Happy 20th...
Dec. 7th, 2007 06:49 pmAt the risk of categorizing myself as over-the-hill already... today marks 20 years since I was administered the oath of office and began my NASA career (having originally come to Silicon Valley after I finished my Ph.D. in part because ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
patgreene was going to law school at Stanford).
In December 1987, I was working on a thermal expert system for the space station... by 1990 I was the lead developer (working mostly in Lisp... real-time controls with periodic garbage collection was, er, challenging) and our success eventually helped NASA accept a broader role for software monitoring and control systems. Then designed a diagnostic and fault detection system for the SETI control system... which detected an equipment fire at 2am at Arecibo, two weeks before going online publicly. Arguably, this saved SETI, in that the subsequent on-time success led to privatization after NASA cut its funding the next year.
Then came a stint (1992-93) on loan to NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, living in northern Virginia, seeing the Clintons arrive, fighting Space Station Freedom battles over the onboard networks and processors and getting my pilot's license on the weekends. Which led, upon return to California in 1993, to my leading a large project for surface aircraft traffic management, delivering the Surface Movement Advisor with the FAA to Atlanta in time for the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Then I worked on space projects, starting a group in 1997 in vehicle onboard health management. Working on vehicle health management and later on studying human vs. robotic efficiencies in doing field science, I went to the Arctic to Haughton Crater for research for the first time in 1998. In 1999, I temporarily shelved the vehicle health management work in order to start a much larger NASA research program in Intelligent Systems... which I didn't run for much past inception in 2001, after I argued with center management about overheads. ;) Having gone back to grad school at Stanford in 1990-92 in geophysics, I had looked for ways of combining that and robotics... and found automated drilling to be interesting. A couple of successful proposals in 2002 and 2003 led to our recent advances in topside sample handling and hands-off drilling, and thence to current work in that area and in lunar resource prospecting.
patgreene was going to law school at Stanford).In December 1987, I was working on a thermal expert system for the space station... by 1990 I was the lead developer (working mostly in Lisp... real-time controls with periodic garbage collection was, er, challenging) and our success eventually helped NASA accept a broader role for software monitoring and control systems. Then designed a diagnostic and fault detection system for the SETI control system... which detected an equipment fire at 2am at Arecibo, two weeks before going online publicly. Arguably, this saved SETI, in that the subsequent on-time success led to privatization after NASA cut its funding the next year.
Then came a stint (1992-93) on loan to NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, living in northern Virginia, seeing the Clintons arrive, fighting Space Station Freedom battles over the onboard networks and processors and getting my pilot's license on the weekends. Which led, upon return to California in 1993, to my leading a large project for surface aircraft traffic management, delivering the Surface Movement Advisor with the FAA to Atlanta in time for the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Then I worked on space projects, starting a group in 1997 in vehicle onboard health management. Working on vehicle health management and later on studying human vs. robotic efficiencies in doing field science, I went to the Arctic to Haughton Crater for research for the first time in 1998. In 1999, I temporarily shelved the vehicle health management work in order to start a much larger NASA research program in Intelligent Systems... which I didn't run for much past inception in 2001, after I argued with center management about overheads. ;) Having gone back to grad school at Stanford in 1990-92 in geophysics, I had looked for ways of combining that and robotics... and found automated drilling to be interesting. A couple of successful proposals in 2002 and 2003 led to our recent advances in topside sample handling and hands-off drilling, and thence to current work in that area and in lunar resource prospecting.
