Dear HI-SEAS Applicant,I believe I've put a lot of hard work into this application process and to be cut now is really saddening. I will hopefully be able to apply next year and get further. I wish all the best to those applicants who have advanced and will go on to interviews and flight physicals.
Thank you again for your interest in the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. I am sorry to inform you that you have not been selected for the interview stage of the application process. We had a very large number of highly qualified applicants, and it was extremely difficult to narrow the pool down.
I don't know what will happen in the short term with this blog. I am sinking into the final two months of my thesis and need to concentrate. But, I hope to not abandon everyone who has been so supportive. Stay tuned while I figure a few things out.
That's very disappointing. At least this time around, you won't get the opportunity to spend 4 months on a tin can with 5 smelly roommates eating food out of a toothpaste tube. And somebody probably snores.
ReplyDeleteNotice how I'm trying to cheer you up by emphasizing the negatives? I know it's lame, but it's all I got. This is disappointing, but hang in there. This, too, shall pass.
Seriously, I'd like to see you continue this blog (after you get that thesis finished--priorities). In a very short time, you have made a really nice science education website. A few tweaks to make it less HI-SEAS centric, and you could do some neat stuff with it. Just last night you were talking about some ideas you have for future posts. You should do that.
You're at the start of your career, and there will be more opportunities. Some you'll miss, and others you'll catch. Keep looking for stuff that interests you, and if you find something that requires specific qualifications, work at gaining the right credentials. Keep working toward what you're passionate about.
And to answer The Question: Yup. My interview is scheduled for May 1, and I'm working on getting my references lined up.
All the best,
Ed
Congratulations! Best of luck on your interviews and references. May I ask about your proposed research? Must be quite interesting!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I'll find some sort of adventure for 2013. I'll make it a point to focus on something with wide open spaces and wonderful food! I'm eager to rework the blog to better reflect some new goals. I have a national park road trip planned for July that would be perfect fodder for posts.
Thank you for the kind words and advice. I'll keep working hard and find some new opportunities. Let me know if you'll be staying in a tin can with five smelly, snoring roommates eating toothpaste tube food! I'll be rooting for you. I definitely will want to follow along with the project from wherever I end up!
M
Well, the thing I figured out about the research project is that it doesn't matter what it is so much as that it's time-consuming and somewhat relevant. And "time-consuming" is probably more important. For purposes of the food study, they want the crew to be busy all the time. Food preparation takes time, and there won't be a cook. So crew members will have to take time out from their real work to cook, and one of the objectives is to discover whether it's worth it. I've designed quite a lot of experiments involving human subjects, and one way to simulate the stress of a real environment is to load 'em up with tasks.
ReplyDeleteI recently published a paper here:
http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780123859563
(it's chapter 14) and have been wanting to extend that work. I figured this might be a perfect opportunity.
It's a dynamic simulation that attempts to correlate the variations of the sun's orbit around the center of mass of the solar system to the sunspot cycle. I had some success with the first iteration, but extending the model is proving to be quite difficult. What's good about this for the HI-SEAS study is that 1) it's time consuming, and 2) all I need is a reasonably fast laptop computer with a software development environment installed.
The relevance is that being able to predict the sunspot activity over several years would be a useful planning tool for multi-year space missions.
That's kinda it in a nutshell. I'll be happy to discuss it further if you are interested, but over the next few days I'll be traveling, and mostly off-line.
Cheers,
Ed
It looks like the majority of your chapter is available via Google Preview! I'm going to try and read through it this week. I always enjoy learning about the different applications of modeling. I would definitely love to discuss it further once both of our schedules allow.
DeleteM
If you email me at edfixatinfinetdotcom, I'll send you a pdf of the paper, plus the spreadsheets behind it (caution; BIG spreadsheet)
Delete