילות סקטור החלל, מהנדסת מערכות חלליות, דרך לימודי מדעי החלל הקרוב והרחוק ועד לדיני משפט בחלל ואופן התנהלות עיסקית בסקטור החלל. ה-ISU מוערכת מאוד בקרב הגופים הפועלים בסקטור החלל, ובין נותני חסותה ניתן למצוא את סוכנויות החלל של אירופה, ארה"ב, סין, הודו, קנדה ויפן, וכן חברות מסחריות גדולות כגון בואינג, לוקהיג מרטין ונורת'גרופ גרמין.

התוכנית הגדולה של האוניברסיטה נקראת תוכנית לימודי החלל (Space Studies Program - SSP), מדובר בתוכנית באורך תשעה שבועות המתקיימת מידי קיץ בעיר אחרת ברחבי העולם, השנה היא התקיימה במונטריאול ובעוד שנתיים (קיץ 2016) תתקיים התוכניות בטכניון בחיפה. בתוכנית משתתפים כ-120 אנשי מקצוע וסטודנטים שעיסוקם קשור לחלל, ביניהם ניתן למצוא מהנדסים ומהנדסות מתחומי האווירונאוטיקה, חשמל, מכונות ומחשבים, פיסיקאים ופיסיקאיות, ביולוגים/יות, רופאים/ות, אנשי ונשות עסקים, משפטנים/יות ועוד רבים ורבות. המשתתפים מגיעים מרחבי העולם, סינים וצפון אמריקאים ודרום אמריקאים ואירופאים והודים וישראלים. כמו כן המשתתפים מגיעים בשלבים שונים בקריירה שלהם, מסטודנטים לתואר שני ועד מנהלים בכירים שתחתם עובדים אלפי אנשים. נוסף על משתתפי התוכניות ישנו גם סגל מכובד המגיע ממקומות שונים בסקטור החלל, מנהלי התוכנית במונטריאול (SSP14) היו דיוויד קנדל מסוכנות החלל הקנדית וג'ון קונולי מנאס"א, המרצים מגיעים מאוניברסיטאות שונות, מסוכנויות החלל השונות וכן מחברות בינלאומיות גדולות.

כרזת ה-SSP14 במונטריאול

ה-SSP מחולקת לשלושה חלקים, לימודים פרונטליים כללים, התמקדות בלימודי מחלקה וביצוע פרויקט קבוצתי. פעילות השלבים מעט חופפת לאורך התוכנית, הן בזמן והן בחומר הנלמד. בשלב הלימודים הכללים לומד המחזור כולו לאורך חודש את היסודות הנדרשים להבנת פעילויות החלל השונות. ההרצאות מכסות חומר מהתחומים השונים, ממסלולי לווינים והנדסת מערכות חלל, דרך ישומיי חלל בחיי היום היום, אסטרוביולוגיה, גוף האדם בחלל ועד עקרונות החוק בחלל וניהול והקמה של חברות חלל. מכיוון שמשתתפי התוכנית מגיעים מרקעים שונים תוכנית הלימוד רחבה מאוד בכדי לאפשר לכל אחד ואחת להכיר את התחומים השונים העוסקים בחלל, כך גם נוצר מצב שמהנדסות עוזרות לעורכי דין ופיסיקאים מלמדים רופאות בתהליך בו כולם משתפים מהידע שיש להם.
החלק השני של התוכנית הוא לימודי המחלקה, במסגרתו בוחרים המשתתפים אחת משבע מחלקות ולאורך שבועיים מעמיקים את הידע באותו התחום. הפעילות הנעשית במחלקה היא יותר מעשית וכוללת סנדאות וסיורים וכן ביצוע פרויקט אישי ע"י כל משתתף ומשתתפת. סגל ה-SSP מעודד את משתתפי התוכנית לקחת חלק במחלקה שונה מתחום עיסוקם ביום יום. שבע המחלקות הן - יישומי חלל, הנדסת חלל, מדעי החלל, ביצועי האדם בחלל, חלל ומנהל עסקים, משפט ומדיניות חלל ולימודים הומניסטיים של החלל. המחלקה בה אני השתתפתי היתה מחלקת מדעי החלל במסגרתה הרחבנו את הידע על אסטרונומיה ועל משימות מחקר לפלנטות אחרות במערכת השמש שלנו.
החלק השלישי הוא הפרויקט הקבוצתי, במסגרתו כל המחזור מתחלק לארבע קבוצות של 30 משתתפים כל אחת וביחד מבצעים פרויקט הבוחן סוגיה כלשהי מתחום החלל. שלב זה אורך כשלושה שבועות ובסיומו מוגשים דו"ח מסכם, תקציר מנהלים ומצגת מסכמת. תוצרי העבודה לרוב מוצגים בהמשך בכנסים שונים ומהווים בסיס רעיוני לפעילויות נוספות בתחום החלל. הפרויקט בו אני לקחתי חלק נקרא אקסופלנטות או כוכבי לכת חוץ שמשיים, אלה פלנטות הנמצאות במערכות שמש אחרות מזו שלנו וע"פ החוקרים בתחום מספרן עולה על מספר הכוכבים בגלקסיה שלנו. במסגרת הפרויקט שלנו למדנו על הפלנטות המעניינות האלה וניסינו לראות איך העולם יכול לשפר את יכולת המחקר שלו בתחום.

בנוסף על שלושת החלקים העיקריים ה-SSP נעשו פעילויות רבות ומגוונות שכללו מפגשים רבים עם אסטרונאוטים ואסטרונאוטיות, הרצאות של ראשי סוכניות חלל ומנהלי חברות גדולות, הרצאות משתתפי התוכנית בהן לכל אחד ואחת ניתנה הזדמנות לספר על תחום עיסוקם ואירועי תרבות רבים בהם כל מדינה משתתפת הציגה את התרבות, המאכלים והקשר שלה לחלל.

משתתפי ה-SSP14 בטקס הפתיחה של התוכנית

מטרת הבלוג הזה היא לשתף את החוויות שאני חוויתי במהלך הקיץ שהיה לי, היה זה קיץ בו גיליתי עוד (הרבה) יותר על היקום וקצוותיו הרחוקים ביותר אך במקביל חשתי קרוב מאוד לארץ ככל שמבצע "צוק איתן" התפתח, היה זה קיץ שפתח בפני עולם רחב יותר מכפי שדמיינתי קודם של פעילות חלל ברבדים שונים ובמקומות חדשים.
בשבועות הקרובים אפרסם פוסטים נוספים בבלוג שיתארו את שלבי התוכנית השונים ואת החוויות המעניינות ביותר שהיו לי. הבלוג גם פורסם בצורה מקיפה יותר באנגלית במהלך שהותי בתוכנית וכולם מוזמנים לקרוא אותו גם שם.

אשמח לכל הערה/שאלה בתגובות.

דניאל

Back to Earth

I said I won't conclude my SSP14 because it's only stage in my overall journey, I would like to mention some things that did since it ended and some things that I plan on doing in the near future in order of using the momentum I've gained. It is also important to mention and thank the Israeli Space Agency Ilan Ramon foundation and the ISU that helped me find the resources to get to the SSP in Montreal.

Now to business, I am now more then ever motivated to keep on working on space related projects, from teaching space, through developing space technologies and researching space both near and far, to pursuing the childhood dream of space travel.

After leaving Montreal, I spent a week at my older brother's house in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I relaxed, wrote some blog entries, played with my nephew and even has some meetings in the University of Michigan's Aerospace department.

My nephew Amitati, and me at the Ann Arbor Hand-On Museum 

After Ann Arbor I returned to Israel for the real de-orbiting. A process that makes a person think about what he/she has achieved and where they want to go. For me, for the near future I have to prioritise some of the ideas and concepts that the SSP had me thinking about. The three things I feel I need to do for the time being (before I start looking for exoplanets, counting more supernovae or enlisting to the astronaut core) are written here, if a manage to do them well enough in this following year I can definitely say I'm on the right track.

The Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) is something sometime I learned about during the SSP. The description on the SGAC website specifies that “The Space Generation Advisory Council is a global non-governmental organization and network which aims to represent university students and young space professionals to the United Nations, space agencies, industry, and academia”. Membership in the SGAC is free and it only requires its members to be students or young professionals under the age of 35 working in the space sector. The SGAC connects its members in the local, national and international levels with activities done year round such as online discussions, local meetings and international events held in different locations around the world. The Space Generation Congress (SGC) is one of the major events held by the SGAC it is held for three days every year in the week prior to the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in September-October. More than 130 SGAC members participate in the SGC every year; they have discussions and panels on space related issues and then produce papers and recommendations that are then presented in the IAC and other events around the world. In addition the SGC includes several networking events meant on creating international and local connections within the space generation. This year (2014) the IAC and SGC are held in Toronto, Canada, and next year they are planned to be in Jerusalem, Israel.
When hearing about the SGAC I have also learned that Israel did not have an official representation (called National Point of Contact (NPoC)) for a while now and that the Israeli SGAC member community is very small and not active.
After learning more about the SGAC, and after realizing that it's important to have a good human infrastructure to help organize the 2015 SGC (all done by volunteers) I decided to nominate myself to be NPoC for Israel. Given that I was a single contender I got both first place and last, and as of  August 20th I am the official SGAC NPoC in Israel. With great help from Ofer Lapid I have been able to get sponsorship from Michael Potter (which I am very very thankful for) to go to the SGC in Toronto (and all this after his help with sending me and my friends to the SSP). I will be going there in order of meeting the people that make the SGAC and in order of learning more about the SGAC and SGC. It will a be a short re-orbit of a few days that will hopefully help me bring some more of the space experience back home. When I come back to Israel I will work on  building a large and active SGAC community that will participate in representing our generation to policy makers in government, industry and academia around the world.

My official appointment as the SGAC NPoC in Israel

Another project I want to advance in the near future is the work done by my high school student group on the Israeli QB50 satellite Hoopoe. We are planned to work on the satellite's structure and hope to manage some work on the satellite's orbit, all this while building a ground station in our science education center in Yeruham.

Last, but definitely not least is my MSc work in satellite control. I hope to take this coming year and make it as fruitful as possible in my studies and research. The SSP has made me even more enthusiastic about space, but I know that only through my research and work I can truly contribute to the space sector and the global community.

One small blast from the not to far away past, out 3.5 hour Mars rover mission has been turn into a 3:52 minute YouTube clip, I drove the rover for team Alpha. -

A recording of the Mars analogue mission that I participated in in the
Space Sciences Department, I drove the rover for team Alpha.

I stated with a Laika photo, should I should end with one, it doesn't seem like she missed me too much, but I was told that every time a car alarm locking beep that sounded like my car went off she run to the door waiting for me to come.

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) 

From Creation to Destruction

(I've started writing this blog two weeks ago and got sucked into the madness of the team project. Another blog will continue where this one ends)

Almost two weeks have past since my last blog. It has been harder to find the time to write these things due to the different obligations I have to the team project (TP) and mostly due to the activities I do to run away from the work like a camping weekend, sci-fi movie watching, and now, finally, bloging.

In the last two weeks we finished the departmental portion of the program and started head-on with only TP work. The last day of department activity included participant presentations on various Space Sciences, from solar activity and planetary research to black holes. My presentation asked if supernovae are randomly distributed in the night's sky, the big answer I found was YES! However, due to observer biases we don't have enough data to present a truly random sequence. The majority of supernovae observed are not from our galaxy, but from far away galaxies, that is because this most valiant of celestial events happens only once in a few tens to hundreds of years in the Milky Way. Thus, observer biases are created because our own galaxy block the view for a portion of the sky where we would find other galaxies at. Another reason for biases is "man made", different researchers choose to survey different portions of the sky (there's a lot of sky and a limited number of observers), and thus we can get a nicely populated area in the sky because of researcher interests. In my process I looked at about 6000 supernova sightings recorded by man-kind (the earliest of which is from 1006), I plotted on the sky map and then allocated numbers by order of appearance. I then checked a selected area's number sequence using a very basic statistical test and found that the numbers are random, which means the appearance of supernovae is random for an Earthling.

Supernovae distribution in the sky, the V shape in the center of this inverted globe is the Milky Way blocking our view 

Another department event we had was a presentation and discussion on exponential technologies with a visiting lecturer from Singularity University, ISU's sister university. The lecture discussed the exponential rate of technological advancement in the past one hundred years, especially in the fields like computing power and robotics. One of these disruptive technologies is 3D printing, a manufacturing method that basically makes any home user a world class producer of cretin goods (like household tools and personalized accessories). This technology can, and probably will, revolutionise space exploration by allowing for the production of items in space. The same can be said for medicine but also warfare. One of the projects presented to us as an exponential technology product which was led by a Singularity graduate was a 3D printed rocket engine, this automatically sounded an alarm in my head, regrading the distribution of Duel-Use tech to the general population. I asked the lecturer, Emeline Paat Dahlstrom, about it, and she said that they discuss the ethics around technologies at Singularity and try to make sure they "Do no evil" as their Silicon valley neighbours say, but I guess this process is inevitable and a part of a world where technological advances often (more like always) proceed the discussion on their social implications.

We also had an Air Space Safety panel during this period. In it, each of the three panellists presented a different catastrophes in air and space travel, the Challenger disaster, the Columbia disaster and the disappearance of the Malaysian flight 370 in March 2014. It was a long panel, with a lot of details and information (and not enough breaks). The conclusion for both Space Shuttle incidents is that several things went wrong and they happened due to a false confidence within NASA and their contractors. That together with (at least for Challenger) a need to provide that winning picture of the a successful flight for supervising levels.
Now, as I write these words on the Challenger and Columbia, I can't stop myself from thinking about another big organization, much closer to me, that from time to time falls to the over-confidence trap and together with pressure felt from the political level declares the win and is quickly shown that that might not be all correct. Now, I don't really want to get into political issues, but I would like to say that sometimes politicians and the organizations influenced by them would rather get this winning picture then resolve a problem properly, quietly but without as much political gain as they believe they deserve. 

One of the participant talked that we had during this period was about the Mars One initiative, a privately sponsored and owned one-way mission to Mars. This initiative called for candidates from all around the world, and received around 200,000 applications. After a selection process there are currently 700 global candidates waiting to be further screened in order of finding the 40 astronauts planned to fly off. One of these people is a participant of SSP14 and it was his talk about the mission. My first understanding from the talk (and it's important to mention the he is not an official speaker for the program) is that this mission will not be operational in the planned schedule (first crew on Mars in 2022). And that's just because hardly any engineering work has been done to date in order of building the facilities to support this crew. It seems to me more like a nice gimmick, meant to make its creator rich and famous. When we discussed the "one way" issue it was important for the Mars One candidate/SSP14 participant to mention that it's not "a going to die on Mars mission" as it's being called, but rather a "going to live a full life on a Mars colony, and at some point die mission". I agree with him that there is a difference between the two, and that it's his right to do so, just like the example he give - smoking. But what I disagree with is a little sentence he said in the end regarding what if things go wrong during the mission and the crew needs to be rescued, he made it sound like he would expect the world to come and rescue them, even if the original Mars One company is unable to. This means that a bunch of people are planing on having a very high risk adventure and expecting the world to provide billion dollar insurance in case of accident, somewhat like smoking. Billions that would probably have to be provided by governments with no relation to their planned budgets, money that could be used for other purposes, spaceborne or terrestrial. I'm not saying that money shouldn't be spent to advance space exploration and especially a Mars colony but if a certain institution wants to do so it should provide or at least find all the funds necessary to complete the mission and all probable issues that might arise during it. What Mars One are saying is that they'll complete only half a mission and save a lot of money and research needed to make sure it's done properly and then let the astronauts and the rest of the world deal with the consequences.  

In one of my getaways I was watching the NASA panel on "Life in the Universe". It is an interesting discussion about the future NASA galactic observation missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and the WFIRST mission. The panel had a lot to do with the field of exoplanet research, which is understandable due to the exo-hype both in the scientific world and with the general public. One of the panellists was Prof Sara Seager, an exoplanet researcher from MIT that actually talked  the following week to my EXO TP about the work she's doing. When watching the broadcast it was clear (after hearing a lot about the political and financial state of NASA) that it was intended on getting public support for the next big space observatory. Support that will, in time, turn to the funds needed to build this future space researcher. While I was watching the panel I kept on viewing the news from Israel, it was the peak of "Operation Strong Cliff" with many casualties on both sides. It felt surreal to listen about what bright future mankind could have while reading the stories of young man that died after being called to protect their country in the present.

I had two more insights from this panel, the first regards the existence of alien life here on Earth and the second is about how scientists and engineers sometime present their work to the general public. Regarding the first one, one of the NASA officials joked that there's no little green man hidden in some secret warehouse somewhere. It was the second time I've heard a high exec from NASA say that this summer. Before hearing these statements I hadn't much thought on the matter (at least not since I was ten) and would probably agree with it. But now, after hearing these denials, I might be more inclined to think otherwise. Or not, just kidding (or am I?).
The second insight was one I have discussed with Dan Cohen in some way. Sometimes when scientists and engineers discuss their work they emphasise how elaborate, accurate and sophisticated it is. When doing so they sometimes make it sound like an impossible task that only geniuses can do. This then creates a deterrence, especially for teens, from getting involved with these fields. Basically, by saying how hard these things are they mean to pat themselves on the shoulder and present how amazing the worlds of science and engineering are. But they're actually scaring kids away and keeping these fields open only to the ones that have already realized that yes these things are difficult, but they are done mostly by regular people that worked hard to reach their position. What I think is always important to say when presenting the great technological and scientific advances of our days is that they are being done by human beings and that everyone can help this work if they work hard enough to get there.      

One last event we had in this period was the traditional SSP rocket launching competition. The rockets were designed and built by the SSP participants during their work in the engineering department (happened in parallel to my space sciences department). It was a nice sunny day with a great atmosphere that showed the use of rockets for fun and learning (unlike others, these rockets parachute their way down).

  

The two weeks that followed after the rocket launch were all TP (and the end of the SSP), they'll be discussed in another blog entry.