Under Construction

Transforming Satellites and Their Applications

Space Science and Climate Change

Transforming Supply Chains and Manufacturing

Education Day, Thursday, November 8^th

NASA Centers in California, Thursday, November 8^th

Luncheon Keynote:

General Kevin Chilton, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command

The Strategic Command superseded the Strategic Air Command (SAC) when SAC assumed the responsibility for space and cyberspace five years ago.

Educating the Workforce of the Future

Transforming the Workforce of the Future

2008 Regolith Evacuation Challenge

Evacuation of lunar regolith (dirt) is the first step in exploiting lunar resources. The Challenge is to build an autonomous robot within the challenge restraints.

Palm Springs International Airport

Garrett Lisi: An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

The periodic table systemized the elements for chemistry leaving a hole for the later discovery of helium. The table of nuclides organized the isotopes in a similar fashion and we’ve had the Standard Model for particles for thirty years. The Standard Model unites three of the four fundamental forces, the electromagnetic force, the strong force and the weak force failing to account for gravity, the fourth fundamental force. Einstein famously failed to find the Holy Grail of a Unified Field Theory which would unite gravity with the three other fundamental forces. String theory includes gravity but was weak in producing predicting tests for its concepts. Lisi’s new theory uses the mathematical E8 pattern which leaves about 20 holes for new particles which may be observed when the new Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland comes on line.(The LHC came on line in September 2008.) Leut’, please get the collider operational; Garrett can’t spend the rest of his life surfing and snow boarding around the world.

Sour Notes

I was an aerospace engineer until I was involuntarily retired from aerospace when I was about 50 and found myself unemployed as a network admin when half a million East Indian H1Bs entered the network admin and programming fields competing simply on salary where there allegedly weren’t any qualified Americans. The lead man at the last real job that I had told me when he was canning me that he could get two Indians for what he was paying me. I had traveled from California at my own expense for this contract job in Raleigh, North Carolina and would have to pay my own way home. I can still get a job greeting customers at Wal-Mart. Neither of my sons has gone into engineering and I wouldn't encourage them to. What jobs are least likely to be outsourced? Don't put engineering, software development or network administration on your list. Don’t expect me to help you get more youngsters into engineering.

Texas Piper Cub

I asked some retired Air Force people in San Angelo, a place where the army sent me for two months to learn how to use a radio, what the big propeller blades on a flatbed were.
“You say they were only 40 feet long? Then they must have been for a Texas Piper Cub.”

I’m heading for Palm Springs, Phoenix, Globe, Superior, Miami, Salt Water Canyon, Pie City, Socorro and the Festival of the (Sandhill) Cranes.

Dennis Carlyle Kenney is the author of Star of Fire, an alternate history of the exploration of Mars, which can be freely downloaded at StarOfFire.com. Comments welcomed. The Word version of the paperback has the latest revisions.