Reflections on Space Exploration and the ISDC

I’ve always been interested and impressed by space exploration, but I never really thought of myself as a “space geek.” I am a software geek, a robotics geek, a Sci-Fi geek, an old Volkswagen geek, etc. So it’s not the geekiness I lacked. The truth is that, for all the “cool”-ness and wonder of space exploration, I had always regarded it as this big inaccessible thing. Historically, only governments have been able to mount manned missions into space. I know that there has been a handful of privately funded space tourists that have traveled to the ISS, but they have all come from among the ranks of the super-wealthy, and they still had to make deals with foreign governments to get there. However, what hadn’t occurred to me is that, like most other technologies, space travel will eventually become more affordable and accessible with time. Indeed, much of the buzz at the ISDC this year was about how manned space flight (at least in near-earth space) is now just on the cusp of being within the reach of private corporations.

The Two Faces of NASA

As an American, most of what I know about space has come to me in one form or another through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA and space exploration are virtually synonymous in American culture. But this week I began to see that NASA is a complex animal with many different facets.

The first side of NASA is the inspirational NASA that most of us are familiar with. Although it was not technically part of the conference, my girlfriend Jane and I spent a few hours at Huntsville’s US Space and Rocket Center museum where we watched an IMAX documentary about the Hubble telescope. The movie talked about the purpose of the Hubble, described some of the initial problems it faced, and featured some amazing film from the shuttle missions sent to repair and improve the telescope. We saw the astronauts doing very demanding and incredibly complex work, but then also telling jokes and enjoying the amazing opportunity they had. It was the sort of thing that fills you with wonder and joy and pride in what we have accomplished in space and an appreciation of what we are capable of when we set ourselves to a task.

The other side of NASA I saw this week was the relentlessly stodgy, soul-crushingly boring side. I attended seminars that purported to be about innovations in space exploration that were in fact nothing more than descriptions of org-charts; charts telling us the names and titles of the administrators in charge of developing innovative technology, with nary a mention of actual innovations. Of course, any organization as large and as complex as NASA needs structure and management, but it began to seem to me as if there’s more management going on than actual work being managed.

In the United States, and perhaps worldwide, NASA enjoys a very positive public perception. This perception has begun to diminish in the past few years as the Space Shuttle program winds down, and its future manned space flight programs remain in limbo. NASA has done and is doing amazing things which have tremendous ability to inspire us; however, it's stodgy, boring side is beginning to peek through. Perhaps NASA can reverse this trend, but only if it can get out of its own way.

Robot-building as a timed event

If you’ve seen much of the Part-Time Scientists’ media, you’ve almost certainly seen pictures or videos of the R0, our software prototyping platform for the lunar rover. The R0 is designed to let our software teams develop control algorithms on a less expensive and more stable device, while the hardware engineers finish and polish the designs for the version that will actually be sent to the Moon.

The R0s are hand-built in Germany by the hardware team, and last week they sent us the components for one to demo at the conference. Wes had given Eric and me the task of doing the final assembly and calibration, as well as creating some interesting demos to show off the capabilities of R0. We arrived on Wednesday night, and our goal was to have a working Demo by Saturday morning when the GLXP panel discussion was scheduled to take place. After doing an initial inventory of parts, tools, and existing software on Wednesday night, that left Thursday and Friday to build and code, in whatever time we could spare away from the conference sessions.

For those of you who have ever participated in Startup Weekend, GiveCamp, or any other timed-engineering event, you will know this feeling. The feeling that comes from hacking together a working device with your own hands under a tight deadline. It's a mix of enthusiasm, fear, adrenaline and caffeine. I’m very pleased to say that we were able to assemble, calibrate and program a nice set of demos working mostly in the evenings after the conference sessions ended. (OK, there may have been some coding going on during the sessions.) And both nights we managed to get to sleep before 2AM.

On Saturday morning, we showed off the R0 platform performing a mix of several simple behaviors we had managed to get working well. Our only regret is that we didn't have time to hack together an on-board battery power supply. Special thanks to Karsten in Germany for his support. His input was essential to our understanding of the commands required to control the servo motors on the R0.

Andrew