Day 7 lectures:
- Hoffman’s “Introduction to Astronynamics” (aka orbital mechanics)
- Madry’s “Introduction to Satellite Applications”
- Green’s “The Space Environment” (the effects of solar events, radiation, etc)
After the lectures and lunch, we had a 3-hour TP Theme Day. Our chair, German astronaut Reinhold Ewald, brought in 3 speakers
- DLR’s humanoid robot Justin [video link]
- Astrium’s automated science rack on space station: Biolab
- ESA’s automated comet lander Philae
Thirteen of us went to dinner with Hoffman and Logsdon which was really interesting. After dinner I walked back to the dorm with Hoffman. How often do you get to have the undivided attention of an astronaut? I thought it would be good to give him a chance to talk about something other than Hubble and going to the bathroom in space so I asked him about his hobbies. We talked about his adventures trekking in Nepal, scuba diving, and skiing in Colorado and the Alps. Of course, the scuba diving discussion led to him sharing about his Hubble training in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston (the pool where the astronauts train). He talked about how cohesive NASA was during the Hubble mission preparations because everyone understood how important it was to science and our understanding of the universe to have an operating telescope. It was a good lesson – when our project is science oriented, it unites the engineering and science departments. Maybe we could use this with Mars. Scientists want some samples of the Martian surface to be brought back to earth. Maybe if we work together we can get there.
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