Orbit or Bust

I have been neglecting to write about my many experiences from my NASATweetup and NASASocial experiences. First, as a refresher a NASASocial is an event where individuals involved in social media apply, and are randomly selected to participate in an experience at a NASA Center (it differs from place to place, but I’ll explain that in a bit). Often times this involves getting the VIP tour at that center, meeting astronauts, and doing things that the general public doesn’t get to do.

I have been to several different events, below is a list of them, followed by a brief summary of each event. 

• STS-130 JSC Mission Tweetup, May 2010
• GRAIL NASATweetup, September 2011
• Wallops NASASocial, October 2011
• SpaceX COTS 2+ (2/3) NASASocial, May 2012

I could write on and on about the different events, their impact on my life and the cool people I’ve met. So I’ll be brief with a summary of each one, and what I vaguely remember from each one.

During the first event I was really impressed to see what mission control was really like. Everyone sees the different views of mission control of TV and in movies, but being able to be in the observation deck and see operations going in in front of me was impressive. At the time there were several spacewalks going on to replace a part of the International Space Station (ISS) that had failed. This was the beginning and my introduction to Twitter and the power of the platform. 

During the second event the tweetup for the GRAIL mission this was my first launch tweetup after being met with “we’re sorry you haven’t been picked for the Space Shuttle tweetup” many times. I was so excited to get close to a launch vehicle. We were introduced to many of the main program scientists, the principal investigators, and a few “science celebrities” (such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Jim Adams). In between the presentations we were treated to a tour of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and the general area of Kennedy Space Center. Then we saw the rocket launch from KARS park.

For my third event, which was the first of the rebranded NASASocial events we were given a tour of the NASA Wallops Flight Facility. We were given an up close tour of the many different things that go on at this facility. They launch sub-orbital research rockets, and also launch orbital vehicles in cooperation with Orbital Sciences. They do high-altitude balloon programs and education and public outreach. It was interesting to see how they do almost all of their stuff in house. They design, fabricate, build, test, verify and launch their rockets on site. The do control systems and software for these rockets. They design and build high-altitude balloons and sometimes help build the science payloads that go on these “launch vehicles.” It was really impressive to see them doing so much without replying on outside contractors to do a lot of work. After that we were given a tour of the Horizontal Integration Facility that is used by Orbital Sciences and their Antares Rocket.

For my last NASASocial event I attended the SpaceX Falcon 9 COTS 2+ (COTS 2/3) mission at Kennedy Space Center. This event was punctuated with meeting many with the NASA Commercial Program office, Gwynne Shotwell the President of SpaceX, and other members of various teams around Kennedy Space Center. We were then treated to seeing the launch at the KSC Press Site. However, this launch wasn’t without its issues, and had a three day delay. 

While this is just a brief overview of the events, more information can be found below. And it is impossible to mention all of the people I have met and formed lasting friendships with, it just amazes me how these events bring together people who are so interested in spaceflight in its various forms. As a result of meeting some of these people I have become involved in several project that are extremely worthwhile for outreach, such as RocketSTEM and SpaceUp Houston. 

You can find more information about these various events  and how to sign up at the official NASASocial page and at a community owned and operated Wiki page. And you can find me at my various social media outlets on the right.

Another thing worth mentioning that is extremely important. I will not be attending any more NASASocial events, at least not at the same NASA centers simply because part of the goal of this program is to share the experience with as many people as possible. So since I have participated in several of them my time has come to not take the spot from another person. Best of luck to any person who applies to them in the future, it is very well worth the expense of getting there.

Side note: NASA Public Affairs changed the name of the events from NASATweetups to NASASocials in order to include more social networks such as Google+ and Facebook.

So at&t recently updated their password policies to ban profane passwords. There is a lot of rage going around that how dare at&t say what you can and can’t put in a password, that it would make it less secure to only consists of certain phrases. The thing is THEY ARE ALL MISSING THE POINT.

Let me back up a bit. When going to a website and signing up and creating an account the following steps should happen. Enter username and password for the account, and then any necessary personal data. When the password is put in it should go through the following steps: Password is input into the character field, that character data is run through something called a hashing algorithm (also called a one-way function). The password is then turned into something that when given the output of it, it is mathematically infeasible to re-create the source. You can find more information here (with a much better explanation). So the only way to prove the user is who they say they are, is for that user to input the password back in, run it through the hashing function, and compare the end result with the stored data.

So while people are getting angry, they are getting mad at the wrong thing. What they should be mad at is that their passwords to their at&t accounts are being stored in the clear on their servers. What happens if you used the same email and password for your at&t account as say your bank? Well an at&t rep/administrator/IT employee now has your login credentials to your bank. (ignoring the fact that using the same passwords anywhere is a horrendous idea). Or what would happen if their password database was compromised, then your password is now in the clear on the internet. What happened if you saw “monkey33” plastered everywhere? (Odd anecdote, monkey is one of the most popular single word passwords). One only needs to look at all of the password database breeches that have occurred recently: Linked In, Zappos, RSA Security, Gawker Media, and on and on and on….

So if getting angry, be sure you are getting angry about the right thing.

Today during a press conference Dennis Tito made an announcement that he was forming a group called Inspiration Mars to plan a manned flyby of Mars (similar to the Apollo 8 mission). This mission would calls for a crew of two, a man and a woman, this mission would be on a free return trajectory so they would do their boost of speed in low earth orbit and then automatically be on the way back home.

The press conference today was basically here is ten minutes of engineering plans and then lets spend the rest of the time pulling at heart strings without answering the core questions. Then a reporter from the associated press basically asked the question how are you guys going to pull this off? The question fell on deaf ears when they basically just reiterated what was said earlier. So was this reporter not paying attention? No.

Here is a breakdown of what the mission requirements are, by the flight in 2018 they want to: Fly on a Falcon Heavy, the crew will fly to orbit in a Dragon capsule, there will be a Bigelow inflatable module for the crew to have some extra space in, and the radiation shield will be the Trans-Martin Injection stage. There are a few problems with this:

• The Falcon Heavy slated for its maiden this year (2013). Which is fine, but the pad that the Falcon Heavy will be launching isn’t finished yet. Granted they have 10 more months (as of this writing) but finishing the pad and a flight seems like a long shot.
• The Dragon capsule hasn’t even been rated for manned use yet (even though it is pressurized and undergoing that testing at the moment).
• Bigelow inflatable modules haven’t even been lofted into space yet, but that is planned. [Correction, Bigelow modules have flown, but they were unmanned]
• Designing the rocket stage to do the Martian injection burn.

So with this information it seems to me like there is one of two things that could be going on:

1. They actually have a possible plan for doing everything they have announced. They know the hardware is in the pipeline and will have everything completed.
2. This project will go the way of ATK’s Liberty rocket and platform. They make a grand presentation, stir up the fervor of the media with promotional videos and presentations, and nothing happens with it.

So while it is too early to make a complete judgement call, and more information is coming out about it. Right now I am leaning toward this is a pipe dream.

EDIT:

But perhaps my biggest issue with the whole situation is when asked if they were going to test the hardware, they seemed to indicate they were going to fly it based on minimal testing, citing Apollo. Umm, no. Apollo had many check out rides to vet the hardware. Please check facts before citing them in a press conference. So they are going to send two crew members on a 501 day mission to the moon and back WITH NO ABORT PROFILES on untested hardware. If I may be so blunt, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.