hello to everyone not reading this

Well, now that most of the interns have left, I'm finally getting around to making an entry. I'm not sure I'm "officially" a Small Spacecraft Intern, as I'm in the NASA CoLab. We don't have any small spacecraft sitting up on blocks in our front yard that we're trying to build/fix, but I think the CoLab is organized as part of the Small Spacecraft Division.

With all that established, I figure I'll limit myself to two points in my first post.

Number one, Mythbusters' show on the "moon hoax" aired last night, and wow did it lay a vicious beating on the conspiracy theorists. These folks usually need half an hour of screen time to figure out whether you can tenderize a steak with high explosives, but it took them about five minutes apiece to spank the daylights out of each dopey "the moon shots were FAKED!" myth. Seriously, if you haven't seen it, you should.

Number two, am I the only one who thinks the logo on this page is reminiscent of the emblem used by the Galactic Empire in Star Wars?

Yup, I'm a major turbonerd.

Intros: Ashwin

Hello- my name is Ashwin and I will be entering my senior year at the University of Michigan (UM). I am studying mechanical engineering and originally from Ontario, Canada. 

I got interested in space when an elementary school teacher gave a class assignment to write an essay on the Future of Space for entry into a Canada-wide competition. The competition was sponsored by Space Camp Canada. I happened to be one of the 50 winners and as the reward, got to take 11 of my friends (and our teacher) on an expense-paid trip to Space Camp. Here, the 13 of us got to experience, among other things:

(1) simulated lunar gravity on a seat suspended by springs from a ceiling

(2) a trial on a Manned Maneuvering Unit

(3) a simulated mission, including launch, black-out, emergencies, payload experiments, a scaled shuttle and a fairly realistic mission control center; the 12 students served different roles on this simulated mission (i.e. flight director, commander, pilot, payload specialist, etc.)

At UM, I have worked extensively on the aerodynamics team of the University's Solar Car Team doing CFD simulations and CAD modeling.

I took my inclination of building/engineering systems and combined it with a related interest, entrepreneurship, and with friends, founded a student organization at UM called MPowered Entrepreneurship (www.umich.edu/~mpowered). Our mission at MPowered is to expose students to entrepreneurship and support student ventures. We have been pleasantly surprised with the demand for MPowered from students. We went from a group of 15 students during the summer of 2007 to over 700 that currently make-up our community of entrepreneurial-minded students.

It comes as little surprise, then, that my primary interests are in space systems and entrepreneurship. Having recently attended ISDC 2008, I got first-hand exposure to commercialized space industry (aka New Space) and the people within it.

Details about my job at Ames to follow...

Looking forward to hearing your story,

Ashwin

http://ashwinl.tumblr.com

Welcome, 2008 Small Spacecraft Interns!

Thank you to all of the 2007 interns for contributing and working hard on your projects here!

And welcome to the 2008 interns, who are arriving and starting up work at NASA Ames... feel free to introduce yourselves, guys!

Small Spacecraft Industry Day

(Yeah, it's not an exciting post, but it is good info...)

So, you've made posters before, right? No?

Well, then. Aaron gave some good info that would probably be hella useful for everyone. If you've got more tips, put 'em in the comments, please!

***

Notes from Aaron [bracket notes by me]:

Stanford's poster page [the template dimensions and those comments don't apply, but good info going around, and templates could be modified to fit your posters]

'The first time I made a poster it was quite an intimidating task and required a couple of printings to get it right. One suggestion is to print it in color on an 8.5x11 sheet.... shrink the page to fit when printing. It should be about "border line" as far as readability. ' [this should definitely help you see the balance of it and help make sure it'll look good and pleasing to the eye when you see it printed large as life.]

PowerPoint poster tips [pdf]

In the past I've started with the templates from the Stanford media services.

***

This link also has some good info on structure to get you started. Plus it makes pop culture references, which I'm all for.

I (and your mentors*) can check them out on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday... if I'm in the county, I'd be happy to look at them.

Thanks, guys! Good luck!


* probably not on the weekend for your mentors, unless we know where they live; then we could probably arrange something.

Meeting the lost members

Hello,

Let's make this blog more lively. It's a nice way to know what on Earth is everybody doing.
Today we had the sexual harassment POSH training. I have to admit I was kinda reluctant at the beginning that these almost 2 hours would be useful. And I still don't know if they were, however, I can say it was interesting (for me). The woman talking was quite energetic and even quite convincing in whatever she spoke.

After that I had the chance to go to the original Small Spacecraft Office and find there the rest of the mates/interns/colleagues/friends in this office. Because we are splitted in two groups. There I met the rest of our team and we decided to have lunch together. Actually I decided to have lunch together and then I "shared" my idea with Lulu, Suzanne and Chip (I hope I understood all the names right). So at 12:30 we met in the Cafeteria. There we exchanged some experiences together and also exchanged rooms. In the lodge is a tradition that instead of exchanging cells to socialize, we exchange room numbers.

And this is all, let's see what happens this noon in the Softball match.

Forgive me if the expressions here are not the correct ones.

Nil

HIYA

Hey everyone I'm here at NASA and it's been a good 2 days so far.

Yesterday: I moved in, and went food shopping later in the day with my new friend Katy ($91 at Safeway) , the amenities are good, my fridge is too small but everything else seems okay. If I get a roommate she's screwed though so I'm sorry. Then I leeched off her internet at night because she's on the RIGHT side of the building and I'm on the WRONG side. Oh well.

Today we went shopping in Mountain View the absolutely most gorgeous little town I've ever seen and it was fabulous and the weather was perfect and I bought a beautiful little sundress. I was looking for mugs but did not find any within my price range. I bought a kitchen knife. I'm slowly building up my cooking repertoire

I start work tomorrow... blahblahblah got kicked off the internet.

-lulu

second week, and already a holiday

So, how did everyone spend the holiday weekend?

What do you want to do next weekend?