New project...

Drill Automation for Mars Exploration (DAME)

Purpose: develop enabling information technologies for planetary subsurface exploration
Approach: iterative implementation and field testing of drilling automation

In the first year, the project would obtain a drill and conduct manual drilling operations in the field to characterize fault modes and try out ice-worthy bits.
In the second year, a set of initial automation would be tested alongside the drill in an observe-only fashion.
In the final season, in-the-loop automation tests in the field.

My baby... at least for now. The kickoff meeting was Monday, lasting all day. I was playing host and leading the discussions... had our participants from Honeybee (NYC) and Georgia Tech there, and pieces of stainless drill casings and sample retrieval gear spread across the table. Lots of fun, but with 3 hours of sleep I was drained by 6pm. Still... with that goal or purpose... that's what it is all about, for me.

Waiting on George...

Yesterday I finally got an appointment with SZ, a former boss of mine who was acting Ames Center director last spring and is now second- or third-in-command. I asked him about my pending career decision, regarding the de-emphasizing the drilling projects in favor of nearly full-time work on the air traffic project. I'd probably keep DAME, but let go of the other three.

It appears that the much-rumored new lunar exploration program will be approved by Bush and Co. and announced sometime soon... either on the Kitty Hawk anniversary date, or after the MER rover landing in early January, or at the State of the Union address in late January. It's a low-key approach to sending robots and humans into cislunar space and eventually back to the Moon, over about 15 years. Rumored to be motivated in part by fears that the Chinese will try to put up a lunar outpost during the same time period (unilateralist reflexes, again...).

Apart from the motivations, more exploration beyond low Earth orbit is IMO a Good Thing. Only... given the current financial hemhorraging of the US government (thanks to the war and tax cuts) there may be no new budget to go there. So NASA may be directed to abandon everything other than space exploration -- no earth sciences or observing platforms, no astrobiology, and no aeronautics (no more wind tunnels, engine research, materials and structures, airfoils, fluid dynamics, etc.). Lockheed and Boeing would presumably be left to do their own long-term R&D. But that would mean that a new air-traffic program is unlikely to fly.

So, SZ's advice to me was to stall... hold tight and avoid DC (who wants a decision) for the next 2-4 months, until it is clearer what the President and NASA headquarters will do. From the global, to the personal...