AcWriMo 2012 - My Commitment

Have you read about AcWriMo?  Yep, its a sort of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for academic writing.  I've decided to participate, and yes, I'm a little late to the game (It's already November 6).

This is where I make set a crazy goal: Complete a publishable (format and content, anyway) literature review of current thinking on astrobiological possibilities (past and present) for Venus by November 30.

Go Public: I just did with this blog post!

Strategy: Well, it's like writing anything, so there is a sequence for me:

1. Collection: Find the published papers I will start with for the research.  This entails a lot of time with Google Scholar, RefWorks, and the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System.
2. Reading.  just what it says, plus note-taking.
3. Organization: Taking all of my notes and organizing them into the sections of the paper
4. Writing.

There is a fair amount of rinse & repeat between steps 1 and 2, since good papers will lead me to others.  Even so, there is something to be written every day, almost from the beginning.

Discuss: I will.  I'll be posting here and on Twitter at @ElevenPointTwo.

What about Venus?

NASA Photo

Mars is getting a lot of attention lately.  Truth be told, Mars has been getting a lot attention for quite some time: landers, rovers, orbiters, and Elon Musk and President Obama want to send people there.  Mars One is creating a reality TV show to send contestants to the surface of Mars!

So what about Earth's "sister" planet?  Where's the love for Venus?  [This question is all the more ironic given that in Roman mythology, Venus was the goddess of love, beauty, sex, and all that.]

Well, I am not going to sit idly and do nothing.  I'm going to start giving Venus more of the attention it sorely deserves!  Here are some of my reasons:

• Venus is right there every night (well, most nights)!  It's the second-brightest object in the night sky, and its phases can be observed with binoculars.
• It is the closest-approaching planet to Earth (38 million kilometers at its closest)
• It is roughly the same size and mass as Earth
• It has an honest-to-goodness atmosphere
• It possesses the most similar environment to Earth conditions in the solar system¹
• It may have harbored life in its early days

I've been interested in Venus for quite some time, and have always wanted to dig a little deeper into the subject.  Be careful what you wish for!  I'm currently taking a UND grad course in Astrobiology, and our final assignment is to write a literature review on an astrobiological subject.  I chose Venus, so it's going to be all Venus, all the time for me.

I'll do what I can to share interesting snippets here on the blog as I go, but I also plan to write some topical articles such as:

• Robotic Missions to Venus: Past, Present
• Robotic Missions to Venus: Proposed
• The Case for Human Missions to Venus
• Venus Facts You Should Know

Check back, I'll try to keep the material coming every week or so for a while.

Footnotes

1. This is not at the surface... it is about 50km up into the Venusian atmosphere.

New course laid in

I am changing course.  I have spent the last seven years (and off and on a few before that) becoming an archaeologist.  I did this in my spare time, while raising two daughters and working a full-time job as an avionics software engineer.  I imagined that one day I would leave the engineering world behind, and become a more pure scientist by digging up, studying, and comparing ancient cultures.

Only a few weeks ago, I watched a live video feed of the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifting off for the last time.  Within 48 hours of this event, I had decided to make this course correction, setting a heading for a future in the Space industry.  I still had two weeks-worth of coursework remaining to complete my B.A. in Anthropology, and complete it I did.  But I am relegating my interest in archaeology to the "hobby" category (I'll never completely turn my back on it), and investing myself completely into the boyhood dream I abandoned so long ago: Space.

I have already enrolled at the University of North Dakota, whose M.S. in Space Studies looks fantastic.  I am taking the first course of the program (SpSt 501) as a non-degreed grad student, while putting together my application to the formal program.  This interdisciplinary program includes courses such as spacecraft systems engineering, radio astronomy, planetary geology, space mission design, politics of space, space law, and remote sensing.  For a kid who once wanted to work and live in space, this is about as good as it gets.

I currently work as a senior engineer at a small software firm specializing in embedded software for commercial, business, and private aircraft, as well as for military and space applications.  I'm hopeful that we will be able to expand our partnerships with customers working on both government- and privately-funded space projects, and that I can be a part of them.

I plan to use this blog to chronicle my journey, and to discuss space-related topics that interest me.  As a graduate student, I'll be expected to read more academic papers than I can count, and that should provide all the fodder I need to keep this blog humming.