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ESA Summer of Code In Space 2012
phyr writes "The European Space Agency is looking for student coders to join the Summer of Code in Space. ESA will pay 4000 Euros to each student for contributing to a space related open source project for the summer. Accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios. Mentor organizations have been selected. Students now have until July 27 to submit their applications. Check out the ideas pages of each project such as for the NEST SAR Toolbox"
Gay Porn.
Don't Click.
Let's see...
Are the students in space? No.
Is someone in space communicating with the students? No.
Is the coding going on in space? No.
Is this just trying to capitalize on Google Summer of Code and tack on "in space"? No....I mean, yes.
Is the code going to end up in space? Not really... -- most of the projects are viewers for data here on earth. I clicked on a bunch of them and I don't think any of them are trying to actually do dev work that will end up "In Space."
How about calling it "ESA Summer of Coding for Space Projects" or "ESA Summer of Code Destined for Space" (actually "Code for analyzing heavenly data" would be more accurate) or even go over the top and sound actually funny with "ESA Summer of Code: To Infinity and Beyond" ?
*shakes head*
coding is life
As a senior computer science student who is spending part of his time writing image analysis software for a Martian geological study, I think this seems like a pretty cool idea. It's neat to see ways to impact space exploration and discovery with software - my primary job is working as a programmer for software services at my university's IT department which, while a good work environment and a job that I'm thankful for, doesn't offer the kind of awe-inspiring discovery that doing work for space research can. My Mars work has been the most rewarding part of my summer, even though it doesn't offer any financial benefits (I wouldn't mind getting the equivalent of 4000 euros; I get co-authorship, though, which is pretty snazzy considering it's for a graduate level research project and I'm in undergrad). Hopefully the ESA's Summer of Code will help other CS students discover the same kind of wonder in developing software for space research that I have as a result of my work this summer. :-)
- C
I'll look em up later, but if someone is in the know ... thanks in advance.
Arghhhhhhhhhhh, too late......
As a practical matter, for code that is going to "execute in space", the delay from "write code" to "execute code" is typically on the order of 6 months, given the verification and test required (except for trivial toys.. if an astronaut on ISS plays Angry Birds, I don't count that).
SO given the time, code in summer won't run in space til winter.
What? You want me to RTFA? :-)
Anyhow, if they say that it was inspired by GSoC, doesn't that mean that they realize that they're capitalizing on the name?
In regards to the viewer comment, 99.9% of space launches put up satellites for practical purposes. So to say that viewers aren't necessary for those organizations in actually wrong.
Now you're just puting words in my mouth -- when did I say that viewers/data visualization tools aren't useful for the ESA? I think the ESA has a great idea here, and both a number of FOSS projects, the ESA, and a number of space-related organizations can benefit from the result. The whole point I was making is that the name portrays this as putting stuff (code?) up in space, and all of the links I clicked on didn't show that.
Being able to visualize where your satellite could impact given a worst case scenario is considered when developing these satellites. Additionally, visualizing the trajectories of 1000 other satellites is also important. There's a lot of space junk up there.
Sure, that's helpful, but it seems more of a "mission control" piece than an "in space" piece.
Finally, not everything is a viewer.
Perhaps I was too general in my depiction of the stated projects. It was my understanding, based on clicking on a half-dozen links, that the planned projects were to be used as either visualizers of data on the ground (not in any kind of active tracking, etc..), or as general mapping/modeling tools. Everything looked ground-based.
After reading through a bunch of the other links (the "Selected mentoring organizations" page is super-dense), it looks like there are actually a number of software projects will make it to space (or at least high altitudes). Some, like OpenCube nano-satellite hardware/software stack describe the project in plain English, but some are very technical from the get-go, e.g. pyNastran with the tag line "Nastran BDF Reader/Writer, F06 Reader/Writer, OP2 Reader, OP4 Reader & GUI," but no description or link or About page giving us a hint about what 'Nastran', 'BDF', 'F06', 'OP2', or 'OP4' means. It would be really great to have a blurb about each project on the mentoring organizations page, just so that we could see at a glance the purpose of each project, and what specific tasks they were aiming to complete for SoCiS
The ESA funded engineering projects that they believe are useful, not general computer science projects. There's a huge difference. Engineering is all about understanding a problem and finding a way to solve it. Viewers are for understanding your data.
The ESA funded a number of projects in various different areas. I just wish that they had chosen a more inclusive name so that both the projects that were going to space (hardware, software control, etc..) as well as the ground-based projects were both covered. "ESA Summer of Code" would have been short and descriptive. If they want to make it "in space," they should hire that sign painter from Kickstarter to paint a nice sign with a bold offset section for the "In Space!" portion of the sign.
coding is life
http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2012/?q=faq#socis_elig_restrictions
The age bit's been mentioned (18) ... but you must be a student at an accredited institution in a restricted list of countries (other than Canada, all are in Europe) ... which is what's going to knock out most of the readers on here.
(disclaimer: I was a mentor for a SOCIS 2011 project, and I just found out I'm listed on some 2012 projects, too, even though I don't have time to mentor this summer)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
From: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products.
The project's short-term benefits will include
* technology education,
* historical education,
* collaboration,
* sustainable technology development,
* public science literacy, and
* knowledge democratization.
The project's ultimate long-term goal will be to generate a repository of knowledge that will support the design and creation of space settlements. Three forces -- individual creativity, social collaboration, and technological tools -- will join to create a synergistic effort stronger than any of these forces could produce alone. We hope to use the internet to produce an effect somewhat like that described in "The Skills of Xanadu" by Theodore Sturgeon (available in his book The Golden Helix).
We will develop software tools to enable the creation of this knowledge repository: to collect, organize, and present information in a way that encourages collaboration and provides immediate benefit. Manufacturing "recipes" will form the core elements of the repository. We will also seed the repository, interact with participants, and oversee the evolution of the repository.
You can read a paper we presented on this project in the Proceedings of the Thirteenth SSI/Princeton Conference on Space Manufacturing May 7-9, 2001, which we have made available on the web: here.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
The slides for the presentation are here.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/KFReviewPaperForSSIConference2001.pdf
You can read an essay on how to to find the financing to create a "Star Trek" like society here. ...
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html
It is the aim of this project to create an open-source community centered around applications and knowledge related to space settlement. To gain the broadest participation, the project will also include knowledge related to terrestrial settlements. The initial focus will be on collecting "manufacturing recipes" on how to make things: for example, how to make a 1930's style lathe. Information collected will range from historical interest (fabrication techniques of the stone age to make flint knives) to current (fabrication techniques to make stainless steel knives) to futuristic (fabrication techniques requiring nanotechnology to make diamond knives). This project will involve potentially hundreds of thousands of individuals across the globe. It is expected that ultimately millions of individuals (many in developing nations) will benefit from use of this database directly or indirectly.
====
Still working on it on and off, been about a quarter century...
"Self-Replicating Space Habitat graduate school purpose and plans from 1988"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html
I've been mostly working towards a social semantic desktop to support the creative, organizational, and analysis parts. And still not much to show for it. :-)
See also:
http://www.openvirgle.net/
Although I'd suggest looking hard at OpenLuna, TMP2, the Mars Society's efforts, Open Source Ecology, the Lifeboat Foun
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.