Using 210 E – 605 S – 10 E
Note: Had to turn around after going 210 W; had to turn around after going too far on Azusa
Trip Odom: 36.6 mi
Moving Time: 1 hrs 13 min
Stopped: 8 min 11 sec
Max Speed: 83.3 mi/hr
Moving Avg: 29.9 mi/hr
Overall Avg: 26.9 mi/hr
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There was surprisingly little traffic this morning. I drove about 33 miles at an average 42 miles per hour, completing the trip in about 47 minutes.
The website of Syd Lieberman, who NASA commissioned to write the story of the Mars Exploration Rovers, is impressive.
JPL is the star of NASA. Other than manned spaceflight, what do the other centers do? Yet 2/3 of NASA’s budget goes into manned spaceflight. Robotic missions are way cool, the technology is revolutionary, and we could do so much more. In the words of someone here: “NASA’s insane.”
Andrew Viterbi, who donated $52 million to the USC School of Engineering, joined a communications research group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) upon graduating from MIT in 1957. It was “the most intriguing job he was offered”. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1962, invented the Viterbi algorithm in 1966, and founded Qualcomm in 1985. I never knew that JPL had played such a crucial role in his success. What an amazing story. The Quiet Genius (PDF).
It’s about time I posted to the “Big Room” category, dedicated to the outdoors. I’ve found that when I’m cold and sleepy, I can usually wake up by walking (or, for faster results, running) around. So, I made up a goal that perhaps could add a sense of achievement to these morning walks: take a picture of the sign for all of the buildings at JPL. That requires me to see the entire campus. I could use my cell phone camera, from which I can now transfer photos using Bluetooth. Hopefully there’s no security concern with this. JPL has tons of visitors very often, so the exterior of the buildings is all non-discreet information. Anyway, we’ll see if I actually decide to do this.
NASA uses duct tape to save the day. It secures “British astronaut Piers Sellers to his jet-propelled backpack today for the final spacewalk of the shuttle Discovery’s 13-day mission to the International Space Station.” I have patch stickers for this flight, STS-121. By the way, the saying goes: “Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side and a dark side, and it binds the universe together.”
I picked up a Yoplait nouriche SuperSmoothie from the 167 Cafe, and under the cap, the seal read:
Vitamin A
At lunch today, I decided to venture out and try talking to people. Engineers at JPL are very quiet, but nice once you start up a conversation. At least that’s my experience. Not a single person looked at me for more than a second, and none of them said anything other than one person who said, “May I sit here?” and then was silent after that. Is it typical of the adult world for them not to initiate conversation? Anyway, I spoke with David J Oberhettinger, who works with the Chief Engineer and told me about a computer that he worked on when he first came to JPL some 19 years ago. It was near the age of 3-by-5 punch cards, apparently. And he used to be a contractor for Northrop Grumman, but as of 2 years ago, has worked solely for JPL.
Today at noon they had the third presentation in JPL’s summer speaker series with Jim Graf on MRO. He’s the project manager. Also from the MRO team was Dr. Richard Zurek, Project Scientist, who I spoke with after the talk. MRO was launched on August 12, 2005 — less than a year ago. I didn’t realize it was so new 
It carries the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet, able to take photos of the surface whose pixels are 30 cm across. This extremely high resolution should allow it to see thet tracks created by the Rovers, and maybe even the Rovers themselves, although they will be only about 9 pixels in size, out of trillions.
