The man wants a base on the moon By the end of his term as president!!!!

I could go on about why this is nuts, but that’s been done before. Instead, I’ve created a year-by-year outline for how we could actually put settlement up there in the next 4 years. I would say 8, but why not make it a challenge?

Year 1:

Newt and Gary have just been sworn in, the crazy train is now leaving the station! Here’s what else needs to happen:

• Newt and friends need to start delivering supplies to a predetermined lunar location. That’s building supplies, equipment, food, ect.  Small payloads on currently existing rockets are the name of the game. Lots of launches over the next 4 years will be required. (This means lots of blue and white collar jobs!)
• Human-Rating of a current heavy lift vehicle begins. Assuming we are staying American-made, this would leave us with the Falcon 9 Heavy. It will take several years and lots of money to grease the skids, but it’s but doable (more jobs!).
• Design of the lunar habitat begins. We’re going old school Apollo-Style here folks. No touch screens or panoramic view ports. A series of pressurized tubes with basic amenities will do the trick. (even more jobs!)

Year 2:

We may or may not have bombed Iran. . . Crazy Uncle Gary can’t remember what happened last night in the oval office.

• Habitat designs must be finished. (But I haven’t finished my WIFI schematic! Too bad–you’re done, pencils down.) Construction and testing begins concurrently. There will be failures at this point, but modifications will be made to existing hardware on the fly.
• Supply rockets are continuing to land on the moon.
• Crew training begins. Astronauts need not apply. Blue collar workers are what is required with a few engineers to back them up. Welders, machinists, and construction workers will be among the first wave of lunar settlers. Scientists will follow on later.
• Human rating of Falcon 9 Heavy continues along with suitable crew capsule. Test flights begin.

Year 3

Let us congratulate Carmen Electra, our new First Lady. This is the first time in history a single president has had this many wives during their term in the White House.

• Pieces of the habitat begin launching into parking orbits aboard smaller rockets.
• Testing continues of the Falcon 9 Heavy + crew vehicle with on orbit trials and practice docking maneuvers.
• Crew down select occurs and training with representative equipment begins.
• Supplies continue to build at the lunar out post. Enough so that precision landing equipment will need to be used to coordinate equipment locations.

Year 4

The White House has been abandoned and left to a pack of vicious primates that *SOMEBODY* thought would be cool to liven up the place. The American public sees no change in their day to day lives.

• Falcon 9 “Cargo” rockets push the remainder of the habitat pieces into orbit around the moon.
• Ready or not, Falcon 9 Heavy flies with a human crew for the first time.
• After several successful flights, the crew vehicle docks with on orbit habitat pieces.
• ‘Bob the welder’ is the first American to return to the moon. Immediately realizes the moon is better than New Jersey and says so on live TV.
• Construction crews spend several weeks living and working in their space suits while the habitat is assembled. On orbit, pieces are de-orbited to the surface as needed.

Year 5

We now have a functioning, crewed, lunar base. It’s not pretty, and most of the occupants spend their days keeping the systems running, but it’s there.

Is this plan rushed?

Yes.

Is it feasible?

Yes. It will require money (lot’s of it) and most likely some human sacrifice due to accidents from an accelerated schedule. But the pieces are all in place or already on the drawing boards. In theory, if the American public and government were to unite behind a single plan and brute force a simple solution then it is entirely workable.

**Newt, if you can hear me, this plan is free for you to use… I only request you make me the first governor of our Lunar State. (I may or may not name the state ‘Bob’.)

Last year, 10 of our customers seemed to think so (click here to check them out!).

If you want your voice to be heard, click here to fill out the survey.

Just fill out our survey and wait for your sweet reward.

A big shout-out for last year’s winners!

1. Tom Steigerwald, John Crane
2. Monan Yu, Columbia University
3. Jkumar Gopalarathnam, Fluor
4. Kevin Chang, Cabot Microelectronics
5. Sarah Mead, Clarkson University
6. David Armstrong, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
7. Lynn Craig, NASA
8. Dan Hullinger, Navistar
9. Andrew Carlson, University of Miami
10. Nikhil Uddaraju, University of Cincinnati

Want to be a winner this year? Click here to fill out the survey!

Here is a taste of the questions recently featured on GlassDoor.com’s Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions of 2011:

“Would Mahatma Gandhi have made a good software engineer?” –Asked at Deloitte.

“You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?” — Asked at Google.

So what’s the deal with these odd interview questions? And more importantly, how can you ace them?

Brain-teaser type questions are meant to snap you out of the persona we all fall into when meeting a prospective employer. We’ve got the drill fresh in our minds: How to highlight the best parts of our resume, how to graze over any gaps in employment, or how to gracefully list off our hard skills all while emphasizing the importance of leadership and  team-building.

But your employer has heard that before. He or she is looking for the exceptional employee, otherwise they would just pick any resume out of the top 10 prospects.

And while it’s true that you’ll never have to inject Gandhi’s philosophy into your own workflow, your answer gives the employer a crucial glimpse at your inventiveness under pressure.

Let’s go back to Google’s oddball question above (You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown into a blender. . .) Apparently one of the best answers is to recognize that small creatures are stronger in proportion to their weight and that you can probably just jump out of the blender . . . But there’s really no one “right” answer, if you aren’t afraid to step outside of the box and use your intellect to present something new.

Another important thing to keep in mind: the brain teaser questions are getting a lot of attention, just preparing yourself for them is half the battle. The majority of any interview will still focus on the specific skills you’ll need to bring to the table.  If you’re applying for a programming position at Google, get ready to write code.  .  . In the middle of the interview.

If your skills are fresh, there’s nothing to fear.  Even your skills need some work, go with your gut.

A recent Machine Design article offers the perfect example of an engineer trying to land a spot at a control-systems engineering firm.  After the candidate listed off her qualifications to deaf ears, she was faced with a surprisingly simple question: “What’s the integral of 1 over x?” She blurted out “log(x),” though fearful she had gotten it wrong (and pretty shocked she remembered at all). A smile flashed over the interviewer’s face as he exclaimed: “That’s the question I use to separate out the real engineers!”

The bottom line?  You can’t prepare yourself for everything they’ll ask you, but never let a potential employer throw you off your game with the oddball question. You know it’s coming, and you’ll answer with your own inventiveness and personality.

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Have you faced any oddball questions in your engineering interviews? Please, do share!

5. Scientists Clone Human Brain Cells. We’ve come a long way since Dolly! This new breakthrough will greatly help the treatment of mental illnesses and nerve diseases.

4. The Most Amazing HD Image of Earth Ever Seen! It would be a crime not to lay eyes on this photo.  Courtesy of NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite.

3. VIDEO: First Ever HD Footage of an Individual Protein. Proteins are notoriously difficult to study, which is why this advancement is so thrilling.

2. Kepler Telescope Finds 11 New Solar Systems. That’s 11 new solar systems and 2,300 candidate planets awaiting confirmation. Not bad, Kepler, not bad.

1. The First Free-Standing 3-D Cloak. The invisibility cloak has already prompted a lot of buzz in the scientific community, but now scientists can make a 3D object in free space disappear . . . It just got real, folks.

(Left)  #1 Story: The unbelievable 3D cloak is one step closer to reality. Image from Science Daily.

Back in the old days of engineering, you were expected to wear black pants, a white shirt, a tie, dress shoes, pocket protector, and the thick glasses were optional. Smoking was permitted and women weren’t.

Obviously, we’ve come a long way since the preferred dress in my office was khakis and a shirt with a collar (this goes for the women too).  And to my knowledge no one has ever said a word about my coworker’s visible tattoos ( both of his hands, wrists and forearms are  heavily inked). Should they?

I honestly don’t know. We’ve come a long way in redefining what is appropriate for the office. These days, you call your boss by his first name, and you’re probably friends on Facebook.

Some would say it’s a person’s right to dress however he sees fit if he is capable of doing the work. But where does professionalism come into play?

No one ever wore white dress shirts, ties, and slacks because they enjoyed it or they felt it expressed who they really were. They did it because they were professionals and were expected to dress like it. Are we not as professional as our fore-engineers? How should we go about showing our professionalism? Are dress codes inside the office a fading relic of the past?

These days, it seems like new Exoplanets are being revealed left and right. . . So why would you care about an image of boring ol’ Earth?

You may have seen her plenty of times before, but never like this. Suomi NPP, NASA’s newest Earth-watching satellite, has captured one of the most beautiful images of Earth you’ll ever lay eyes on.

The high-res image is available in 8000×8000 pixel resolution, and it takes a while to download, but it’s totally worth the wait. Take a few minutes to recognize the true awesomeness of our blue planet.

Download it here.

 See the entire map below. . .

More than you think, according to John Johnson of the California Institute of Technology, who presented  findings on the three newly discovered planets dominating this week’s headlines.

I’m going to assume that most of you are suitable underwhelmed. While it may not make you laugh it is exactly how John Johnson of the California Institute of Technology described the three new rocky planets orbiting KOI-961.  They orbit close to their tiny star, meaning their period is about 2 days and their temperature is blistering hot.

Is there life there? Probably not. In fact other than their diminutive size there is nothing particularly special about these three little balls of rock. However, their mere existence is proof that the Kepler orbiting observatory is still providing plenty of fuel for astronomers and planet hunters.

While these planets fall far outside the habitable zone for life it shows us that our ability to detect and analyze planets so small is a boon. The smaller the planet we can detect the more planets we will find. The more planets we find, the more likely we are to find more that are similar to our own.

It’s pretty easy to assume that astronomy is for people who like staying up at night segregated in funny dome shaped buildings… And I’ll be honest–there’s a lot of truth in that stereotype. But now the most important tools we have are orbiting above our heads. By and large these systems have already shown they can produce amazing information about our universe and the majority of their cost has already been paid for.

While our presidential candidates are busy arguing about moon bases and trying to line contractor pockets for super-heavy lift vehicles I think we should be focusing on these little gold mines that are paying dividends now and only cost a fraction of their higher-profile sister programs.

5.  NASA Spacecraft Completes Biggest Maneuver. The Mars mission is looking better than ever.

4. Internet Junkies Beware. Apparently, the internet has addictive qualities similar to cocaine.

3. World’s Smallest Frog Discovered. Give a warm welcome to the Paedophryne amauensis, the smallest (and cutest) frog out there.

2. Space Station Dodges Debris From Satellite Crash. A huge hunk of debris almost took out this station ( and 6 astronauts! )

1. Will the Sun Cause a Natural Disaster? A new study in space weather says yes!

Left:

The Mighty Sun May Have Trouble in Store for Us

Photo from smithonianmag.com

I enjoy changing flat tires.

Before you think I’m an overly macho type, or someone who pictures themselves in the pits at a NASCAR race, understand this is the extent of automobile maintenance knowledge. I enjoy it because it’s the only thing I can do. (I once dated a woman who could change brake pads. It was emasculating). I can put a satellite in orbit of Saturn if I wanted to, but changing a spark plug is completely beyond me.

This is even weirder considering my father, whom I love very much, is an absolute car nut. He spent the majority of his youth stripping down engines and rebuilding them for sport. But yet he somehow neglected to pass this information on.

I used to be quite bitter and embarrassed by this fact. This all changed when I had to sit down and completely overhaul my wife’s laptop. BIOS flash? Check. RAM reclocking? Check. Clean Windows install? Check. Drivers installed and updated? Check. I did it all from memory, not a single website or manual consulted. I then had to repeat this process this last weekend on my desktop at home.

I am my own tech support.

In much the same why my father built cars, I built computers when I was young. Back when 233 MHz was a big deal and 128megs of discrete video RAM rendered Half Life smooth as glass I cut my teeth on IDE cables and DOS commands. I don’t need anyone to fix my computer!

This skill set is something I’ve had for a while now and it will no doubt only become more and more valuable. The question is will I pass these skills on to my progeny? Computers are become more and more maintenance free. When they do go wrong it’s usually something serious. Will it be worth my children’s time to learn how to fix them in the future or just take them in to a shop the way I do when my trip odometer hits 3,000?