TechTalk: Delaying the Inevitable by 10 Seconds...

[Note: This program takes place tonight, 10/29.  While attendance is free, please using the "Let us know" button on the "Details + RSVP" page to help us prepare our munchies.]

AIAA SF/SVSC TechTalk

Delaying the Inevitable by 10 Seconds...

Tuesday, October 29, 2013; 6:30pm-8:00pm

Hacker Dojo, Mountain View, CA

The vast majority of contraptions in the Red Bull Flugtag competition find creative ways to leap off the pier and plunge into the water. However, an occasional design seems to just float across the waters. Such was the case on September 21, when a Mountain View-based team, the Chicken Whisperers, set a Flugtag world record of 258 feet.

It helps that they are a team of engineers devoted to a new generation of aircraft design. But in this case, they do it in such an entertaining way. Aside from the frivolity, the lead designers Bob Parks and Zach Hazen of the record setting glider offer insight into the design and testing of their aircraft. [ Details + RSVP ]

Conrad Foundation looking for on-line judges

[This note comes to us from AIAA HQ.  The Conrad Foundation, named for late astronaut Pete Conrad, is a STEM partner of AIAA.]

Do you want to help foster the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs? Interested in motivating today's youth to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math?

The Conrad Foundation is currently recruiting online judges for the 2013-2014 Spirit of Innovation Challenge. The program invites teams of high school students to use their science and engineering skills to create innovative products and services that benefit humanity. (www.conradawards.org) They need experts like you  in the areas of aerospace and aviation, cybertechnology and security, energy and environment, and health and nutrition to review general entry submissions. Judging takes place entirely online and begins Oct. 25. 

Serving as a judge will take approximately 3 hours of your time.

If you are interested in participating as a judge, please send an email with background information on your area of expertise or CV, and the category you would like to judge to info@conradawards.org.

Detailed Version:

The Conrad Foundation is currently recruiting judges for the 2013-2014 Spirit of Innovation Challenge. The program invites teams of high school students to create innovative products and services that benefit humanity within one of four challenge categories. During this stage of the competition teams enter with a one-page abstract.
We need judges for each category, which consists of:

·       Aerospace & Aviation

·       Cybertechnology & Security

·       Energy & Environment

·       Health & Nutrition

General Entry Judging: Oct. 25. - Nov. 8
A Judge’s Responsibility

·  Commit to judge the minimum of 10 projects in your area of expertise (estimated 3 hours)

·  Provide thoughtful, constructive and age-appropriate feedback for each submitted project

·  Complete submission review and comments prior to the judging deadline

·   Agree to confidentiality terms that protect the intellectual property of our students

Time Commitment

·  All judging takes place electronically through a secure online judging portal.

·  We ask that you commit to reviewing a minimum of 10 entries in your area of expertise; on average, each entry should take 15-20 minutes to review and provide comments. If you are able and interested, you are invited to review additional abstracts.

The judging phase for the General Entry (abstract round) starts Oct. 25 and is approximately two weeks long.  We already have teams submitting their abstracts, so it is important that we get qualified experts such as yourself in place to help provide quality scoring and feedback to the students.
If you are interested in participating as a judge, please send an email with background information on your area of expertise or CV, and the category you would like to judge to info@conradawards.org . The Conrad Foundation will send you an invitation with a unique link to register your judge account.
Many thanks to you for your support of innovation, education and entrepreneurship! Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact Carrie Taylor at info@conradawards.org.

Join us tomorrow Tuesday August 13th for our monthly Dinner Meeting with SSL VP Mr. Chris Hoeber

AIAA Public Policy Committee Solicits Input for 2014 CVD Key Issues

The AIAA Public Policy Committee (PPC) is now soliciting your input for its 2014 Congressional Visits Day (CVD) key issues under the themes/subcommittee focus of: Space, Aeronautics, STEM Education & Workforce Development, and National Security.  This opportunity is available to all members within AIAA.  If you’ve ever wondered if AIAA is addressing the most pressing and relevant issues within the industry, now is your chance to contribute and participate in the process.  Input should consist of issue title/name, brief background, and at least one proposed recommendation.  Also, the issues must avoid focusing on specific local or corporate concerns and instead should reflect a consensus of the entire Institute.  Please send your input to AIAA Region VI Deputy Director for Public Policy, John Rose (john.c.rose@boeing.com) for submission to the PPC.  Deadline for input is August 1, 2013.

NASA Research Announcement (NRA) for Leading Edge Aeronautics Research for NASA (LEARN)

(Ed. note: Posting on behalf of ARMD NARI.)

The Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s (ARMD’s) NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) has released a solicitation for multi-institutional, team-based proposals for research as participating members of LEARN.  Proposals must clearly articulate an innovative, broadly based research topic addressing strategically important aeronautics technical challenges that have the potential to mature into technologies of interest to ARMD or commercial aerospace companies.

The schedule for the LEARN NRA is:

Release of NRA at https://nspires.nasaprs.com	May 28, 2013
Notice of intent to propose due	June 14, 2013
Pre-proposal briefing	June 25, 2013
Proposals due	July 30, 2013
Selection of teams	September 2013
Period of performance start	October 1, 2013

Please see NSPIRES website for specific information relative to this solicitation.   If you are not a registered NSPIRES account holder, you can register at https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/aboutRegistration.do

Students and Space Hacker Workshop

There is still room to attend the Space Hacker Workshop, May 4-5, at the Hacker Dojo, in Mountain View.  Registration is at:  http://spacehacker.eventbrite.com.

IF YOU ARE A STUDENT, you can enter the promotional code "studentinspace" and get a 50% discount.  HOWEVER, you must be prepared to show your current valid student ID card when you show up.

The early bird discount is no longer in effect.  Until May 1, the registration fee is $125 + $7.87 processing fee.  For students, this means the current rate for the two days is something like $66.93.  (It didn't just divide by 2.  There must be a base credit card fee.)  This includes coffee, snacks, and lunch on both days.

In addition to the hands-on sessions using the Ardulab module, here is the current list of speakers:

• Entrepreneurial spaceflight start-ups

Sean Casey, Silicon Valley Space Center

• Citizen astronauts, flight selection and training

Edward Wright, Citizen Science

• The XCOR Lynx vehicle

Khaki Rodway, XCOR

• Microgravity and biological experiments

Oana Marcu, NASA ARC/SETI

• Protein crystal growth in a micro-gravity environment

Carl Carruthers, NanoRacks

• Lunar Mining

Jim Kerevala, Shackleton Energy

• 3D Printing

Jason Dunn,  MadeInSpace

• Open Sourcing Space Technologies

Darlene Damm, Open Space University

• Mesospheric Science

Jason Reimuller, Astronauts4Hire

• New Space and Synthetic Biology

John Cumbers, NASA/USRA

PoSSUM - TechTalk - Apr 22

How can manned suborbital vehicles support science in the upper atmosphere?  We will get an example of this in our next TechTalk, on Monday, April 22.  Jason Reimuller, prinicipal investigator on PoSSUM, will describe the project.  Below is the first part of the abstract on the TechTalks webpage for the talk.

The Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere (PoSSUM) campaign will employ a manned reusable suborbital vehicle that will launch from a high-latitude spaceport (e.g. Alaska or Kiruna, Sweden) during a weeklong deployment scheduled for July 2014 to study numerous aspects of Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMCs).  PoSSUM will optimize the opportunity created by the “PMC  Imagery and Tomography Experiment”, a high-latitude campaign selected by the NASA Flight Opportunities Program (Experiment 46-S) to study the small-scale dynamics of PMCs.  The PoSSUM Project will make full use of the 46-S opportunity by fully utilizing all available payload space and campaign deployment time to optimize technology maturation and science return while validating a repeatable, low-cost means to study seasonal trends of PMCs.

The manned suborbital spacecraft referenced is the XCOR Lynx, which is currently being completed in Mojave, California.  This is a chance to learn about this PMC phenomena as well as what it's like to work with the NASA Flight Opportunities Program.  The TechTalks webpage lists some additional links to resources, including a 2-page summary PDF of the project.

AIAA SF Southern California Tour 2013

Dear Members of AIAA San Francisco,

Your local council is pleased to invite you on a tour of aerospace sights in Southern California from September 18-21, 2013! Please consider the following:


Wednesday, Sept 18: the group will meet at 3pm in Mountain View, drive in 15-person vans to Hawthorne, and stay in a hotel

Thursday, Sept 19: tour SpaceX and a TBD aerospace site, stay in Hawthorne

Friday, Sept 20: drive to Pasadena for a tour of Jet Propulsion Lab, stay in Pasadena

Saturday, Sept 21: drive to Mojave, tour aerospace facilities, return to Mountain View by 9pm


The tour is going to be a great opportunity to visit some of our finest spacecraft makers and form bonds between the San Francisco and Los Angeles aerospace communities. The trip costs $200 per person, which includes van rentals, gas, and hotels. Hotel rooms will be determined by those who wish to attend, as this would be a great trip to bring along your spouse. We must restrict participants to US citizens only. Also, there is only limited space available so RSVP soon!

Please RSVP to ricetoldi@gmail.com by June 30th. Thank you for your time, we hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,
AIAA - SF Council

AIAA-SF STEM Event Tomorrow!

Hello San Francisco Section,

The STEM Committee is organizing an amazing "Day at the Museum" at the new Exploratorium location, see flyer for more info.

This is an event for families and for friends, bring K-12 students to be part of this GREAT event!!!!

Have an amazing week!

Magaly Gonzalez Sipperley
AIAA-SF STEM K-12 Director
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Webpages:  www.aiaa.org/ | http://www.aiaa-sf.org/

Space Hacker Workshop - May 4-5

SVSC/Citizens in Space Workshop
San-Sun, May 4-5, 2013
Hacker Dojo, Mountain View

A Space Hacker Workshop for Suborbital Experiments will take place at the Hacker Dojo, directly across from NASA Ames Research Center, May 4-5.  Participants will learn how to build and fly experiments in space aboard the XCOR Lynx in a 10-flight program managed by Citizens in Space.  The program will accomodate up to 100 CubeLab experiments.

The program announcement was picked up by Scientific American, and appears in their Citizen Science section.  The announcement appears in full on sites like SpaceRef.com, and appears below. Registration is $100 before April 18, and will be $150 at the door.

Press release at SpaceRef.com and other sources below...

Are you a hardware hacker? Do you have the Right Stuff to become a citizen scientist or citizen astronaut? Here's your chance to find out.

Citizen scientists and hardware hackers will learn how to do "space on the cheap" at the first Space Hacker Workshop for Suborbital Experiments. Participants at the two-day workshop will learn how they can build and fly experiments in space, and even fly in space as citizen astronauts, through the Citizens in Space program.

The Space Hacker Workshop takes place May 4-5 at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, California, across the street (literally) from NASA Ames Research Center. The workshop is sponsored by Citizens in Space, a project of the United States Rocket Academy, and the Silicon Valley Space Center.

Citizens in Space has purchased 10 flights on the XCOR Lynx spacecraft, now under construction at the Mojave Air and Space Port, which will be made available to the citizen-science community.

"We're looking for 100 citizen-science experiments and 10 citizen astronauts to fly as payload operators," Citizens in Space project manager Edward Wright said. "This is a chance for citizen scientists to develop and test new technologies, like bioreactors and 3D printing, in zero gravity; to collect microorganisms from the extreme upper atmosphere; to experiment with new processes for creating new materials; and do many more cool things. The Space Hacker Workshop will provide participants with information and skills needed to take advantage of our free flight opportunities."

"Space is no longer the exclusive domain of NASA and university scientists," said Dr. Sean Casey, co-founder of the Silicon Valley Space Center. "Citizen scientists can build and fly fully functioning experiments for a few hundred dollars or less, thanks to technology developed here in Silicon Valley. With components available at Radio Shack or Fry's Electronics, citizen scientists can build instruments and experiments with more power than a NASA satellite from a few years back."

"Commercial spaceflight is the next high-tech revolution, making space a participatory frontier," said Dr. Alexander Saltman, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. "This event will tap into the creative spirit that has made Silicon Valley a center of innovation for decades."

The Space Hacker Workshop will provide hands-on exposure to a variety of microcontrollers, sensors, imaging systems, and other components. With these components, participants will learn how to design and build microgravity, fluid-physics, life-science, and engineering experiments.

Infinity Aerospace, which is developing the open-source ArduLab for low-cost space experiments, will be on hand to discuss the use of ArduLab hardware as a development platform. Also on hand will be representatives of XCOR Aerospace, which is building the fully reusable Lynx suborbital spacecraft, and NASA Ames Research Center.

Khaki Rodway of XCOR Aerospace will discuss the capabilities and requirements of the Lynx spacecraft. A panel of experts from NASA and industry will discuss research professional scientists have done in the past, prospects for new research on low-cost vehicles such as the Lynx, and opportunities for citizen scientists to build on the shoulders of NASA giants.

Project manager Edward Wright will be on hand to discuss Citizens in Space flight opportunities for experiments and citizen astronauts, including an exclusive glimpse at citizen-astronaut training activities planned for this summer.

Admission for the event is $150 at the door, but early-bird tickets are available now for $100. Tickets are limited and the event may sell out. Online registration is available at http://spacehacker.eventbrite.com.

Day at the Museum - May 11

Hello San Francisco Section,

The STEM Committee is organizing an amazing "Day at the Museum" at the new Exploratorium location.

When: Saturday May 11th, 2013

Where:

Exploratorium
15/17 Pier
San Francisco, CA 94111

Time: 10:00am
Cost: TBD


This is an event for families and for friends, bring students from K-12 to be part of this GREAT event!!!!

STAY TUNED FOR MORE INFO TO COME!!!!

Have an amazing week!

Magaly Gonzalez Sipperley
AIAA-SF STEM K-12 Director
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Webpages:  www.aiaa.org/ | http://www.aiaa-sf.org/

Deep Space Industries (TechTalk: 3/25)

AIAA SF/SVSC Small Payloads TechTalks
Monday, March 25, 2013; 6:30pm-8:00pm
Hacker Dojo, Mountain View, 
In mid-February, the Dojo moved to a new location at 599 Fairchild Dr., near Specialty's Cafe, Peet's Coffee, and the south gate of NASA Ames. 

 

Deep Space Industries 

James Luebke and Dr. Chris Cassell

Summary

There's been quite a lot of asteroid traffic near Earth lately, with one meteorite striking Russia on the day of another asteroid's close shave of our planet. Aside from detection and perhaps one day deflection, are there other opportunities for our space-faring species to interact with these celestial neighbors?

Deep Space Industries, announced merely two months ago, has already staked its claim as one of the most ambitious new space ventures. Founded by such leading minds as Rick Tumlinson, commercial space godfather, David Gump, formerly of Astrobotic, and John Lewis, scientist and author of the revolutionary Mining the Sky, Deep Space Industries envisions a business in which robotic scouts prospect for valuable asteroids, intermediate spacecraft return samples to Earth for analysis, and finally mining vehicles fly to the chosen asteroid to excavate and utilize the material on site. That final detail is perhaps the most significant aspect of their vision: by using a heretofore unrealized 3D printer, DSI will transform the mined elements into the components of space-native industry, allowing unique structures that would have been impossible to bring up from Earth in pieces. Join AIAA - SF on March 25 for a Tech Talk with founder and missions integration expert James Luebke. 

About the Speakers
James Luebke is a Founder and Vice President of Technical Marketing at Deep Space Industries. He brings his expertise as an aerospace engineer to DSI, contributing practical skills in mission planning and integration. Jim will be instrumental in overseeing the fundamentals of the operation, both in the hardware and software engineering side as well as in relations with the government. When Deep Space Industries dispatches its first Firefly scout to an asteroid, Jim will be one to thank for actualizing the concept. He is an alumni of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine.

Co-Founder Dr. Chris Cassell, expert on orbital mechanics and fellow missions planner, will join Jim after the presentation for Q&A.

Essays - thanks everyone

Thanks to everyone that helped promote our AIAA National Essay Contest for 7th and 8th graders!!! We have received the essays and we are starting the review process.

YPs at Cal Academy of Sciences - Mar 21

Are you an aerospace engineer age 35 or under? Would you like to join the San Francisco chapter of AIAA as a Young Professional (YP)? We organize many worthwhile activities around the Bay Area, including monthly Space talks, Tech talks, social activities such as this month's event posted below, and tours of local companies. If you are interested in joining please email me at ricetoldi@gmail.com.


Save the date! Join AIAA members for an evening of fun at the California Academy of Sciences Nightlife Event, March 21th. The theme of the evening is "Bold Local Nightlife", about our relationship to businesses around the Bay Area. This will be an opportunity for Young Professionals and anyone else so inclined to explore the beautiful new museum, socialize, and think about the universe!

* NightLife at the Academy: http://www.calacademy.org/events/nightlife/

Museum Days and CVD

Good Afternoon!

The month of March means one thing for AIAA: Congressional Visit Day in Washington D.C.!

If you're in the South Bay, come to Hiller Aviation Museum on Saturday, March 9 to learn about AIAA's Key Issues 2013.

If you're in the East Bay, we will be at the Oakland Aviation Museum the next day, Sunday, March 10.

And remember that Congressional Visit Day is March 19-20.

What is Congressional Visit Day?: It is an annual event held in Washington D.C. that gives AIAA members the opportunity to engage with congress members to discuss industry issues. These issues are in the form of the Key Issues.

If you are interested in participating in any of these events please contact Jose Ramil Seneris at JRSeneris@gmail.com or pubpol@aiaa-sf.org.

MESA DAY Volunteering Opportunity!

Dear AIAA-SF Members,

I hope you are having a warm weekend in this beautiful city! This email is to notify you and ask for volunteers for the upcoming MESA DAY COMPETITION event that San Jose State University will be hosting next Saturday March 2nd, 2013. The  Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Silicon Valley Chapter has asked me to be a Lead Judge and to recruit 20-30 volunteers that will represent our organization AIAA-SF in this event. This is a very exciting opportunity not only for our organization to get involve with other organizations but also the fact that we are part of promoting STEM across any culture. This is an awesome opportunity for us of being exposed to interdisciplinary ideas related to Biomedical Design, we might learn something new, you never know! In addition, we are helping our neighbors, our communities, and encouraging our young generations to not only pursue higher education in these branches of STEM but to love it and to feel the passion for what you do in your career. We are all examples and its is time to give back!!

Additional Info:

As you know MESA DAY Competitions are led by our industry sponsored groups and organizations. 

This year we are counting on IBM to once again lead the following competitions: 

MESA NATIONAL ENGINEERING COMPETITION - 

PROSTHETIC ARM

Junior High and High School

I have attached further information to this email that you will need to read to participate. Here are some of the major keys:

When: Saturday March 2nd, 2013
Where: San Jose State University
Time: 6am -5pm
Attire: Wear blue top and black pants


When signing in as volunteer make sure you write "AIAA-SF" under other Organizations, follow this link to register

Please have all volunteers register via our online link:

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFh4dG94NHVKdTJPVm5XbXlnMU1TRVE6MQ


I hope you can join me in this event and look forward to see you next weekend. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, precollege@aiaa-sf.org

Thank you!!!

Mission Control Technologies (TechTalk: 2/25)

The next AIAA SF/SVSC TechTalk will discuss the Mission Control Technologies software package. NASA has released it as an open source package for use in spaceflight mission operations. Jay Trimble, the project lead at NASA Ames, will describe the package.

The announcement below is the taken from the AIAA SF sign-up page for the meeting.  The page has pointers to documentation as well as the location on GitHub to get the source code.  If you're coming, please use the "Let us know" button on the page.  It helps us plan for food. :-)

AIAA SF/SVSC Small Payloads TechTalks 
Monday, February 25, 2013; 6:30pm-8:00pm 
Hacker Dojo, Mountain View

Mission Control Technologies

Jay Trimble
NASA Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, CA

Summary

Mission Control Technologies (MCT) is an extensible architecture that was developed as a generic framework for developers and deployed with a specific set of modules as an application at the NASA Johnson Space Center. Traditional software is built as monolithic applications. The functionality of an application is determined during design and development. Once an application is developed and tested, change is difficult, leaving users with few options other than operational workarounds, if the software does not do what is needed. Recent software systems have evolved away from monolithic applications to collections of components and services. This model leaves organizations with a more effective way to customize and reuse software.

Jay Trimble from NASA Ames will speak about the development and use of the software at NASA and the potential use for educational and commercial cubesat and other small satellite missions.

About the Speaker

Jay Trimble leads the User Centered Technology (UCT) Group at NASA Ames. The UCT group uses agile user centered software development methods to design and build software platforms for NASA missions. Highlights include Mission Control Technologies user composable software, the MERBoard Touchscreen used for Mars Rover Operations, and software for planetary data archive and retrieval.

Prior to leading the UCT Group at NASA Ames, Jay initiated and led the Mars Exploration Rover Human Centered Computing Project, building a multi-disciplinary team to work with the Jet Propulsion Lab to bring process and technology improvements to Mars Rover Operations.

Prior to NASA Ames, he held technical management positions at UC Berkeley and JPL, and was a flight controller at NASA Johnson. He has an MS in Computer Science from USC, and BA in Geology from UC Berkeley.

AIAA National Essay Contest Due March 15th: STEM Event

Help us Promote our STEM Event

Editor's note (2/23):  Here is a link to the new contest one-page PDF flyer.  You can get students and their teachers thinking about exploration.

The blog is coming back!

A couple of years ago, we decided to abandon active update of this blog since only one person was posting, and there are other ways to get announcements out.

So now, in February 2013, we're looking at new ways to communicate to AIAA SF members and the surrounding community. But we/I also want to encourage members of the section council to post their own announcements.  So... the blog is coming back.  Hopefully, this time, there will be posts from more people than just yours-truly.

--Rick (unofficial minister of propaganda)

Addendum (2/22):  I should probably provide a bit of additional info on why the blog is coming back.

Currently, the main AIAA SF website is a high maintenance activity depending on volunteer effort, and typically a shoestring budget. We have been working on migration to a content management system (CMS) on our own server for about a year. But on volunteer time schedules, this is likely still going to take a couple of months... or more. Meanwhile, announcements are backing up and human resources are thin.

For those who are curious, we are planning to utilize Joomla as the CMS. We previously could not do this because we were on a shared server with no root access, but did have a reasonably cooperative ISP. Last year, we arranged with our ISP to take over a VM (virtual machine) at slightly higher cost, installed an Ubuntu server, and moved the existing website into it. This also gave us the foundation to install other software components as we evaluate our needs and see their fitness to the task.

The guys who currently manage the server are hybrid aerospace and computer science nutcases.  While that exact combination is not a requirement, we are extremely lucky.  It is absolutely required that you have more than one server "hacker" if you want to manage your own server image. We got our first additional "hacker" ("hackette"?  footnote 1) a couple of years ago (well, perhaps a little longer), and began to explore the possibilities of a CMS back then.  We got a second additional "hacker" last year, and began to put the migration into action. However, we all have full time jobs; some of us are even taking additional academic courses, but somehow still enjoy the challenge of managing a server.

--------
1. "hacker" is used here in the positive sense. A female hacker is... this question only came up once, and the two terms suggested were "hackerette" or "hackette". But I thought it was good to point out that at least one of us had more culture than your typical hacker.