I will survive!!

Week 3 Highlights

I can't believe SSP is officially 1/3 over!

Tuesday our 3 lectures were 1. Remote sensing applications, 2. Remote sensing data distributions and policies, 3. Power & thermal controls. After lunch we all went to 1 of 5 workshops. Earlier in the program everyone had to pick 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice for workshops, departments, and team project. During the workshop time slots there are 4 of 5 choices. I chose Artificial Gravity and it was a very good choice! Gilles Clement and Angie Bukley taught the class. Gilles is one of the core lecturers (focusing on life sciences) and Angie is the SSP director. They make a great team....makes sense since they are married! :-) We learned that the concept of artificial gravity was first conceived in 1883 by Tsiolkovsky. Had no idea it was that old! Class highlights:

• Spinning in a chair while holding a watermelon. Move the watermelon towards and away from your body to experience the Coriolis force. Then tilt your head down - dizzy!!
• Watching scenes from 2001 A Space Odyssey, Armageddon, and Moonraker and then calculating rotational speed, artificial gravity, and diameter of the rotating vehicles.
• Eating the watermelon!

Wednesday our 3 classes were: 1. Global Navigation and Satellite Systems (GNSS), 2. Policy Issues of GNSS, and Technology Transfer, Export and Import Controls. Then we had an Ethics Panel and a participant debate on the topic: Is it ethical to mine the moon and other celestial bodies.

Thursday our classes were: 1. Attitude determination and orbital control, 2. The brain in space, 3. Astrobiology. Gilles taught "the brain in space" of course. I learned a lot! Did you know that we have sensors in our inner ear that can detect yaw, pitch and roll just like an airplane or spacecraft?! We also have something called Otolith Organs in our ears which tell us how fast we are accelerating and in which direction. Absolutely fascinating! We are so high tech! In space, however, you cannot distinguish between tilt and translation because of zero-g. This leads to confusion when you get back to earth. Being in space also causes problems with depth perception, distance perception, cognitive skills, navigation, space motion sickness, and handwriting! Gilles showed us lots of pictures of astronauts performing experiments related to the brain / cognitive skills. This was a whole new world for me since I'm not in life sciences.

Friday we had 1. Governance of space settlements, 2. Space robotics, and 3. Space & security. The robotics one was my favorite because Dr. Yoshida showed us some robots I have never seen before. For example, Big Dog, Ballroom Dance Robot, and Humanoid Walking Robot HRP-4C. After that we had a workshop in Planetary Engineering. Pretty far-fetched, but interesting concept. Some of this is a lot more science-fiction than I anticipated.

After class we had a robotics competition. Five teams of 5 built Lego robots to pick up "gems" within a square boundary. The robots were built in two days! Amazing! I have pictures, I'll post later. My roommate's team won with 490 points! Go roomie!

After the competition, 11 of us went to the city center for an Italian meal. A note about food here... We eat in a cafeteria 3x a day. It's a cafeteria, so naturally you can't expect gourmet food. But almost every day, we have fried meat and potatoes. Needless to say I'm getting fat here! Every morning we have the exact same breakfast: bread, meat, cheese, yogurt, granola, corn flakes, coffee. On the weekends we get that plus bacon and eggs. I live for the weekends. So Friday night I had my first good meal in 3 weeks. I had bruschetta as an appetizer, then shared pesto risotto with shrimp / mozzarella and a mozzarella / ham pizza.... yummmm. I can't tell you how amazing it was. Then we all had dessert - the tiramisu was fantastic!! I was in heaven.

Yes, we had class on Saturday this week. Saturday we had our last lecture from Gilles (Space Biology) and Jim Dator (Space Art). Then Angie talked about my job!! Structures!! Woohoo!! Pretty exciting. :-) After this, we have a presentation about the Exam which is a little over 1 week from now. Uh oh! Tonight we have culture night 2. I will have to do a separate post about that because this one is getting long and I'm sure that one will have lots of pictures.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Shout out to my Houston peeps - I miss all of you. Keep in touch, I'd love to hear from you! I can skype on my ipod, but we just need to set a time.

Day 17 - Monday, July 25

Today was so much fun! I decided I'm letting myself be too lazy so I got up at 6:30 and went for a jog. I'm gonna be really sore tomorrow!

Our first lecture today was by Canadian Astronaut Bob Thirsk. He talked about preparing for an Extended Duration Mission (EDM) on board the International Space Station (ISS). Everything he said applies to our SSP time this summer. Here's a brief recap:

• In order to have a happy / productive crew, it is necessary that each person takes care of himself or herself.
  
• It feels better to be ahead of daily tasks than behind.
  
• If you're not having fun you're doing something wrong.
• Put stressful situations into perspective.
  
• You've got to figure out how to deal with separation from family
  
• Be flexible
• You can interpret everything positively or negatively
• Hang out with positive people
• Pace yourself - don't be a workaholic
• Ask for help when you need it
  
• Preserve your personal space (at least 30 min alone time per day)
• Set realistic goals so you don't burn out
• Your team includes the ground crew (I love you, Mitch!)
• Develop relationships early
• Discuss group expectations

The next lecture was about space propulsion and the final lecture for the day was about cost estimation, insurance and risk management.

After lunch half of the Human-Robotic Cooperation Team had the opportunity to visit Magna Steyr where they assemble Astin Martin Rapide and Mini Countryman! We saw the Mini part of the factory. So cool!! There are about 300 robots in the Mini assembly line and only 3 in Astin Martin. I really liked seeing the body assembly robots. Sparks flew everywhere from the spot welding. It was very dramatic! We also saw the Countryman post-paint. They are so colorful in bright blue, navy blue, white, black, silver, dark silver and brown. Each one is different and is custom ordered. We saw the finished cars rolling off the line. Ten percent of them go through the rain test before shipping. This field trip was to show us robots in action. The most exciting robot they had on the Mini line was the one that puts the wheels on the car. It can "see" the incoming wheel, assess its orientation, "see" the car on the line, match its speed, rotate the tire to the appropriate angle and put it on. Pretty sophisticated!
wikipedia page
company page

After our tour we came back for dinner and then watched 4 teams compete in the Rube Goldberg competition. A Rube Goldberg machine is basically an intentionally over-Engineered machine that performs a very simple task. For this competition, the students were given no money and no supplies. For example watch this.... Honda "Cog" video

Here is a picture of their creation. For more, see my Facebook page.

So that was today! Really fun! Nevertheless, I am counting the days until I can be home with Mitch. :-)

Week 2 Highlights

Time is just flying... I can barely keep up!

This week we had 3 classes every morning and workshops after lunch. Here were the classes from Tuesday through Friday:

• Management of Space Projects
• Cultural Rationales for Space Activities
• International Dimensions of Space Exploration
• Systems Engineering & Requirements
• Space Medicine
• Astronaut Selection and Training (Soyeon Yi)
• Space Futures
• Financial Issues / Techniques of Space Projects
• Space & Sustainability
• Spacecraft Configuration
• Satellite Imaging, Payloads, Sensors & Data
• Spaceship Earth
  

The "Spaceship Earth" lecture title reminds me of one of my favorite rides at Disney World in Florida:

We had a "Team Skills" workshop on Tuesday afternoon where we did some pretty neat team-building activities. The first one was that we had to individually draw a comic based on a short dialogue between two imaginary characters. Then we had to pick a partner and draw our representation of the dialogue together with both hands on the pencil. Pretty tricky! Then our whole team (40 people) went out into the lobby where there was a circle of chairs prepared. Each of us stood on a chair and we had to arrange ourselves in order according to first name. Then we had to re-arrange ourselves by birth date and month without talking. This was a really fun activity and helped me get to know some more names on the team.

The workshop on Wednesday was about report writing and presentation skills. We had to make an elevator pitch answering the question "what is your mission this summer." It was video-recorded so we could watch ourselves later. Then we had a grammar quiz. The native English speakers were each paired with 3 non-native English speakers to review actual content from previous SSP TP reports. Our last activity was to practice writing a timed essay. No biggie for me, but all these things will be challenging for non-native English speakers.

This week was the annual International Astronaut Panel. In the pic below (left to right) is the moderator, Nicole Stott (USA), Soyeon Yi (Korea), Jean-Jacques Favier (France), Chiaki Mukai (Japan), and Franz Viehbock (Austria).

On Thursday, July 21, the shuttle Atlantis made her final entry and landing. We stopped our third class that day about 5 minutes before the landing and watched NASA TV together on the big screen. It was a very special moment and I'm glad I was able to share it with other space fans. I'm sad to see the shuttle program end, but this step is necessary to move funding into developing our next human spacecraft.

The highlight of this week was Culture Night on Friday. Each culture night, 5-6 countries will present 15 minutes about their country. This week was Ireland, Turkey, South Africa, USA, and Austria. Team USA acted out 8 stereotypes of Americans: cowgirl, intellectual, military, Sarah Palin, hippie, couch potato, surfer, space nerd (me). We got a lot of laughs. Then we performed a dance to the chorus of Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA." Someone has a video so I'll post that once I get my hands on it. The Austrians followed us and had everybody evacuate the auditorium. We convened in the foyer and learned the "slap dance" in two groups. I was starting to get the hang of it but need more practice! Then the 5 countries served food and gave away gifts they had brought with them. We served hot wings from Hooters, s'mores, and drinks. We gave away tons of NASA mission stickers, NASA stickers, pins, NASA cups, and flyers about ISS and shuttle. Our table was very popular and I kinda felt like a movie star! After all the food was gone we had a dance party in the basement of that building. So far this is the most fun I have had at SSP. Everybody was just having a great time and letting go.

This weekend I decided to stay in Graz rather than take any side trips. I was really dragging this week. Definitely not getting enough sleep. I think next week will be much better since I'm going to be all rested and ready to go! I even had a chance to do some yoga with others who stayed here. But I hope the people who went on weekend trips to Munich, Vienna, Venice, Salzburg, and Innsbruck are having fun!