AIAA SF, P.O. Box 1548, Mountain View, CA 94042-1548
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AIAA SF, P.O. Box 1548, Mountain View, CA 94042-1548 |
The San Francisco section of the AIAA serves about 1100 members in the San Francisco Bay area. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world's premier organization for professionals in aerospace and aeronautics.
NOTE: The AIAA SF section website is undergoing revision. Some minor updates will be done here. In the meantime, section councilmembers will post updates to the resurrected Blogspot site.
Send questions to webmaster@aiaa-sf.org. We also have an archive of past events.
AIAA SF Dinner
Thursday, May 30, 2013; 6:30pm-9:00pm
Michael's at Shoreline, Mountain View, CA
The AIAA Space Systems Technical Committee has co-sponsored the annual 7-8th grade essay contest in the SF section before, and this year is no exception. Traditionally, topics focus on aerospace policy, history, or technology. This year's topic was "How can Humans and Robots work together to explore Mars?" There are many benefits to student participation. Our collaboration encourages technical writing capabilities, deepens the connection between the local section and teachers and schools, and contributes to STEM education. We will be honoring this year's essay contest winners at this banquet.
Additionally, our annual banquet serves as a time to celebrate our outgoing section oofficers, as well as welcoming the section officers for 2013-2014.
We are also very pleased to have Mr. Jim Keravala from Shackleton Energy Company, and also the current AIAA-SF Chair, share his vision for the future of Space Exploration. Shackleton Energy Company (SEC) is embarking on a program to provide a strategically-assured, continuous, supply of LOX/H2 propellant, initially in Low Earth Orbit, then subsequently expanding to GEO and beyond. Heralding the first off-world energy business, this infrastructure will dramatically lower the cost of space access and forever change our relationship with the Solar System. Is this the start of deep space exploration? What are the prospects for its future? Join us, along with Jim Keravala, as we discuss The Future of Space Exploration.
AIAA SF SoCal Tour
Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - Saturday, September 21, 2013
Southern California
A tour of aerospace sights in Southern California is planned for September 18-21, 2013. The trip is going to be a great opportunity to visit some of our aerospace colleagues down south, from the commercial enterprise SpaceX, to the wizards of interplanetary missions at Jet Propulsion Lab, and the spacecraft makers of Mojave.
AIAA SF - Day at the Museum
Saturday, May 11, 2013; 10:00am
Pier 15/17, San Francisco
The AIAA-SF K-12 STEM committee is organizing a "Day at the Museum" that is at the Exploratorium at its new location on Pier 15. This event is for families and friends, and especially K-12 students.
Please look for the AIAA SF section banner at the entrance of the museum to check in.
[ More info ]
AIAA SF/SVSC TechTalk
Monday, April 22, 2013; 6:30pm-8:00pm
Hacker Dojo, Mountain View
The Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere (PoSSUM) campaign will employ a manned reusable suborbital vehicle that will launch from a high-latitude spaceport (e.g. Alaska or Kiruna, Sweden) during a weeklong deployment scheduled for July 2014 to study numerous aspects of Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMCs). PoSSUM will optimize the opportunity created by the "PMC Imagery and Tomography Experiment", a high-latitude campaign selected by the NASA Flight Opportunities Program (Experiment 46-S) to study the small-scale dynamics of PMCs. The PoSSUM Project will make full use of the 46-S opportunity by fully utilizing all available payload space and campaign deployment time to optimize technology maturation and science return while validating a repeatable, low-cost means to study seasonal trends of PMCs. Join AIAA - SF on April 22 for a Tech Talk with the Principal Investigator on the PoSSUM mission, Dr. Jason Reimuller.
[ More info and RSVP ] [ More TechTalks ]
AIAA SF/SVSC TechTalk
Monday, March 25, 2013; 6:30pm-8:00pm
Hacker Dojo, Mountain View
Deep Space Industries, announced merely two months ago, has already staked its claim as one of the most ambitious new space ventures. Founded by such leading minds as Rick Tumlinson, commercial space godfather, David Gump, formerly of Astrobotic, and John Lewis, scientist and author of the revolutionary Mining the Sky, Deep Space Industries envisions a business in which robotic scouts prospect for valuable asteroids, intermediate spacecraft return samples to Earth for analysis, and finally mining vehicles fly to the chosen asteroid to excavate and utilize the material on site. That final detail is perhaps the most significant aspect of their vision: by using a heretofore unrealized 3D printer, DSI will transform the mined elements into the components of space-native industry, allowing unique structures that would have been impossible to bring up from Earth in pieces. Join AIAA - SF on March 25 for a Tech Talk with founder and missions integration expert James Luebke.
[ More info and RSVP ] [ More TechTalks ]
Essay Contest
Entries due March 15, 2013
NOTE: Here is a new version of the essay flyer with the new due date.
The 2013 essay contest for seventh and eighth graders is now under way. The local contest is sponsored by the AIAA San Francisco Section. The winning entries will be submitted to the national contest, sponsored by the AIAA Space Systems Technical Committee. The topic for this year: How can humans and robots work together to explore Mars? [ More info ]
AIAA SF/SVSC TechTalk
Monday, February 25, 2013; 6:30pm-8:00pm
Hacker Dojo, Mountain View
Mission Control Technologies (MCT) is an extensible architecture that was developed as a generic framework for developers and deployed with a specific set of modules as an application at the NASA Johnson Space Center. Traditional software is built as monolithic applications. The functionality of an application is determined during design and development. Once an application is developed and tested, change is difficult, leaving users with few options other than operational workarounds, if the software does not do what is needed. Recent software systems have evolved away from monolithic applications to collections of components and services. This model leaves organizations with a more effective way to customize and reuse software.
[ More info and RSVP ] [ More TechTalks ]AIAA SF Dinner
Wednesday, February 13, 2013; 6:30pm-9:00pm
Michael's at Shoreline, Mountain View, CA
This talk will give an overview of work for the Space Shuttle program
analyzing the ascent aerodynamics of the Space Shuttle Launch Vehicle
(SSLV) and in developing and applying debris analysis tools.
Growth over the past two decades of the NASA supercomputer facilities
at Ames, together with maturity and capability of NASA computational
simulation capabilities has advanced the ability to add significant
detail to the computational models of the SSLV.
This ability was used during the investigation of the loss of the
Columbia Space Shuttle due to foam-debris damage, during subsequent
return-to-flight efforts, and through the end of the Space Shuttle
program.
Dr Stuart Rogers will talk about this work. He has spent the
last 23 years at NASA Ames developing computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
codes, and worked on the computations for Shuttle ascent aerodynamics
and debris analysis.
[ More info and RSVP ]
AIAA SF/SVSC/SVSBR TechTalk
Monday, December 3, 2012; 6:30pm-8:00pm
Hacker Dojo, Mountain View
PolarBot is a remotely operated, semi autonomous mobile robot designed for operation harsh environments using commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components. The rover has a built in weather station, GPS, satellite communication, local wireless connectivity, PTZ camera and a two kilometer mobility operation range.
It is as close as some students will get to landing a rover on another planet. Satish Chetty, a polar technology developer, has used Polarbot to mentor aerospace engineering students. He will talk about the rover and other aspects of the project.
This is the year-end joint holiday season techtalk for AIAA SF, SVSC, and SVSBR. Season's greetings to all. [ More info and RSVP ] [ More TechTalks ]
AIAA SF Dinner
Wednesday, November 7, 2012; 6:30pm-9:00pm
Michael's at Shoreline, Mountain View, CA
The Kepler Mission is designed to determine the frequency of Earth-size
planets in and near the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. Kepler is a
space telescope orbiting the Sun that continuously measures the brightness
of 170,000 stars watching for a planet to cross and temporarily dim a
star. From the size of the dip, the time between dips, and the properties
of the stars, we deduce the size and temperature of the planet and the
distance of the planet from the star. Currently Kepler has found over 3000
planetary candidates, 1500 small planets, and several planets orbiting
double stars. Several dozen candidates have been found in the habitable
zone of their stars, but most are too large to be rocky worlds.
William Borucki is the Science Principal Investigator for the Kepler
Mission. He will describe the mission and review the current science results.
[ More info and RSVP ]
AIAA SF/SVSC Small Payloads TechTalk
Monday, October 15, 2012; 6:30pm-8:00pm (tentative)
Hacker Dojo, Mountain View
KickSat is a mission to demonstrate the Sprite ChipSat developed at Cornell University. ChipSats like the Sprite represent a disruptive new space technology that will both open space access to hobbyists and students and enable new kinds of science missions. A large portion of the KickSat mission has been financed through crowd funding on Kickstarter with the goal of reducing the total cost of putting a satellite in low Earth orbit to under one thousand dollars.
The Sprite is a tiny spacecraft that includes power, sensor, and communication systems on a printed circuit board measuring 3.5 by 3.5 cm with a thickness of a few millimeters and a mass of a few grams. It is intended as a general-purpose sensor platform for micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) or other chip-scale sensors with the ability to downlink data to ground stations from LEO.
At this time, KickSat expects to launch on a NASA ELaNa mission.
Zac Manchester, the project leader, will discuss the project.
[ More info and RSVP ]
[ More TechTalks ]
SVSBR Event and Tour
Thursday, September 13, 2012; 6:00pm-9:00pm
Bldg 20, Moffett Field
Airship Ventures will brief attendees about the past and future of airships. This will be followed by a panel discussion of applications.
The first 24 registered attendees will be able to attend hanger tours
of the Airship Ventures Zeppelin before and after the presentation.
Remaining attendees will be able to attend a scheduled tour at a later date.
(This event is organized by the Silicon Valley Space Business Roundtable.)
[ More info and RSVP ]
AIAA SF Public Policy
Saturday-Sunday, September 8-9, 2012
California Capitol Air Show, Mather Airport
The AIAA SF Public Policy team has been reaching out to visitors at regional aviation events.
Last weekend (Sept. 2-3), it was the
Watsonville Fly-In and Air Show.
This weekend (Sept. 8-9), it will be the
California Capitol Air Show, just outside Sacramento.
If you are interested in participating in the AIAA SF Public Policy outreach
efforts, contact section public policy chair Jose Ramil Seneris at
pubpol@aiaa-sf.org.
[ AIAA Key Issues 2012 ]
AIAA Design/Build/Fly
Congratulations to the San Jose State University team "PhalanX". They won 2011–2012 Cessna Aircraft Company/Raytheon Missile Systems/AIAA Foundation Student Design/Build/Fly (DBF) Competition, held April 13–15 at Cessna Aircraft Company’s Cessna Field, Wichita, Kan. The DBF Competition, which encourages and recognizes excellence in aerospace engineering skills at the undergraduate and graduate level, drew 55 teams from 28 states and 12 foreign countries
"PhalanX" received the $2,500 first place award. Team "Angel of Attack," from The University of California, Irvine, Calif., received the $1,500 second place prize. Team "H2BuffalO" from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo., received the $1,000 third place prize. [ More info ]
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Silicon Valley Space Business Roundtable | Hacker Dojo |
Silicon Valley Space Center |
With the roll-out of the new AIAA website, the AIAA videos have a new location.
Recent videos include:
Highlighting a few conferences that might be of interest to our membership.
Organized by AIAA unless noted otherwise.
[More AIAA conferences.]
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