Check out Zero Robotics. It is an annual programming competition for high school students that runs during the fall. During the season students write C++ programs for the SPHERES satellites developed by MIT and run online simulations. After several virtual rounds, the championship competition is live from the space station hosted by an astronaut. This year's season is just finishing up, and the finals will be held on January 11. It is also expanding to a limited group of of middle schools this summer.
Anyone can sign up for an account and write programs and for and run simulations of SPHERES from the web-based interface. There has already been one general public competition that was mentioned on/. a while ago where the finalists had their code demonstrated in space. We hope to have more in the future.
DARPA and NASA also sponsor an annual Zero Robotics high school tournament that starts on September 8. Just like in this challenge the final competition will take place live on the space station. More details are on the Zero Robotics website: www.zerorobotics.org
i would be interested in being a mentor to a group of students located in Munich, it sounds like a fun project.
Keep an eye out for the competition in the fall. We ran a pilot program with ESA this year including some schools in Germany, and it will likely expand this year.
Disclaimer: I'm involved with the project. Sorry, the tutorial there is a bit out of date and refers to an older pilot of the program. We host the simulation and editing tools online for a number of reasons, including the ability to distribute bug fixes and updates rapidly as well as allow for online collaboration and centralized scoring. A downloadable version of the simulation has been a repeated request, and it is in the long-term queue, though likely not for this competition.
If I can only access the simulator online, and I can only copy paste my C code into a flash window "IDE", then this sounds pretty dead in the water already. No thanks.
Disclaimer: I'm involved with the project. Coding and project management is online in a JS-based IDE. The flash component is for viewing the results of the simulation in 3D. Also, we're working on adding 2D charts/plots to be deployed before this starts. The editor has evolved from a simplified IDE targeted at high school students and constrained in ways to make the code compatible with the satellite hardware, so be prepared for some limitations. At the same time, there's really quite a lot you can do.
It isn't strongly emphasized in the release, but this is primarily run out of a lab at MIT (the Space Systems Laboratory). From that perspective a big goal is to make a contribution in the sense of academic research. The hope is that the outcome of the contest will prove useful to future space missions in much the same way that a publication of a paper could contribute. Compared to just publishing simulation studies, this provides an opportunity to actually test the algorithms in space. The chance to run (and view in real time!) tests on the ISS is quite a rare opportunity.
...they even let everyone look at their source code, so that other programmers can learn from it or modify it.
Not everyone's code will be published, just the finalists that have been guaranteed a spot for the ISS tests.
Most of the text on the main page refers to the high school robotics program this is based off of. You do not need to be affiliated with a school to participate in the new challenge.
I grew up and went to high school in a rural school district in North Idaho where my parents are still teachers. As mentioned in many of the post above, the resistance to this move is not some anti-tech paranoia. There are serious concerns like plans to lay off large swaths of teachers, and use the savings to pay for the computers.
I most seriously object to the notion that the superintendent of schools is going to "fix" education with this move when many of the state's districts are in shambles. State and local support for schools is so dismal that my home district has gone to a 4 day school week to cut costs, and that's been going on for 7 years, one of the first in the country. Students all the way down to first graders sit through class from 8:00 to 4:00 every day to meet state requirements for hours, then spend 3 day weekends melting away what they learned. Every year the school board whittles away at the foundations, most recently furloughing salaries for two days during the Thanksgiving holiday. Every two years when the school has to levy the community for additional funds, the scenario gets even more bizarre and terrifying. The most recent levy had things like paper and dry erase markers on the chopping block as well as all extracurricular activities which were lumped in with things like "art" and "band." Is issuing every student a laptop going to solve these problems? By the time students make use of them, everyone will be outside in the rain doing algebra with sticks in the mud.
These issues seem to always take a tone of vilifying teachers for being antiquated and unprepared, when I really think they are true saints, working with the best that they have. I hope Idaho takes a little closer look at the reality on the ground and thinks of a better strategy than paying a company in another state to tube-feed content while slashing budgets.
I would caution you against using the periodic solar activity claim to back your argument. This idea has been injected into the public dialog as a farcical talking point and is lacking in evidence. If you would like to examine a great source of information and a healthy debate, check out:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=2&t=515&&a=18
I'd also recommend Thomas Friendman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, which very clearly outlines many important issues and facts connected to climate change.
I would highly recommend reading The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin. It is a fascinating book in itself, but more importantly, it references hundreds of important works that you might choose to explore more thoroughly.
The debate in nuclear energy often focuses on two things: safety and waste. The former is usually emphasized heavily with worries of repeating the disasters of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. While even the remote possiblity of such a disaster is enough to justify serious doubts about the role of nuclear energy in our society, in day-to-day operation, nuclear power plants are relatively "safe."
However, the second issue, waste, is often brushed under the table and ignored. Advocates make the attractive comparison between the relatively small quantity of waste produced by nuclear power plants and traditional power plants. They assure us that waste can be stored in underground geological respositories for an indefinite period of time, awaiting further processing, or gradually decaying into daughter products. It is still questionable and almost unpredictable about whether these repositories will maintain their integrity for 100,000 years. This is not something I would feel comfortable leaving my descendants to determine.
Super radioactive, or "High-Level" waste is not the only issue though. Just as in any refining process, a huge amount of material is required to concentrate Uranium into usable quantities. The process produces tons and tons of low level radioactive waste. Some of this is used for making things like U-238 bullets, which on the surface seems productive, but think for a second about how many mildly radioactive bullets we have sccattered across the surface of Afghanistan and Iraq. Where does the rest of the waste go? Nowhere. It sits in piles of dust in refining factories or tanks underground, waiting to be spilled or mishandled and spread into the environment. This is a disturbing issue that is often brushed under the table.
Another example of low-level difficulties comes from other nuclear countries such as France that to "reprocess" spent fuel rods from other nations. Outwardly this seems like a very good use of spent fuel other than the possible proliferation of plutonium that can be extracted from the products. Unfortunately, the process to create new nuclear fuel from spent fuel is nasty affair that involves dissolving the fuel rods in extremely strong acid. After the process completes, the left over *radioactive acid* sits in large metal tanks underground, awaiting long term storage...somewhere.
Bonus item: this movie teaches us that hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in the harshest terrestrial environment on earth has left the penguin with large rolls of belly fat as a major and important adaptation for survival (to protect the chick/ egg from the harsh cold). So eat your popcorn and drink your soda guilt free.;-)
While I agree 8.02's "Technology Enhanced Active Learning" approach to using the clicker idea was flawed, it may have been due to the structure of the class itself and not the technology. 8.02 had way too many questions and they weren't used effectively to direct the lecturer towards areas that needed work.
Aero Astro undergrads use clickers for Unified Engineering and Thermal Energy, and my experience with their application in these classes was mostly positive. Many times the charts of student responses led to a dynamic change in the lecture's focus to clarify confusing points.
What bothers me about these systems is their consumption of time in the classroom. Just activating the system, waiting for responses, and charting the results can take 5-10 minutes. If this process is only being used to take a basic poll of class opinion about a silly topic, then it isn't worth the effort.
This is entirely incorrect. The notion that these schools are impossible to attend without money is a bit outdated. Universities like Harvard and Princeton have moved to debt-free tution policies. MIT does not guarantee a debt-free graduation but it accepts many people from disadvantaged backgrounds and makes it possible for them to go to school. My family was extremely concerned about being able to afford MIT after I got in, but they made it possible for me. It is a shame to think such brilliant kids should be discouraged by the somewhat deceiving pricetags.
The analogy to sailboats is "tacking," but a solar sail is really a very different device than a conventional sail.
First of all solar sails do not use solar wind. Instead, they rely on the pressure generated by photons striking (and reflecting off) the solar sail. "Solar Radiation Pressure" is 1,000 to 10,000 times the strength of the solar wind. (See this site for more on the principles of solar sailing.)
In terms of maneuvering, sailboats use the differential pressure caused by wind flowing over their sails to create lift and direct it using a keel into forward motion. To sail in to the wind a sailboat zigzags at angles to the wind in order to keep its sails full and still make progress.
A solar sail utilizes its thrust in a rather different way to sail towards the source. If you are familiar with orbital mechanics you will know that if you increase your velocity in the same direction as your current orbit (prograde), you will "climb" to an orbit of a larger radius. Likewise if you decrease your velocity along your orbital path (retrograde), you will descend into an orbit of smaller radius. Though a solar sail cannot position itself for prograde or retrograde thrust because it is perpendicular to the Sun, it is equally easy for it to orient its thrust to increase or decrease its orbital velocity. Thus, not only can a solar sail travel towards the sun, but it can do so as easily as it can go away. In fact, since the intensity of solar radiation varies inversely with the square of distance, getting closer to the sun will actually provide more thrust.
Posted before under the Japanese Solar Sail Deployment:
Though Solar Sails are often associated with interstellar travel they have many extremely useful applications in Earth orbit and local solar system exploration. Most potential applications take advantage of the continuous thrust and zero fuel payload of a solar sail.
Near Earth, Solar Sails are particularly suited for high orbital inclination satellite missions. Weather forecasting and global positioning systems would directly benefit from satellites orbiting the poles. Most satellites take advantage of the natural speed of Earth's rotation to boost them into an orbit relatively close to the equatorial plane. Changing the plane requires a large fuel burn for a conventional rocket and greatly increases launch costs. With its small but continuous thrust, a solar sail can reach polar orbits without a massive fuel payload, making them more accessible to scientific research.
Away from Earth, Solar Sails offer a number of other interesting options. Missions have been proposed for asteroid rendezvous, travel to the inner planets (yes, solar sails can travel toward the sun), and an interesting idea using Lagrange points. More advanced solar sails could use their continuous thrust to enlarge the regions where they are able to "hover" well away from Earth. This allows much better observation of solar activity. Solar sails not only have an appealing sci-fi flair, but appear to be quite practical as well. I hope to see the technology develop rapidly.
Though Solar Sails are often associated with interstellar travel they have many extremely useful applications in Earth orbit and local solar system exploration. Most potential applications take advantage of the continuous thrust and zero fuel payload of a solar sail.
Near Earth, Solar Sails are particularly suited for high orbital inclination satellite missions. Weather forecasting and global positioning systems would directly benefit from satellites orbiting the poles. Most satellites take advantage of the natural speed of Earth's rotation to boost them into an orbit relatively close to the equatorial plane. Changing the plane requires a large fuel burn for a conventional rocket and greatly increases launch costs. With its small but continuous thrust, a solar sail can reach polar orbits without a massive fuel payload, making them more accessible to scientific research.
Away from Earth, Solar Sails offer a number of other interesting options. Missions have been proposed for asteroid rendezvous, travel to the inner planets (yes, solar sails can travel toward the sun), and an interesting idea using Lagrange points. More advanced solar sails could use their continuous thrust to enlarge the regions where they are able to "hover" well away from Earth. This allows much better observation of solar activity.
Solar sails not only have an appealing sci-fi flair, but appear to be quite practical as well. I hope to see the technology develop rapidly.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out Zero Robotics. It is an annual programming competition for high school students that runs during the fall. During the season students write C++ programs for the SPHERES satellites developed by MIT and run online simulations. After several virtual rounds, the championship competition is live from the space station hosted by an astronaut. This year's season is just finishing up, and the finals will be held on January 11. It is also expanding to a limited group of of middle schools this summer.
Anyone can sign up for an account and write programs and for and run simulations of SPHERES from the web-based interface. There has already been one general public competition that was mentioned on /. a while ago where the finalists had their code demonstrated in space. We hope to have more in the future.
(Full disclosure: I am one of the co-founders)
DARPA and NASA also sponsor an annual Zero Robotics high school tournament that starts on September 8. Just like in this challenge the final competition will take place live on the space station. More details are on the Zero Robotics website: www.zerorobotics.org
i would be interested in being a mentor to a group of students located in Munich, it sounds like a fun project.
Keep an eye out for the competition in the fall. We ran a pilot program with ESA this year including some schools in Germany, and it will likely expand this year.
Disclaimer: I'm involved with the project. Sorry, the tutorial there is a bit out of date and refers to an older pilot of the program. We host the simulation and editing tools online for a number of reasons, including the ability to distribute bug fixes and updates rapidly as well as allow for online collaboration and centralized scoring. A downloadable version of the simulation has been a repeated request, and it is in the long-term queue, though likely not for this competition.
If I can only access the simulator online, and I can only copy paste my C code into a flash window "IDE", then this sounds pretty dead in the water already. No thanks.
Disclaimer: I'm involved with the project. Coding and project management is online in a JS-based IDE. The flash component is for viewing the results of the simulation in 3D. Also, we're working on adding 2D charts/plots to be deployed before this starts. The editor has evolved from a simplified IDE targeted at high school students and constrained in ways to make the code compatible with the satellite hardware, so be prepared for some limitations. At the same time, there's really quite a lot you can do.
It isn't strongly emphasized in the release, but this is primarily run out of a lab at MIT (the Space Systems Laboratory). From that perspective a big goal is to make a contribution in the sense of academic research. The hope is that the outcome of the contest will prove useful to future space missions in much the same way that a publication of a paper could contribute. Compared to just publishing simulation studies, this provides an opportunity to actually test the algorithms in space. The chance to run (and view in real time!) tests on the ISS is quite a rare opportunity.
...they even let everyone look at their source code, so that other programmers can learn from it or modify it.
Not everyone's code will be published, just the finalists that have been guaranteed a spot for the ISS tests.
Most of the text on the main page refers to the high school robotics program this is based off of. You do not need to be affiliated with a school to participate in the new challenge.
I grew up and went to high school in a rural school district in North Idaho where my parents are still teachers. As mentioned in many of the post above, the resistance to this move is not some anti-tech paranoia. There are serious concerns like plans to lay off large swaths of teachers, and use the savings to pay for the computers.
I most seriously object to the notion that the superintendent of schools is going to "fix" education with this move when many of the state's districts are in shambles. State and local support for schools is so dismal that my home district has gone to a 4 day school week to cut costs, and that's been going on for 7 years, one of the first in the country. Students all the way down to first graders sit through class from 8:00 to 4:00 every day to meet state requirements for hours, then spend 3 day weekends melting away what they learned. Every year the school board whittles away at the foundations, most recently furloughing salaries for two days during the Thanksgiving holiday. Every two years when the school has to levy the community for additional funds, the scenario gets even more bizarre and terrifying. The most recent levy had things like paper and dry erase markers on the chopping block as well as all extracurricular activities which were lumped in with things like "art" and "band." Is issuing every student a laptop going to solve these problems? By the time students make use of them, everyone will be outside in the rain doing algebra with sticks in the mud.
These issues seem to always take a tone of vilifying teachers for being antiquated and unprepared, when I really think they are true saints, working with the best that they have. I hope Idaho takes a little closer look at the reality on the ground and thinks of a better strategy than paying a company in another state to tube-feed content while slashing budgets.
I would caution you against using the periodic solar activity claim to back your argument. This idea has been injected into the public dialog as a farcical talking point and is lacking in evidence. If you would like to examine a great source of information and a healthy debate, check out: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=2&t=515&&a=18 I'd also recommend Thomas Friendman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, which very clearly outlines many important issues and facts connected to climate change.
I would highly recommend reading The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin. It is a fascinating book in itself, but more importantly, it references hundreds of important works that you might choose to explore more thoroughly.
Initial merchant partners include Apple Computer's iTunes service, RealNetworks Rhapsody, eMusic and Amazon.com....
:)
Let's hear it for Googlezon
The debate in nuclear energy often focuses on two things: safety and waste. The former is usually emphasized heavily with worries of repeating the disasters of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. While even the remote possiblity of such a disaster is enough to justify serious doubts about the role of nuclear energy in our society, in day-to-day operation, nuclear power plants are relatively "safe."
However, the second issue, waste, is often brushed under the table and ignored. Advocates make the attractive comparison between the relatively small quantity of waste produced by nuclear power plants and traditional power plants. They assure us that waste can be stored in underground geological respositories for an indefinite period of time, awaiting further processing, or gradually decaying into daughter products. It is still questionable and almost unpredictable about whether these repositories will maintain their integrity for 100,000 years. This is not something I would feel comfortable leaving my descendants to determine.
Super radioactive, or "High-Level" waste is not the only issue though. Just as in any refining process, a huge amount of material is required to concentrate Uranium into usable quantities. The process produces tons and tons of low level radioactive waste. Some of this is used for making things like U-238 bullets, which on the surface seems productive, but think for a second about how many mildly radioactive bullets we have sccattered across the surface of Afghanistan and Iraq. Where does the rest of the waste go? Nowhere. It sits in piles of dust in refining factories or tanks underground, waiting to be spilled or mishandled and spread into the environment. This is a disturbing issue that is often brushed under the table.
Another example of low-level difficulties comes from other nuclear countries such as France that to "reprocess" spent fuel rods from other nations. Outwardly this seems like a very good use of spent fuel other than the possible proliferation of plutonium that can be extracted from the products. Unfortunately, the process to create new nuclear fuel from spent fuel is nasty affair that involves dissolving the fuel rods in extremely strong acid. After the process completes, the left over *radioactive acid* sits in large metal tanks underground, awaiting long term storage...somewhere.
To invoke the cliche, "not in my back yard."
Bonus item: this movie teaches us that hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in the harshest terrestrial environment on earth has left the penguin with large rolls of belly fat as a major and important adaptation for survival (to protect the chick/ egg from the harsh cold). So eat your popcorn and drink your soda guilt free. ;-)
Just don't tell George Bush
While I agree 8.02's "Technology Enhanced Active Learning" approach to using the clicker idea was flawed, it may have been due to the structure of the class itself and not the technology. 8.02 had way too many questions and they weren't used effectively to direct the lecturer towards areas that needed work.
Aero Astro undergrads use clickers for Unified Engineering and Thermal Energy, and my experience with their application in these classes was mostly positive. Many times the charts of student responses led to a dynamic change in the lecture's focus to clarify confusing points.
What bothers me about these systems is their consumption of time in the classroom. Just activating the system, waiting for responses, and charting the results can take 5-10 minutes. If this process is only being used to take a basic poll of class opinion about a silly topic, then it isn't worth the effort.
Will they have the homebuilt roller coaster or the 3-d teeter totter around for the future arrivals?
This is entirely incorrect. The notion that these schools are impossible to attend without money is a bit outdated. Universities like Harvard and Princeton have moved to debt-free tution policies. MIT does not guarantee a debt-free graduation but it accepts many people from disadvantaged backgrounds and makes it possible for them to go to school. My family was extremely concerned about being able to afford MIT after I got in, but they made it possible for me. It is a shame to think such brilliant kids should be discouraged by the somewhat deceiving pricetags.
The analogy to sailboats is "tacking," but a solar sail is really a very different device than a conventional sail.
First of all solar sails do not use solar wind. Instead, they rely on the pressure generated by photons striking (and reflecting off) the solar sail. "Solar Radiation Pressure" is 1,000 to 10,000 times the strength of the solar wind. (See this site for more on the principles of solar sailing.)
In terms of maneuvering, sailboats use the differential pressure caused by wind flowing over their sails to create lift and direct it using a keel into forward motion. To sail in to the wind a sailboat zigzags at angles to the wind in order to keep its sails full and still make progress.
A solar sail utilizes its thrust in a rather different way to sail towards the source. If you are familiar with orbital mechanics you will know that if you increase your velocity in the same direction as your current orbit (prograde), you will "climb" to an orbit of a larger radius. Likewise if you decrease your velocity along your orbital path (retrograde), you will descend into an orbit of smaller radius. Though a solar sail cannot position itself for prograde or retrograde thrust because it is perpendicular to the Sun, it is equally easy for it to orient its thrust to increase or decrease its orbital velocity. Thus, not only can a solar sail travel towards the sun, but it can do so as easily as it can go away. In fact, since the intensity of solar radiation varies inversely with the square of distance, getting closer to the sun will actually provide more thrust.
Posted before under the Japanese Solar Sail Deployment:
Though Solar Sails are often associated with interstellar travel they have many extremely useful applications in Earth orbit and local solar system exploration. Most potential applications take advantage of the continuous thrust and zero fuel payload of a solar sail.
Near Earth, Solar Sails are particularly suited for high orbital inclination satellite missions. Weather forecasting and global positioning systems would directly benefit from satellites orbiting the poles. Most satellites take advantage of the natural speed of Earth's rotation to boost them into an orbit relatively close to the equatorial plane. Changing the plane requires a large fuel burn for a conventional rocket and greatly increases launch costs. With its small but continuous thrust, a solar sail can reach polar orbits without a massive fuel payload, making them more accessible to scientific research.
Away from Earth, Solar Sails offer a number of other interesting options. Missions have been proposed for asteroid rendezvous, travel to the inner planets (yes, solar sails can travel toward the sun), and an interesting idea using Lagrange points. More advanced solar sails could use their continuous thrust to enlarge the regions where they are able to "hover" well away from Earth. This allows much better observation of solar activity. Solar sails not only have an appealing sci-fi flair, but appear to be quite practical as well. I hope to see the technology develop rapidly.
Gotta love how many times you can kill an invisible man.
Though Solar Sails are often associated with interstellar travel they have many extremely useful applications in Earth orbit and local solar system exploration. Most potential applications take advantage of the continuous thrust and zero fuel payload of a solar sail. Near Earth, Solar Sails are particularly suited for high orbital inclination satellite missions. Weather forecasting and global positioning systems would directly benefit from satellites orbiting the poles. Most satellites take advantage of the natural speed of Earth's rotation to boost them into an orbit relatively close to the equatorial plane. Changing the plane requires a large fuel burn for a conventional rocket and greatly increases launch costs. With its small but continuous thrust, a solar sail can reach polar orbits without a massive fuel payload, making them more accessible to scientific research. Away from Earth, Solar Sails offer a number of other interesting options. Missions have been proposed for asteroid rendezvous, travel to the inner planets (yes, solar sails can travel toward the sun), and an interesting idea using Lagrange points. More advanced solar sails could use their continuous thrust to enlarge the regions where they are able to "hover" well away from Earth. This allows much better observation of solar activity. Solar sails not only have an appealing sci-fi flair, but appear to be quite practical as well. I hope to see the technology develop rapidly.