Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Beginning of Making with NASA”.
Hi, I’m Alistair Allan from Make Magazine here with San Mateo from NASA hi good to have you with us thanks I’ll. She glad to be here cool. So you made a point today in your talk to say that it was your space agency. Well, maybe not mine, because I’m British, but like the rest of the audience perhaps, and that the technology was the driver for a new space exploration. You want to talk about about that. Absolutely correct in the sense that it’s not I just get to work there. I get to participate in the space exploration program, but it is belong to the general public.
It is you know the US citizens space program, and so what we’re doing a big push is to get them aware of what the opportunities are, as makers as innovators. As hackers come up with ideas and their solutions, we don’t want that to be an untapped resource. We realize that there’s a lot of technology there that we could be taking advantage of in our space exploration, endeavors, and so that’s where we’re trying to reach out and make them aware of not only the opportunities that they have to engage and be a part of The space exploration program, but also be more aware of what technologies we have available for them to use out there.
We have software portals for free software and software they can license. You know we have patent portals. So all these areas there’s technology, that’s there.
They can take advantage of so where do you see the technologies, the tools of the maker movement turning up inside NASA? So obviously we have a lot of different areas that are technologies have been around for a while three deep additive manufacturing. Many people will be saying. Oh, my god, that’s just nuisance new stuff. No, it’s not new stuff. It’S been around since make up her first started. We had three. We had three people here, the first time here it had added a manufacturing printers, and so we see that technology coming in readily and being used not only at the industrial level, but also at the platform level. At the desk top level, people are becoming using that technology, we’re 3d printing rocket engines right now and testing them and using them for some of our rockets.
It’S not the big rockets, but it’s the smaller ones that we’d use for smaller payloads and to me that is just fascinating to see that technology come in as well as any of the other areas, whether it’s new Electronics, new ways of coding using Arduino is to Control our rocket systems and our payloads using 3d manufacturing to print not only the CubeSat, which are small satellites, 10 by 10 by 10 centimeters, but the PCBs that are used inside under control them, so all of the control systems. All of that can now be just basically, we could print it on the space station and have an hour not throw it out and put it into orbit. That’S cool. I got ta agree that is cool, so you talked about multiple opportunities to be involved in your space program in this space program and the special mentions nyak.
Is it that’s the crazy scientists, crazy ideas agency? Do you want to talk about what they’re doing it is so the NASA innovative advanced concepts program, it’s wwas, a GF, /, NIAC nayak, and what we’re doing there is we’re looking for that very seedling ideas of what we could use for future technologies, whether it’s going To be a new method of technology for usage for manufacturing, whether it’s going to be a concept for space exploration, you know, one of the ones that we recently mentioned is the concept of being a design concept built for fabricating, a submarine that could be used to Explore the Seas of the two moon, Titan and yeah to me, that is just totally awesome, especially as we go off. We want to explore the Seas of time. We explore Europa, you want to go up and do more exploration on the surface of Venus, which has a high pressure, high temperature environment caustic with missile uric acid.
How do you get something to survive any any longer than 10 hours at my max, and so those technologies were other things we’re looking for to be able to do that type of exploration? That’S really sounds great. That’S dream: come true territory, so you’re the program manager for the Centennial Challenges, of course, and you were talking that you want to about six challenges open any one time. What are the current challenges? How can people get involved? How can people like potentially win large sums of money? I guess right so currently have we have three active challenges as of today, we have a cube quest challenge, which is focused on the propulsion systems and the communication systems of small cube SATs.
We have our sample return, robot challenge, which was a autonomous robot, no GPS, no compass that can go out, collect samples and bring them back to a single point, and then we also have our mars ascent vehicle challenge, which the robotic system that would collect would pick Up those collection of samples are already collected, put them in a rocket deploy the rocket to a vertical stage and launch it and back into the planetary orbit. So those three challenges. What we looking at today and then we’re looking to roll out some new challenges of focused on humanoid robotics, we’re looking at advanced manufacturing and actually the vance manufacturing challenge will be announcing here at maker faire here in the Bay Area.
So we’re very excited about announcing that on this Saturday and then we also have one that’s been we’re looking at chance to possibly be focused on tissue engineering and so the space biology aspects, especially if you’re going to be doing a long-term space exploration venture where you’re, Not going to have doctors, hospitals, you have to be able to handle everything on your own there on the spaceship, that’s really cool, so you also mentioned some other smaller challenges. The the soft hatched hatch challenge that that people can get involved in a much of more more ready level as like they don’t have to be massively expert in a whole number of fields. Did you want briefly mention that perhaps yeah you’re right because oftentimes I hear that? Oh well, you know, i’m i’m not i’m just an artist, i can’t be a space explorer and – and that is so untrue, because those are the people.
That’S why we come to make a fair we’re looking for the artistic technology artistically creative people to solve these problems, and that’s what we get here when we do this. So when you go to tinyurl / soft hatch, there is a challenge out there that if we are attaching a inflatable module to the outside of a space station or to the outside of a planetary habitat, we can get that inflated out in the astronaut can open Up the hatch from the help from the habitat and walk into the inflatable module, how do they get outside that door way? Because we want that to be fully collapsed into a small pouch small bag? It expands out well now the hatch has to be able to be soft and how do you make that work so that it’s airtight and that you can open it easily when you’re wearing a v8? You know astronaut gloves and everything like that, and so that’s what the challenge is: its $ 15,000, it’s open until the middle of June and we’re looking for people to explain their idea of how they would create a soft hatch for us what materials they would use. What’S the basic design concept of it and then we’re going to go back and look at those and judge them rack them stack them and then award some prize money.
For that I need don’t actually have to build the hatch. You don’t have to build the hatch. We just want your idea.
That’S really awesome thanks for talking to us. Thank you. .