First, good news! The SSP Director, Angie Bukley, asked me the other day if she could post a link to my blog on the SSP home page! I am so honored! To those who are new readers, welcome! I hope you enjoy accompanying me on this adventure in Graz.
More good news today: NASA/ULA successfully launched the Atlas V rocket taking the
Juno spacecraft to Jupiter.
Ok... back to the blog. Yesterday we had lectures on Space Transportation Systems and Space Ports, Marketing Space Enterprises, and Space Mission Design. All 3 were great lectures! In the marketing class we watched a video about a duck who is a really bad customer. The video has a catchy tune and we all have it stuck in our heads. I would like to share the the aggravation with you, so please watch this... *wink, wink*
The Duck SongJohn Connolly from Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX (where I live) taught the Space Mission Design lecture. He was a very dynamic and exciting speaker. He started out with a video that had the familiar Star Wars opening scrolling text modified into a story about SSP students. He definitely had our attention after that! He talked about the process for creating a mission architecture - how to select a rocket, vehicle, duration, etc. Check out what he wrote on the board: (thanks for the pic, Helia)
After lectures yesterday, we had our third Department Activity (DA) which was focused on remote sensing. We started out with role playing so we could begin to think about the legal implications of remote sensing. The scenario was that the mayor of a town was trying to deal with a huge city-wide fire. What would he ask the insurance company? What would he ask the government agency? What would he ask the private satellite data-processing company? This was a useful way to introduce the laws and policies that Henry Hertzfeld (George Washington University) then discussed with us.
In our Department, each of the students has to write a 1000 word paper on the space policy topic of his or her choice. I spoke with one of my mentors back home about the paper and told her I wanted to do something about commercial space. She suggested a great topic which I decided to use. My topic concerns round 3 of NASA's
Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) awards. In July, NASA proposed changing the procurement plan from Space Act Agreements to a Federal Acquisition Requirements. I will investigate what impact this would have on the 4 companies that have CCDev agreements (Boeing is one). Our papers are due August 19. For those who may not know, Boeing is designing and building a really awesome space capsule called
CST-100 which can bring 7 astronauts to the International Space Station under the CCDev program. My husband is working on the orbital debris shields for the vehicle.
After the DA, I went to dinner at a wonderful Italian restaurant with some friends. I had spaghetti carbonara and I learned how it got its name! Giulia from Italy explained that when you eat carbonara you need to use a lot of pepper which looks like carbon! She also told us that some people in Italy (like her grandmother) think that if you add cheese it means you don't like the sauce - so be careful! Dinner was fantastic.
Today was our last day of lectures! We learned about Space Architecture, Bones and Muscles in Space, and finally Cosmology. In the Space Architecture presentation, Professor Hernandez showed us a video of some students at the
University of Houston who are studying the subject. I had no idea that U of H taught space architecture! The students were designing habitats on Mars. In the second class we learned how and why bones and muscles deteriorate in zero-g and the countermeasures to prevent this. The third lecture was our 63rd core lecture and it was taught by Professor Marov from Russia. He has taught this lecture at all 24 SSP's! That's impressive. Cosmology is the study of the origin (and fate) of the universe. His talk included the Big Bang theory, string theory, multiverses and wormholes. Cosmologists go back and forth between whether the universe is expanding forever resulting in the "big tear," expanding then collapsing resulting in the "big crunch," or steady state. He concluded by saying "don't worry about the end of the universe because you'll be dead long before any of this happens." I definitely have a different opinion on the subject. ;-)
And that's it! No more lectures this summer! After our last lecture, all of the faculty came out and sang "Oh, Happy Day" celebrating this milestone.
Cultural Night 3 is tonight and our performers are Norway, Canada, Italy, Russia, and Brazil. That means that the
best part of today is that we get tiramisu tonight! Thanks Italians!!! We have no activities on Saturday or Sunday so we can study. Our exam is on Monday. We have 9 more Department Activities and then 3 weeks of solid Team Project time until the end of the program. Five weeks to go and so much to do!
