Free at last... now what?

Now that I am finally finished with the dissertation, I find myself with considerably more free time. As my wife has recently pointed out, I have a rare opportunity now to pick up a hobby before I allow myself to get bogged down with the next project or any of life's other pressing demands on my time. So, in addition to spending more time with my kids, and possibly doing little light blogging from time to time, what else could I be doing that I would enjoy and still fell like I'm making good use of my time.

One of the things you learn while getting a PhD is just how little you know out of all that is possible to know. I feel that I've learned a great deal during my studies, but there is a great deal more that I want to know... that I need to know. So, I find that it is time for me to leave the sheltered halls of academia and to try and make my way in the real world. I'm ready to put my hard earned education to work, but I am fully prepared to have to learn more in order to do so.

Power and propulsion are two topics that I love to ponder, but I don't think I'll have the resources to start tinkering with actual hardware for some time. If I'm extremely lucky, I might be able to land a job with one of the new space startups, where I'd be able to do that kinda thing as my day job. I'd jump at the chance to work with the likes of SpaceX, Blue Origin, XCOR, Masten Space Systems, Armadillo Aerospace, Ad Astra Rocket, or Scaled Composites.

I've also been wanting to get more seriously into robotics and astronomy for long time now. I have some brief experiences with both of these, but I'd like to be able to advance my skill set to the next level if possible. I often find myself thinking about better ways to interface to tele-operated devices. If Jeff Hawkins is correct about the hierarchical organization of the brain, then it should be possible to build a robotic system which can learn some basic, low-level behavior in response to commonly encountered stimuli, but still be able to pass on unexpected or novel information to a higher cognitive level (possibly a user). Specifically, I'm thinking about robotic telescopes which will be able to scan the sky autonomously, but be able to direct their attention to more novel phenomena based on their own past experiences.

One project that I've been putting off for a long time now (because I couldn't justify spending the time on it with the dissertation hanging over my head) is to look into doing more sophisticated mission prototyping using the spaceflight simulator Orbiter. Although the development of the main program seems to have stalled, there is still an active community of third party developers generating fresh and interesting add-ons for the simulator.

I have been contemplating a building rapid prototyping tool for designing rockets, RLV's, and other spacecraft. The program would be similar to NASA's Rapid Aircraft Modeler (RAM) that I worked on a few years ago. One simply selects from of list of standard components, then resizes and repositions them to rapidly assemble a desired configuration. Then, I would have the program output the necessary files to fly the model in Orbiter. By making use of some of the advanced modeling capabilities provided by the Orbiter API, it should be possible to get a fairly reasonable approximation of the vehicle's performance for a given class of mission.

And one final thing which looks like it will have to be a hobby since I can't seem to get my supervisor interested in letting me do it for work. I've recently managed to get CUDA installed and running on my laptop. I'd like to teach myself how to program the GPU. There is a lot of potential computing power tied up in those little chips, but not all computations scale equally well on the GPU. I think this is probably something that I will not truly be able to appreciate until I learn it through trial and error. Still, there's at least one instance of someone doing discontinuous Galerkin simulations on the GPU with encouraging results. I'd like to see if I can manage to get at least part of my DG solver running on the GPU.

And it's official..

The day has finally come at long last. I am now officially Eric M. Collins, PhD.

It has been such a long and arduous process that I'm finding it difficult to accept that I'm actually done. From the perspective of fulfilling a life-long ambition, it was well worth it. Now we will see if it was worth the delay in getting a real job and postponing all of those other things that grown-ups with a decent income get to do.

While I've still got a lot of work to do and papers to write, I also need to focus on looking for a job. I have until the end of the year to find something. I would very much like to get on with one of the new-space companies (e.g. SpaceX, Blue Origin, etc.), but I will also be looking into NASA and some of the national labs. If there is anyone out there who wants to hire a computational engineer with an intense interest in enabling technologies for exploration and exploitation of the space environment, please feel free to contact me.

A Biological Imperative

Every few months, the debate over humans in space seems to flare up again. The motivations for human spaceflight are usually touched on briefly while reflecting on the loss of the astronauts of the Apollo I, Challenger, and Columbia spacecraft. Sometimes the discussion is sparked by the humans vs. robots debate. Other times it shows up while attempting to justify the human spaceflight budget. Depending on the context and the participants, the discussion can be anywhere from cordial to an outright flame war.

Jeff Foust recently posted a fairly innocuous summary of reactions to the new administration's budget request (Reacting to the budget proposal - Space Politics) which has somehow managed to stir up a fair amount of discussion in its comments. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to reading through it, some of the comments had already began devolving into pointless bickering.

Of course, I felt compelled to post some of my own thoughts. I am reposting them here for my own benefit, and in case anyone would like to discuss them away from the flames of the other post.

Human space exploration is not about science, or even exploration for that matter. These things are a consequence - a side effect - of having humans in space. In fact, science and exploration are a consequence of humans being just about anywhere, including the bottom of the ocean or in caves dozens of kilometers below the surface. Humans will make observations (either directly or through remote probes), form hypotheses, test them, and then find a way to exploit the results somehow. That's what humans do.

The question on everyone's mind is "Why?" Why do we go to all of these extreme places (in person and with probes)? The answer is quite simple: niche exploitation and expansion. It's a biological imperative. We do what biological organisms have always done: expand to fill an available niche, exploit resources where possible, and then search for new niches to fill. In every biological population, there are individuals or groups which make it their purpose to accomplish each of these tasks. Humans are particularly adept at this and are doing so at an unprecedented rate.

What makes humans so special is that they are the first species capable of expanding the biosphere beyond the surface of the Earth. Humans alone are capable of taking this simple biological imperative out into the universe; exploiting the resources found there, remaking the environment to sustain themselves, and always pressing forward. It is for this purpose that the robotic probes are made and sent out in advance; and that robotic machines are being created to assist humans in hostile environments. It is also for this reason that we cannot send robotic probes alone.

In a way these thoughts are complementary to those I have posted previously (Why Space? and Not Just Science). I find that my thoughts have evolved somewhat since then. I have been trying to come to a better understanding of what it is that space advocates are trying to articulate when they give the 'basic human need to explore' argument. Although most space advocates feel this in their bones, they usually fail to give an adequate explanation of this feeling to those who do not necessarily share their passion for space. I'm not saying that my comments above will go much further at bringing this point home to the average Joe. However, I do feel that if we can get past our own personal motivations and cast human spaceflight in a broader context, we may eventually be able to convince others that it is well worth the expense.

Second Carnival of Space

The second Carnival of Space is up and I actually have a submission in it. Hopefully, these carnivals will give me more incentive to write a post somewhat more frequently than once in a blue moon.

I do have a few ideas that I've been mulling over. However, the desire to complete my dissertation research has been trumping my desire to blog for a while now, and it will most likely continue to do so for the next few months. Still, I will try to make an effort to post a couple of times a month just to keep the Ol' blog from getting dusty.

Ad Astra Per Aspera.

A new year, a new focus.

Well, it happened. I have pretty much let this blog atrophy into irrelevance. (Not that it was ever relevant to anyone other than myself.) The thing is, I find myself at a decided disadvantage. There are so many excellent spaceflight related blogs out there, and they all seem to be run by much more qualified individuals than myself and who apparently have much more free time to blog than I do. These individuals do such an excellent job covering the latest "new space" news and speculating on possible future spaceflight architectures that I find I have very little additional insights to offer to the discussion.

I've also been thinking alot about what I'm going to be doing next with my life. I'm nearing the completion of my dissertation research in Computational Engineering, and am beginning to look forward to doing something useful in the area of spaceflight research and development. Since I started this degree program, so much has happened in the area of spaceflight and so many opportunities have opened up, that I can't wait to get out there and start contributing.

Of course, my personal goal all along has been to one day become an astronaut. However, I find that the particular set of research skills I have been developing over the past several years (developing computational simulation technology in support of NASA engineers designing and building the next generation of rocket engines) may not be directly applicable to the duties of an astronaut. At best, I am on track to become a rocket scientist, or propulsion engineer for NASA or any of the emerging companies focused on space launch and transport. In the near term, advanced propulsion technologies are fascinating to me and I would love to have the opportunity to work directly on the development of new rocket engines. However, in the longer term, I am concerned that this particular career path may not put me in demand when in comes to being selected for astronaut duty.

In light of all of this introspection, I've been reviewing my interests, talents, and experience to date, and I think I've found a field of expertise that may be much more relevant to astronauts in the very near future. The way I see it, when people finally start going into space to get some real work done, there will most likely be a great need for robotic assistants to accomplish many difficult and dangerous tasks. An astronaut trained to operate, repair, and modify these robotic helpers would be invaluable. I've always had an interest in robotics and a talent with computers and programming. I also have some limited experience designing and building a very primitive robot for my Masters thesis project (an automated data acquisition apparatus in which a PC ran the experiment, collected the data, and presented the results to the user).

So, with the new year upon us, I have decided to begin to look into the current state of the art, and near future possibilities, of robotics, with particular emphasis on space exploration applications. I will attempt to document my research on this blog. I do not yet know if there are others out there already blogging this particular angle on space exploration, but I hope I will be able to compile and distill some useful information that may be of interest to others.

Ad Astra, Per Aspera

Comments welcomed

My apologies to the half-dozen or so people who tried to leave comments on my earlier posts. Apparently, the comment moderation setting was turned on, but Blogger wasn't notifying me that I had any (at least not in any obvious way). Anyway, I turned off the moderation feature, so feel free to comment at your leisure. Of course, if I start getting comment spam I'll have to turn it back on again, but for now, the traffic to this blog is so low that I don't know why any one would bother spamming it.