Grant awarded, yay!

[jay]

I may be a hopeless loser in some social realms, but at least I can conduct research pretty well... waiting in my inbox at work this morning is a congratulatory letter from the Office of Space Science, notifying me that my proposed automated Mars drilling project has been accepted at a level of $1.3M over three years, 2003-05. That's excellent news, and also gives me ammunition for claiming more people and higher status as I move into a new department this month at work :-).

Comments

[geekchick]

Congratulations!

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Yay! (Mostly joking: I don't suppose you need a new secretary? :-)

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(grin) I wish... my division has 400+ people and $60M in annual income -- with only two highly-multiplexed secretaries/AAs. We scientists and engineers have do do everything ourselves, in practice. Even though I only type 5 wpm. (this reply took me 5 minutes...)

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. If I typed 5wpm, I would be on the lookout for a good voice recognition program. :-)

wow...

[simplykimberly.livejournal.com]

the Lego League I'm working on with the kids has "Mission to Mars" as the topic and besides the robotics stuff, they also have to do a research report.

Would you be a good person for them to talk to, and would you be interested? I'm not on the research group, so I don't know yet what they're actually working on, but having someone at NASA to talk to might be ultra cool for them!

Let me know :)

Re: wow...

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to talk to school groups, and can even take work time to meet during the day with them. Or I'll answer emails from the students, if that would work better.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :-)

Go Brian! Hurrah!

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I hope this positive energy carries to all the parts of your life.

Re: Go Brian! Hurrah!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the sentiment. :-)

[who-is-she.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's MOST cool.

why do you feel like "a hopeless loser" socially?
you sure seem to have lots of LJ freinds.....
?

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I do OK online, mostly, but tend to drive people away in RL.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Yay! That's wonderful news!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

More field testing, though... it pretty much guarantees that I'll be doing something on Devon Island during the next 3 summers. Unless we test together with CS in Spain in 2005.

[mhw.livejournal.com]

Excellent good!

wAY TO GO

[p3aches.livejournal.com]

right on. your the man.

[airshipjones.livejournal.com]

Bravo! I like to hear good things happening and people doing work and getting the good things they deserve.

Go to!

???

[charlottesmtms.livejournal.com]

This isn't what I think it is, is it? ;-)

Re: ???

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Regrettably, no, it isn't Pascal's HOMER proposal... that was for $300M to actually fly in 2007. Someone else (a team from Univ. Arizona and JPL) won that competition. But I might still ask you for help, someday ;-).

[jasonhollister.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! Sounds interesting; what exactly will the project entail?

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

We buy a Mars-prototype drill (lightweight, low-energy) from a NYC robotics company, a university does sensors and data acquisition, and we do the software diagnosis and task planning. Then we integrate and test it all on Devon Island.