gooooooaal!

[jay]

Over lunch today, I scored another drilling automation client -- in this case, SH and his Mars Technology Program at JPL want us to develop control software for their planetary prototype drill, built by Swales... this means that my group is now the automation provider of choice for all of the US space drill companies' hardware. Bringing a modest amount of funding (maybe $250K over the next 18 months) but making it more likely that our stuff will eventually fly, sometime after 2010. Woot!

Otherwise... I'm off to a colleague's home for pizza, beer and editing our paper in an upcoming Cambridge University Press book on analog missions.

Comments

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the new client!

What's an analog mission?

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

The scientific or operations equivalent to flight-testing a prototype vehicle... we take new instruments or ways of doing things, and try them out in a spot on Earth that closely resembles the lunar or Martian environment that we're targeting. Testing rovers in boulder fields, life detection in areas in Spain with similar bacteria, etc.