Michael West’s Blog

So why am I here in California for two weeks? Well I am helping out with the 1st International Conference on the Exploration of Phobos and Deimos which is being run by the Mars Institute and held at NASA Ames Research Center. I’m involved because back in 2005 I worked as an intern for the Mars Institute with Dr. Pascal Lee for two months. During that time I did a review of all the literature regarding the exploration of Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos, in order to support future proposals for robotic missions to these unusual objects. Since then I have continued to work with the Mars Institute (I’m on the Board of Advisors) and helped out with the PRIME mission study (see my earlier post here). As such I am giving a presentation at this conference (the PDF of the abstract is here) and assisting with various logistical things, including managing the ‘Destination: Mars’ space art exhibit.

I hope to provide some photos and reports of the happenings throughout the conference. Stay tuned!

I flew to San Francisco today to attend a conference on the exploration of Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos that is being held at NASA Ames Research Centre in Silicon Valley. I will be here for a bit less than two weeks, but more on what I will be doing later. On the flight over I was lucky enough to get a seat at the front of economy class which has extra leg room and because the flight was half empty the seat beside me was empty as well. It was great and I even managed to get about 7 hours sleep!

Anyway, of all the people who could have occupied the other seat in my row, there was a ancient history lecturer heading to a conference at Stanford University. We got talking and discovered that he was from Sydney University, specialises in Greek history and teachers many of the Honours students at USyd. As is often the case it didn’t take long to realise that he knows someone I know - in this case Victor Shaw, a old friend from Sydney Uni who started out doing Engineering and saw the light and switched over the Ancient History. Proof once again it is a small small world.

Yes, I am still alive! Unfortunately I haven’t spent the last 2 months on holidays in Cairns either, as James suggested here. Life has been very very busy. Since the IPELS2007 conference in Cairns some of the following has transpired…

• I’ve had a new housemate living with us for two months (his name is Denis and he is visiting from Germany)
• Spent a week in Sydney at the Australian Space Science Conference
• The soccer season has come to a close - we didn’t make the finals
• I scored the winning goal in the ANU Research Schools Final, the Purple Shin - more on that later
• Been flat out in the lab doing lots of different things
• My first journal paper got accepted for publication - yippee!!
• Went to JT & Annie’s wedding in Sydney
• Indulged my passion for gardening and started a vegetable garden at home, only to see it wither in the heat
• And numerous other things…

More details will be coming soon, but the two big things that are coming up are pretty exciting Christina will be arriving in Canberra permanently this Tuesday and I will be heading to the US for two weeks in November to attend a planetary exploration conference at NASA Ames. The other not so exciting thing in the horizon is my PhD Mid Term Review on 22nd November - eeekk!

I’m currently sitting in the Qantas Club in Sydney watching the sunrise over the city - a really amazing site. I’m here because I got upgraded to business class for my flight to Cairns and subsequently get free use of the Qantas Club. I’m off to Cairns for the week to attend the 9th International Workshop on the Interrelationship of Plasma Experiments and Space (IPELS2007), which is a conference on space physics that my research group SP3 is running. I’m really looking forward to conference and making the most of the warm weather. It was 28 degrees there yesterday and the minimum was higher than Canberra’s maximum yesterday!

It will also be nice to have the conference completed as I have been on the organising committee and been responsible for the conference website and online abstract submission system etc - quite a time consuming task. I will be presenting a poster at the conference so fortunately I don’t have the stress of doing an oral presentation. My abstract on my work on the Helicon Double Layer Thruster can be found here. The conference includes a day out at Green Island so I will do my best to post some photos.

As I reported here back in March, a film crew from ABC’s Catalyst program visited my lab to do a story on the Helicon Double Layer Thruster. The story will be going to air tomorrow (Thursday) evening at 8pm on ABC TV. It will include interviews with my two supervisors, Professor Rod Boswell and Dr Christine Charles, and show footage of the HDLT prototype operating inside its new space simulation vacuum chamber. I doubt I will actually feature in the segment, but when the HDLT is running and you see the purple glow of the plasma, I am the one working the controls

This past week was a sombre reminder that the development, testing and use of space technology can be a very dangerous business. Sadly, 3 people were killed and 3 others critically injured after a blast at a Scaled Composites test site in the Mojave Desert, California. Scaled Composites are one of the new breed of private space launch/tourism companies and won the X-Prize a few years back with the SpaceShipOne craft. The follow on vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, is to form the basis of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galatic space tourism business. More info on the accident can be found on the SMH’s site here.

Although this is the first major accident involving these new space enterprises, it will by no means be the last. Why? Simply because the physics and chemistry involved in rocket science is extreme and pushes the limits of man and machine. Furthermore, spacecraft systems are often incredibly complex, for example the Saturn V had over a million individual systems that had to all work together for the first and only time when on the launch pad. As complexity increases, so do the risks. Everyone in the business knows and accepts these risks, unfortunately sometimes we take our eyes off the ball and it has awful consequences as evidenced by these tragic events.

On Sunday afternoon I headed to Canberra Stadium to see Sydney FC take on the Central Coast Mariners in the A-League Pre-Season Cup. It was a good game which the Mariners won 3-0. There is a good overview of the match on the Football in the Capital blog. There was also a reasonable turn out of some 5,700 people which isn’t bad given how bitterly cold it was. Here are some of the other photos I took…

Not that I care too much for Victorian politics but Steve Bracks has just quit politics after 8 years as Premier. Kudos to the ABC News site for being the first out with the news here. Bracks apparently cites personal reasons for his resignation, which probably includes his son’s recent drink driving adventure. I admire Bracks for recently sticking it to the Howard Government over control of the Murray-Darling Basin, particularly when it seems the that he and Malcolm Turnball were close to negotiating a solution, which the Prime Minister overruled just to score some political points. It seems the attempts at Federalism by Howard et al will leave them with egg on their face, even if the High Court was to uphold the Commonwealth’s position because it will leave no one with total control of water in the Basin. It will be divided between the States and the Commonwealth which is just as bad as it is now.

Anyway, good luck to Bracks in his new life outside the political sphere. I wonder how long until he is consulting for Macquaire Bank or similar, like another former Labor state Premier.

Read the rest of this entry »