Quantum Rocketry

I’m trying to write a conference paper manuscript for the AIAA GNC conference right now (why, oh, why isn’t it just an abstract, or even an extended abstract? a full manuscript at this point is going to be slathered with “TBD” and “preliminary” and “temporary” and promises for the future!), but I just discovered something that I had to write down for the benefit of other academic users of Microsoft Office since this has been bugging me since I got Office 2007:

I, personally, rebel against using TeX or its derivatives in my academic work. Yes, I can program in Matlab and Mathematica, and yes, I can create some pretty snazzy HTML/CSS web pages, so I’m not foreign to coding and markup languages, but really, I’m trying to concentrate on the science and engineering when I write a paper. I want to see what I will get. There is no reason at this point in the history of computers for me to have to use a command-line word processor that I have to compile. That sort of thing is for numerical scripts, not for documents.

Word 2007 took some great strides in the direction of making Office easier and better for technical purposes, with a WYSIWYG equation editor that you can control almost entirely from the keyboard using common operators and that automatically prettifies the equations as you write them. It’s way cool.

Word 2007 also has, from the beginning, included some automatic citation generating and outputting features. It’s almost like EndNote or BibTex and such, except that I don’t have to pay extra for them. However, it’s HUGE shortcoming was that it contained only 10 citation formats, and didn’t include some common technical formats. Right around the release of Office 2007, Microsoft blogs touting Word went on and on about how easy it would be for users to generate their own formats, since they used open XML files to create them. However, it turns out that those XML files are totally opaque to my understanding, and when I did try to change some things, I didn’t get what I expected. And it seemed like the rest of everybody agreed with me, because downloads for new citation formats did not immediately appear on the Internet.

I have finally, finally, finally found a web site with a small library of citation format files. It is here.

They unfortunately don’t have the AIAA format, which is what I use most often, but maybe they have something close. And, anyway, it adds to my options for the future.

My lab’s recent microgravity flights gave us some good data to demonstrate that we’re not totally crazy with this flux-pinned spacecraft idea. In fact, it actually works. We were able to get mockup CubeSat-sized spacecraft to pin together without touching, and use magnetic fields to form a non-contacting hinge.

An article just appeared in the Cornell Chronicle about our stuff.

We’ll be applying to fly a refined experiment on the Vomit Comet next summer, as well, through the NASA FAST program. (Check out the link to our video on the FAST front page!)

Those of you out there who follow me on Facebook or Picasa – or who know me personally – have already seen the pictures from my zero-g (well, microgravity) experience. Here’s the illustrated saga, for your reading pleasure:

Read the rest of this entry »

I have two things to write down some thoughts about.

First, while I do some of the more mechanical computer modeling work during the day, I’ve been listening to a lot of NPR streamed over the Tubes. Today, I learned some factoids that basically break down as follows:

1. If you figure out how many people in America get health care and the quality of care they recieve, you find that we actually have the most “rationed” healthcare system of industrialized nations. That is, in a country with omg-we-can’t-have-that single-payer healthcare, or even anything not as vile and disgusting as that, more people get the care they need when they need it than in the USA.
2. If you figure out how much health care costs in this country, and compare it to the cost of health care in other countries – not just premiums, mind you, but tax money that goes into health care as well – you find that Americans have the most expensive health care system in the world.

If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, it’s that the GOP is neither morally nor fiscally responsible; and that they are not really “conservative” in any actual definition of the word. If you’re not thinking that, you’re probably a Republican and have just pegged me as a pinko commie godless bleeding-heart Massachusetts liberal. (I will give you three of the words in that phrase, contend that there’s nothing wrong with at least those three, and the rest I contest.) In fact, I am merely a scientist and engineer, and I know how to read numbers and am willing to make policy decisions based on data. I’m also insulin-dependent diabetic, and would seriously appreciate a much lower cost and more assurance of the efficacy of the treatments just keeping myself alive.

Second, I have been hoping to come up with some good theoretical results to present in a conference paper on my research later this summer, and it just hasn’t happened. I’ve been too busy with other work-related things, and now I’m in a summer internship at NASA and don’t have the time to spare, so results are not going to be forthcoming before the paper deadline. This leads me to conclude that I much prefer being an experimentalist to being a theoretician. The reason is that labs sometimes go the experimenter’s way, and sometimes they don’t – but part of that is uncontrollable. The experimenter can, though, usually sift through data to find some useful results. Even negative results are useful. Any results at all will at least shed light on the techniques employed. If theoretical work doesn’t go the theoretician’s way, however…you are just left with a theoretician staring blankly at a piece of paper with a lot of scratchwork. And a lack of results just means that the theoretician hasn’t done the right thing or worked hard enough yet.

In other words, I have no results and it’s my own damn fault. I can’t even blame fault apparatus, numerical noise, or experimental error. I just didn’t do enough, or the right kind of, work. And that just makes me less motivated to continue this line of inquiry.

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Me: Zzz*snort* Huh–euh–wha…? [Sits up violently] Hello?
Housemate: Heyyyyyyy. [Feeling his way along the wall]
Me: Uh… [rubs eyes] You all right, man?
Housemate: Yeah.
Me: Um, what’s up?
Housemate: I can’t find the stop sign. [Shuffles forward, slaps at wall]
Me: What.
Housemate: The stop sign? I can’t find it.
Me: Oh-kay. Are you drunk?
Housemate: Yes!
Me: [Stumbles out from under covers] Oh-kay. That explains things. [Turns on lights]
Housemate: Oh! This is the wrong room!
Me: Uhm, yeah.
Housemate: Whoops. Sorry for scaring you. [Sticks hand out]
Me: Oh, you just startled me is all. Uh… [shakes hand]
Housemate: Okay, goodnight!
Me: Maybe you should drink some water or something.
Housemate: Good idea. Bye! [Waves]

1. 

   PCA82506

2. 

   PCA82506

3. 

   EETA79001

4. 

   ALHA78040

1. Time-Varying Inertia for Attitude Control
2. AIAA Call for Papers
3. taughannock falls state park summer concert series
4. magnetic field of a magnetized cylinder
5. ma = Fpin + Fcoil + Fcoil, meissner
6. Sine sweep
7. 2 Jul 08
8. Concise?
9. X Transfer Functions, Unwindowed Data
10. the advanced mirror image method
11. exhaust velocity
12. Hamilton’s Equations
13. FFT, 6.0065 cm
14. 0972 counts
15. (but bad averaging)
16. Glue something here to force flashlight into proper orientation

1. Squash ladder match #3
2. Binghamton Airshow
3. Ithacafest
4. Williams Reunions
5. AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit
6. Jonathan Coulton concert in New York, NY
7. Spore Creature Creator Trial release