Space Exploration

APAS

I made a presentation to the Mars Society Conference in Boulder, CO in August 2008. My talk described a proposal that I'd submitted to their Mars Project Challenge. The Autonomous Planetary Agriculture System was ahead of its time and they didn't select it for funding, though since then I've been inspired to read Human Spaceflight: Mission Analysis and Design by Larson and Pranke. Hopefully this will lead to some future pursuits.

NASA

I also try to keep an eye on NSPIRES, the NASA solicitation site. Hopefully someday I'll get a chance to respond to one of their solicitations and work on something cool.

Kennedy Space Center

I was supposed to attend the NASA launch of STS-125 to send a shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope for servicing. My dad had been given a pair of tickets for this due to his involvement in the program from his position within L3 Communications. However, due to NASA schedule delays they pushed the launch back from Oct '08 to May '09 I was ultimately unable to make the date.

I was also scheduled to attend the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbitter in June '09. Jen had been given two tickets through her work with the astronomy department at Boston University. Due to schedule choas (buying a condo for me, beginning a new internship for her), we ultimated decided it would be better if we didn't send in our RSVP.

There will be trips to Kennedy in the future...

Team FREDNET

In June 2009, I learned about an "Open Source" effort to compete in the Google Lunar X-Prize. A team called Team FREDNET is registered and they're attempting to win the $20 million prize money to advance the state of "Open Source" space exploration.

I've made modest efforts to understand their design methodology and contribute to their overarching goal of winning the prize. My goal through collaborating with the project (rather than adding technical knowledge about flight systems and orbital science) is to attempt to help them grow and manage their human resources. As it stands currently, I get the feeling that less than 100 people are in a position to work on the project. Their only chance of winning the prize, in my opinion, is strength in numbers. Expanding to 1000 to 5000 active members is a necessary step for them to take home the prize.