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Steve Jobs: Stanford University Commencement Speech
Quoting Steve Jobs
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
“Design is not just what it looks like. Design is how it works.”
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to be bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.”
“You can’t just ask customer what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
“My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.”
Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011
Thank you, sir.
Thunderstorm
This afternoon we experienced a rare thunderstorm in Los Angeles. Only some drops of rain in my area, but some nice thunder and lightning. Here is a snapshot of the thundercloud remnants, as seen from my desk just before sunset.
Visiting Mount Palomar
Last weekend I was part of a group making a visit to the Mount Palomar Observatory.
When I was in school (voraciously sucking up astronomy books), Mount Palomar seemed to me like a place of magic and wonder. From its opening in 1949, and until 1992/93, the giant 5.1 m (200 inch) Hale Telescope was the largest and most important telescope in the world. (Actually, there was a larger Soviet telescope of a later design, but it is often omitted because it never functioned quite well).
The compound on the Southern California mountaintop also encompasses several smaller telescopes. Together, they account for most of the groundbreaking discoveries in the entire history of astronomy.
Here are some pictures. (Click to enlarge).
In front of the Hale Telescope dome, Mount Palomar. From left to right: Jed Laderman, Dave Yantis, Robert Lozano, Reinhard Kargl.
Standing under the massive, 200 inch primary mirror of the Hale Telescope.
Looking up to the secondary mirror, toward the top of the dome. In the old days, this is where the observer would have sat in a cage all night long, handling photographic materials. Today, the instruments are photo-electronic. Human observers no longer ride the elevator to the top).
The old control panel, preserved in a perfect vintage look. Doesn't it seem like something from Star Trek? (Today, the telescope operator sits in a heated cabin, insulated from the dome interior. This being on a mountain top, it gets extremely cold in the winter).
View from the Hale dome's circular catwalk. In the distance is the dome of the historic 18 inch Schmidt telescope. Beginning in the 1930s, Fritz Zwicky did his first surveys of supernovae here. The dome is no longer in use today.
More on Fritz Zwicky and the 18 inch Schmidt telescope.
Soyuz Launch System at ESA-Spaceport
The Russian Soyuz launch system is now also operating from the European space launch facilities in French Guyana. To the Russians, this location offers a number of advantages.
Located close to the equator, the ESA spaceport can make better use of the Earth’s rotational speed, which is higher at the equator and translates into fuel savings (or performance gains). Secondly, Russia’s main launch sites were built during Soviet times and are now located outside of Russia. (As a result, Russia has been pressured into paying high rent for its continued use of the facilities). And finally, western lawmakers have been lobbied to impose export restrictions on the number of Western satellites shipped for launching from Soviet successor states and China. Although these restrictions and tariffs have been somewhat relaxed lately, commercial launches from the ESA spaceport might avoid the issue altogether.
What ESA and Arianespace stand to gain from the agreement with Russia is not completely clear to me. Certainly, Soyuz will compete against Europe’s Ariane 5 in some aspects. On the other hand, there can be no question that more competition and the removal of artificial trade barriers will be good for spaceflight in general. Perhaps the market will grow so fast that in the end, everyone gets to benefit.
Here is a fascinating time lapse video showing how the Soyuz system works. (It is very different to Western systems).
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For a larger version of this video, click this link.
The Abandoned Railroad
I have a fascination with hidden, forgotten and deserted places. Sometimes, one can find them even in the busiest of places. Here is a picture of an abandoned railroad track in the middle of Los Angeles. I accidentally found this site by following some stray cats in a park. Not far from this place are residences, freeways and traffic jams.
Railroad Tracks. Photo: Reinhard Kargl, 2009. Click to enlarge.
Going For A Drive In Downtown Los Angeles
This stock footage was shot in the 1940s.
The Morals of Chess (by Benjamin Franklin)
One of my American heroes, Benjamin Franklin was a keen (and occasionally obsessive) chess player. He even wrote about the game and its implications. Franklin published the following essay in 1786 (drawing on material from earlier drafts of 1732, Philadelphia and 1779, London).
The Morals Of Chess
by
Benjamin Franklin
The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess, then, we may learn:
1st: Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action, for it is continually occurring to the player, “If I move this Piece, what will be the advantage or disadvantage of my new situation? What use can my adversary make of it to annoy me? What other moves can I make to support it, and to defend myself from his attacks?”
2nd: Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action, the relation of the several Pieces, their situations, and the dangers they are repeatedly exposed to, the several possibilities of their aiding each other, the probabilities that the adversary may make this or that move, and attack this or that Piece, and what different means can be used to avoid his stroke, or turn its consequences against him.
3rd: Caution, not to make our moves too hastily. This habit is best acquired by observing strictly the laws of the game, such as, if you touch a piece you must move it somewhere, and if you set it down, you must let it stand.
Thoughts On Today’s Progress Crash
(Updated 08/31, 2011).
In a tweet, astronaut Leroy Chiao (@AstroDude) called today’s crash of the Russian cargo transport to the ISS a “big damn deal”. My take: no, it aint. Or at least it shouldn’t be.
Just launch another one. (Better yet: always have at least another one on standby, preferably at a different launch site).
I know I am simplifying, but: the loss of Progress M-12M (44P) is the first loss after 43 successful supply flights to the ISS, and after a total of 134 successful flights of this vehicle. Nobody was hurt in the crash, and the launch complex and gantry remain fully intact. A failure rate of under 1% should be acceptable for unmanned ships. Even with occasional misfirings like this, a disposable launcher is still a lot cheaper than the shuttle.
To me, this demonstrates why unmanned transports remain the way to go. Had this been a manned shuttle, an accident would have meant a disastrous loss of life. And the shuttle fleet would have been grounded once again. Years would have to go by for the accident to be fully investigated, and for design and procedural changes to be worked out and implemented. Employing astronauts as cargo truck drivers was an absurd idea to begin with. (Wernher von Braun knew this before the shuttle was even flight ready — I wish NASA had listened).
By contrast, an unmanned supply ship is basically a throwaway device anyhow. Yes, it’s not nice to have rocket parts falling down somewhere. This can seriously spoil the day if you happen to be at the impact site. But flight routes and launch facilities can be chosen to minimize the risk of someone actually getting hurt. Basically, one can write off the vehicle as a loss and launch another one.
However Chiao is completely right about it being a huge blunder to rely on only one vehicle for ISS cargo. NASA made another mistake here. Delta IV and Atlas V should have been purposed for cargo flights a long time ago, but those vested in the shuttle project always understood how to derail such proposals. (Interestingly, the military made the right decision by abandoning the shuttle a long time ago; the military space program has completely switched to reliable throw-away rockets instead).
Fortunately, ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (launched on European Ariane V) is practically ready to assume full operations. The ATV happens to have three times the cargo capacity of Russia’s Progress.
And let’s not forget SpaceX. Its second test launch of the Dragon capsule is scheduled for November. Things went so well the first time around that the second flight has already been is expected to be cleared to go to the ISS.
This is all great news. We all know what happens when there is competition.
Still, the Progess crash spells potential trouble for the ISS. The reason points to another NASA blunder. For safety reasons, Soyuz capsules must remain docked to the ISS at all times. This is so that astronauts can evacuate in an emergency. But these capsules are only certified to remain reliable for 200 days, after which they must be used or replaced. Because the Soyuz launch vehicle (which also launches Progress supply ships) is now suspended pending the investigation, no new Soyuz ships can be launched at the moment. This means that the ISS may have to be evacuated, because the scheduled Soyuz replacements are disturbed.
Why is this a NASA blunder? Because NASA has failed to come up with an alternate return capsule before the shuttle’s retirement. (Projects have been in the works, but faced delay after delay as NASA was concentrating on keeping the shuttles spaceworthy. There were also proposals for emergency return vehicles, which could have been launched via shuttle or by disposable rockets, but NASA decided not to proceed with these programs).
So we arrive at the current status: No way for people to fly to the ISS or back at this time, except on Russian Soyuz vehicles! And these are grounded at the moment.
Update 2011-09-06:
It now appears that should the ISS really have to be evacuated, the SpaceX flight to the ISS might have to be postponed, since docking Dragon with an unmanned station is not an option. Instead, an approach and flyby at the unmanned ISS would be conceivable, but SpaceX considers this to be a waste of time and money.