Technical Activities Committee
The Technical Activities Committee of the AIAA San Francisco Section seeks to expand the understanding and capabilities of local members in current and emerging aerospace technologies.
Through its partnership with the Silicon Valley Space Center (SVSC), AIAA SF holds a regular series of TechTalks focused on tools, methodologies, and technologies that may be of use to aerospace technologists pursuing emerging markets. While SVSC further focuses on business incubation and opportunities, AIAA SF focuses on identifying current and emerging state of the art within the grasp of small enterprises. In addition to TechTalks, AIAA SF co-sponsors workshops with SVSC, which bring in participants from around the country. Among these were the Space Hackers Workshop and the CASIS/ISS Entrepreneurial Opportunities Workshop, held in May and October respectively of 2013.
The Committee has focused on small payload design and integration for orbital and suborbital missions. It is now expanding its focus to unmanned aerial vehicles in the National Airspace System (NAS). Part of the logic behind the strategy is that similar emerging technologies are being used in both.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of working on the Committee is getting a view of large and small aerospace projects in the Bay Area, meeting aerospace entrepreneurs, and understanding how Bay Area efforts relate to other efforts across the nation. In some ways, it amounts to an education in how aerospace enterprises survive.
The Committee welcomes feedback from members, and volunteers to help drive its technology-focused activities.
Contact: technical (at) aiaa-sf.org
Biography: Rick Kwan
Rick Kwan is the chair of the Technical Activities Committee, and a former chair of the AIAA San Francisco Section. The less flattering description is: confirmed aerospace and computing nutcase. In 2011, he was diagnosed as a “compulsive aerospace systems fanatic”. The diagnosing doctor, a PhD and professor in aerospace engineering, gave him this prescription: “Just give in.” With those words, Rick let go, and gave in to the aerospace side of his personality. (True story.)
Rick Kwan – serious selfie
Okay. Seriously now.
Rick is a senior software engineer in the MIPS Technologies unit of Imagination Technologies, but spends a lot of time with aerospace start-ups and non-profits. He has worked for a variety of computing hardware and software companies in Silicon Valley, but also has spent time at NASA Ames and at a small Bay Area aviation start-up. His career started in the Los Angeles aerospace industry, where he spent several years at System Development Corporation, and later Hughes Aircraft and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He later worked overseas for Acer, and then returned to the US to work several years for Sun Microsystems. His aerospace focus is split between trajectory modeling and spacecraft computing systems.
Within the AIAA San Francisco Section, Rick is most closely associated with the section’s Communications and Technical Activities Committees. He is the section liaison to the Silicon Valley Space Center, of which he is a founding member. Rick is a member of the AIAA Computer Systems Technical Committee, and writes the committee’s annual technology review for the December issue of Aerospace America. He is an Associate Fellow of AIAA. His informal activities to bring clarity about space technologies to enthusiasts has resulted in an occasional blog at: http://rocketscirick.com
Rick’s Favorite Quotations
“Once you get to earth orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere in the solar system.” Robert A. Heinlein (attributed by G. Harry Stein and Jerry Pournelle)
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” John F. Kennedy, Sept. 12, 1962