Jeff Balcerski

The high-pitched dog whistle is the wind shrieking around the window. (Higher frequency due to sped-up video.)

In Texas with the Kent State student team for the International Rocket Engineering Competition, and now I've experienced my first thunderduststorm!
6x timelapse from my hotel window.

More progress on the satellite assembly cleanroom. Therval-vacuum oven training/commissioning next week. Helmholtz cage control system work this summer. 6U cubesat chassis in-house fabrication starts next week.

Two tall blue panels standing upright form the start of a wall inside a contemporary lab space.

Spacecraft Design Lab getting a cleanroom addition! Hallway passersby will be able to look in and see the hardware we're assembling (soon, Kent State's FlashSat-1 student-built satellite.)

Snow falling and covering sidewalks and vehicles.

Well happy spring to you too, Ohio.

cf. Russia.

Yep. "If you're young and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you're old and not a conservative, you have no brain." Or some variation thereof. Turns out, they don't have to be orthogonal. And either one, in isolation, can betray the other.

The science-engineering communications gap is A Real Thing. Be bilingual.
"In science, if you know what you are doing, you should not be doing it."
"In engineering, if you do not know what you are doing, you should not be doing it." -Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering

Today's dumb mental challenge that didn't need to be: Worrying about how the use of the phrase, "Technical Readiness Level maturation through environmental testing" will affect the success of a grant proposal.

Class prop catastrophe!
"KHHHAAANNNNnnnnn!!!"

My takeaway from the last couple months of indiscriminate government downsizing: How very affordable are/were the amazing services, science, and research done with our tax $. Given that these cuts haven't made a dent in the deficit, imagine what we could have done with slightly more instead of less.

I would have gone with, "Trinity" for the center one.

All Amendments Matter

I'll be the one in the Firefly/Serenity, "I aim to misbehave" shirt.

Hey #LPSC2025 - I'm on the lookout for a potential PhD student who wants to explore the niche intersection of planetary science, engineering, and technology. Instruments, exploration platforms, and space resource utilization are the sweet spots. I have funding, and a new cubesat award. Let's talk.

Space and Planetary Resources An integrated platform to publish novel data and findings, as well as innovative concepts, models, and technological advances related to various aspects of ...

If you're working on extraterrestrial resource exploration/prospecting, extraction, processing, and utilization, as well as economic, environmental, legal, and policy issues then publish in this new diamond open access journal! link.springer.com/journal/44461

YouTube video by Aly: @usa.mom.in.germany #Teaching #U.S. 🇺🇸 #Propaganda in #Germany 🇩🇪 #livingingermany #germanyvsusa #americanabroad

Confirmed. Starting at around age 14, they have a focused unit on recognizing and evaluating propaganda, both contemporary and historical, along with understanding historical and cultural context. Further, critical thinking skills are taught as part of social studies curriculum throughout.

Is there an organized meetup or peripheral event planned at #LPSC2025 ?

This is a tectonic shift in collaborative publishing. The need is obvious and the timing is perfect.

Honey, I Embiggened the Gong.

It sounds... I dunno... obscene, somehow.

This screen grab from video footage shows a portion of the Sun, complete with a solar flare and bright corona. About two-thirds of the way up the image, a small black dot is in the middle. That's Mercury.

#PPOD: On 3 January 2023, Mercury crossed the Solar Orbiter spacecraft’s field of view, resulting in a solar transit in which Mercury appeared as a perfectly black circle moving across the face of a very active Sun. Credit: ESA & NASA / Solar Orbiter 🧪 🔭

Same. I have defaulted to mixing the local language and English in order to avoid exactly this scenario. I'll greet the person in their language and then immediately follow with, "Is English okay?" or similar.

Welp....

Interesting Baseline. Have you considered a Threshold success criteria?

As a Gen-Xer, I wholly endorse the use of the word "radical" in regular conversation.
As in, I believe that we should be having regular conversations how Radical Empathy can create "a more perfect union".

And now it's... not?

Well, the authors *did* recommend to "go big". So there's at least one piece he got right. OTOH, it would definitely be best to figure out how to keep them alive before sending them. 🤷

Must have been the day for it. Lecture today started with, "I generally believe that politics should be left at the door of the classroom, but we need to talk about what's about to affect you and people you know and care about."

One of my favorite country songs is the one where Toby Keith sings about all the diversity that makes his bar special.
#WeAreAllDEI