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Friday Apr 18, 2008

Space Blogs Round-up 18/04/2008

Posted at 06:00PM Apr 18, 2008 by Pradeep in General  |  Comments[0]

Wednesday Apr 16, 2008

Space Blogs Round-up: 16/04/08

Posted at 08:47PM Apr 16, 2008 by Pradeep in General  |  Comments[0]

Tuesday Apr 15, 2008

From the blogosphere - 15/04/2008

I find that I'm sharing more than I'm adding content to the cyberspace. But, that maybe mostly because I'm involved in writing my assignments, experiments and drawing sheets.

Posted at 05:54PM Apr 15, 2008 by Pradeep in General  |  Comments[0]

Monday Apr 14, 2008

From the blogosphere - 14/04/2008

Just received news in my inbox that SEDSAT II's new homepage is a WordPress powered blog. Cool!

More in the evening, I suppose

Posted at 10:31AM Apr 14, 2008 by Pradeep in General  |  Comments[0]

Saturday Apr 12, 2008

From the blogosphere - 12/04/2008

I've switched most of my regular blog posting to my personal domain - pradx.org - and have been worrying about what to do with this link. Anyway, I plan to continue posting some of the fascinating stuff that I find in the blogosphere for everyone to read and which I share through my Twitter account.

Happy Yuri's Night everyone. Too many wild Yuri's Nights for me. So planning to spend it alone quietly with a book and a hot cuppa.

Posted at 06:17PM Apr 12, 2008 by Pradeep in Space  |  Comments[0]

Saturday Mar 22, 2008

The Places to Go Directory

The current Places to Go directory on the Space Information Archive is not really great when you want to see what the place your going to looks like. And, when you're looking for information for going to some place doesn't it make sense to have a photo? At least it does to me.

So, I opened a Sandbox and have loaded the two looks that the Places to Go directory can post. Although my favourite is the Gallery Look, but I'm still trying to find out if I can enlarge those images. If you can suggest something, feel free to do it. 

Posted at 05:47PM Mar 22, 2008 by Pradeep in SEDS  |  Comments[0]

Wednesday Feb 27, 2008

Space and the Wisdom of Crowds

I picked up James Surowiecki's book 'The Wisdom of Crowds' from my library today. It's byline reads: Why the many are smarter than the few? It's basically a management book and the only reason I picked it up was to get a management eye view of why this happens. I've seen this work in some cases within SEDS and in some cases even in my class, so I really am biased towards the view that crowds can sometimes make better decisions than the experts of the field given a particular situation.

The book makes a reference to an event that occured immediately after the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. The launch was televised, so the news of the incident did spread quite quickly. One of the people who got this news was the Dow Jones, a stock market. Dow Jones did not stop trading for mourning but continued trading.

Four companies were involved in the Challenger programme: Rockwell International (built the shuttle and the main engine), Lockheed (ground support), Martin Marietta (external fuel tanks) and Morton Thiokol (solid fuel booster rocket). These shares started declining in the market 21 minutes after the disaster. Stocks of the companies involved fell almost immediately. By the end of the day, the stocks of Morton Thiokol fell by 12% while the other companies recovered and had fallen only by about 3%.

Six months after the explosion, the Presidential Commission on the Challenger held Morton Thiokol liable for the disaster due to the failiure of the O-Ring which became less resilient in cold weather and allowed the gases to leak out.

Surowiecki argues that the collective wisdom of the market crowd had squarely blamed Morton Thiokol for the disaster within a day which was later proved as the correct by the Presidential Commission. Surowiecki points out that a study by finance professors Michael Maloney and J. Harold Mulherin into the stock market reaction discovered no foul play or backstage manipulation leading to the steeper fall of the Thiokol stocks. Surowiecki states that what happened was that a large crowd was asked the question - How much less worth are these four companies worth now that the Challenger has exploded? and the market responded with an objectively correct answer. Thus, Surowiecki says that the average answer of the crowd will be atleast as good as or even better than the answer of the smartest member.

Stock Markets and space? Whoodathunkit? I wonder if similar studies have been made after the Columbia disaster and the Apollo-11 landings.

Posted at 05:57PM Feb 27, 2008 by Pradeep in Space  |  Comments[1]

Tuesday Feb 26, 2008

Twittering for Engineers

When we started working on SEDSAT-2, we started the blog with the intention of openly communicating with others what we were doing. However, while working there I realised that it's not quite so easy to do it. I now understand why there are so little space blogs and even if there are a few - why their technological content is limited. Why? You have to do it to understand it.

Twitter was not around the block at that time or it had not yet caught our attention. Twitter is a service where you let friends and others know what you're upto. To read and learn more about Twitter, read the official, "What is Twitter?".

This I think is much better than blogging for engineers and is more doable than a blog post. Why?

1. Engineers love writing in short - in equations, in symbols and in broken english.
2. There's not much to say about an engineering problem or solution that can constitute a major blog post and takes a lot of your time writing it.
3. You can access Twitter via anything - laptop or mobile.

To give you live examples of how Twitter can help and to expand your horizons, check out this cool list of space Twitter feeds. Who's in there? Lovell Telescope, APOD and others. See how they're using Twitter.

Also, even if you don't want to use Twitter for your latest engineering innovations, you can use it elsewhere for personal reasons as well.

I usually update my Twitter feed everytime I'm online on my Twitter page.

Posted at 12:03PM Feb 26, 2008 by Pradeep in General  |  Comments[0]

India and her Space Debris Policy

Space Debris can form a threat to currently operating space vehicles and to people on Earth if it deorbits. To give the other side, there has been less than 10 instances of debris actually falling on habitated areas and there too without any serious injuries. But, still as more students in universities and more nations are able to access space technology and build satellites for the development of their country, the problem is not going away, atleast in the near future. There needs to be some way of either utilising this debris or removing this debris without any serious consequences.

India is a member of two organisations that deals with the problems of space debris - United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS) and the Inter-Agency Space Debris Co-ordination Committee (IADC). A recent paper by V Adimurthy, M Y S Prasad and S K Shivakumar titled "Space Mission Planning and Operations", published in the Current Science magazine in Vol. 93 No. 12, had this to say on the topic:

In the design of PSLV final stage, which uses earthstorable liquid propellants, a propellant venting system has been designed. ISRO’s launch vehicle, GSLV, also employs passivation of the cryogenic upper stage at the end of its useful mission. In the operational phase, the last stage of PSLV has been passivated beginning with PSLV-C4, which was successfully launched in September 2002. With the implementation of this passivation, the possibility of on-orbit fragmentation has been minimized in all the future flights of PSLV. India’s launch vehicles,
PSLV and GSLV, and the satellites IRS, INSAT and GSAT series are designed in such a way that no operational debris is created in the launch and deployment phases of the mission.

That seems to be pretty comprehensive. The paper further states that most of the Indian satellites are re-robited "on a case-by-case basis, consistent with national service requirements". ISRO also has developed a space debris proximity analysis software that it uses regularily to keep a watch on currently active satellites, planning launch windows and launches with minimum debris and study the break-up fragmentation during launch.

Since there is a new race to Moon and Mars, I hope that these parameters are kept in mind there as well so that we don't have orbital debris everywhere we go.

In the light of such technology being available to India, one wonders why similar strategies were not used for USA-193 which was recently shot down by a US Navy missile.

Posted at 11:58AM Feb 26, 2008 by Pradeep in Space in India  |  Comments[0]

Friday Feb 22, 2008

Space in today's paper

The newspaper delivered to our doorstep seems to have come out with a space special edition - although it doesn't mention it.

The front page carries the pictorial representation of the story that a US missile has hit a space satellite. It states that India, which expressed worry in the Chinese testing case expressed remained silent on the US act.

The editorial comments about life on Titan at the cost of life on Earth. It's an interesting commentary and seems to be written by someone who has read a lot about space and space literature.

The op-ed page carries news articles from Reuters about the formation of steps on Mars and some stunning images of the lunar eclipse which India, unfortunately did not witness. 

And on the last page of the same paper is a serious advertisement by the Aliens Group. The Group does construction company based in Hyderabad. Probably, didn't have much time to think of another name or tried to be different. But, things get to a head with its new advertisement of a building that it calls : Space Station - 1.

The small description below reads: 'Experience 30 floors of intelligent living at Aliens Space Station, situated in Hyderabad'. Thanks for the clarification that it's in Hyderabad and not in some other galactic system. It eased a tense situation at home (Thank you!!)

Posted at 03:35PM Feb 22, 2008 by Pradeep in General  |  Comments[0]

Astrosat and some SEDS tie-up ideas

Astrosat is one of the most comprehensive astronomical satellites that India has been in the process of building. It has institutions like IUCAA, IIA, TIFR, RRI, ISAC etc. and has foriegn collabrations from the Canadian Space Agency and Leicester University. It is deemed to be one of the most comprehensive multi-wavelength satellite covering be a multi-wavelength astronomy mission that will cover soft X-rays (0.3–8 keV), hard Xrays (10–100 keV), near and far ultraviolet bands (120– 300 nm) and visible band.

That's most of the rays you learn of in your first year in engineering. Find more at the ASTROSAT website - http://meghnad.iucaa.ernet.in/~astrosat/.This provides for unique ideas for working with UKSEDS and SEDS-Canada.

Posted at 03:25PM Feb 22, 2008 by Pradeep in SEDS  |  Comments[1]

Thursday Feb 21, 2008

Chandrayaan I delayed...Chandrayaan II approved

Press reports in the Times of India and the Indian Express have confirmed the announcement of the delay in the launch of Chandrayaan-I. There is no official press release on the point though, as visible from the main page of the ISRO website.

When I was in ISRO last year, I heard a few people say that Chandrayaan was a really on a very competitive schedule. If it were really that competitive a schedule, I would think a 3 month delay is not really that bad.

However, a  related report states that the Space Commission and the Cabinet has cleared India's next lunar mission - Chandrayaan II. Good luck, guys!! 

Posted at 05:25PM Feb 21, 2008 by Pradeep in Space in India  |  Comments[0]

Sunday Feb 17, 2008

Indian Space Programme special in Current Science

When at the IAC, we asked a Director of ISRO what he would do to make the youth more aware of the activities of ISRO, he had replied saying that ISRO did not like to advertise too much. And, as is the case, there are no advertisements in the media or not much coverage in the national English language media of India's space activities except for its successes and failiures. 

So, it was quite surprising to see a series of detailed articles in the magazine Current Science on the Indian Space Programme. Some of the authors can claim to be big names someday in the progress of Indian space science.

Here's a list of articles, which I hope to probe more actively in the coming weeks with illustrations: ALL PDF LINKS

I hope to devour them soon!! 

Posted at 05:59PM Feb 17, 2008 by Pradeep in Space in India  |  Comments[0]

Wednesday Feb 13, 2008

What's there to do?

Somewhere in your mind you are now aware of doing something related to space. The stimuli may have been anything from a sci-fi movie, a Stephen Hawking book, a Discovery channel series or just the love for the night sky. 

This may have brought you to organisations like SEDS, Planetary Society and SGAC and meet other people like you. Simultaneously, via emails, you are aware of a few things that the people on your mailing list are doing - building rockets, designing satellites, planning space events etc. This may be you first awareness of oppertunities available.

Online resources like Wikipedia help in clarifying words that you must have read in emails You may raise doubts which others could not help clarify via the mailing list. You might even consult your college library or your Professors.

This lateral drift in the early days creates an awareness of oppertunitie and the specification of interest. 

Posted at 01:05PM Feb 13, 2008 by Pradeep in SEDS  |  Comments[0]

Monday Feb 11, 2008

Lunar Rover Design Competition

It was the same time last year that we worked on a moon rover competition for SEDS International Conference 2007 in India. The winner, if I remember right got half-tution scholarship to the International Space University. With that bit of information, I should have guessed that preparations for this year might have already begun, especially with UKSEDS being involved with the UK Space Conference besides SEDS International Conference 2008.

Kirk (with whom through AAS, we in SEDS-India held the competition with)  did it againg this time and has come up with an array of information, blog , forum discussions and mailing list.

The problem involves designing a rover that will help humans once they get to work on the Moon. So, these guys will be working while we sleep, eat or do other work that we have not automated. It's perhaps a great next step to what we had in India.

I heard from Kirk, that Indian students came up with really cool and crazy rover designs some of which even captured his imagination. This might set the bar for this year's event. Also, we've got a lot of students interested in India, who I hope will respond positively for this year's event as well.

For those of you, who have caught up with the Twitter bug, you can also catch updates on Twitter. 

Posted at 06:37PM Feb 11, 2008 by Pradeep in SEDS  |  Comments[0]