Robert Smith SmithVoice

Huh. Samuel Adams was an old guy

Robert — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:07:48 GMT

I've had this as my desktop image for a while now. I like it for several personal reasons, but I just finally noticed the dates.

1722 DOB, that means he was in his 50s during the famous Revolution work. 40s and 50s back then was like 60s and 70s today.

Huh.

Buzz, LinkedIn, Mars, Moon, Asteroids and wigs

Robert Smith — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:43:51 GMT

This morning in the Leeward Space Foundation group on LinkedIn, Jun Okushi posted a link to this Examiner article which reported Buzz Aldrin is no fan of the current Asteroid plan. And, of course the comments raged from the Mars, Moon and Asteroid supporters (wait, there were no Asteroid supporters, odd).

If you're on LinkedIn, search for it but be ready for a slug fest.

With my two cents I was going to quote Mozart's exclamation to his wigmaker...

but I posted this instead ...

Robert McCall's Prologue And The Promise

Robert Smith — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:40:22 GMT

"It shows that people of that generation had high expectations and a vision of a bright future ahead. I don't think there is anyone left on this planet that believes of a positive and Jetson's like future for the human race. It's like we have all just given up. "

Not all. Have You?

We have a copy of this piece in the office of the Space Studies Institute. It is about 12x24 (ish) framed and with a penciled in note at the bottom "To my good friend Gerrard O'Neill..." Every time my young son comes to my work at the Mojave Spaceport (where XCor, ViirginGalactic, Orbital, Masten and StratoLaunch make their amazing 'for-us-people' futures quietly today), he slides a chair over and steps up to just stare at this.

Have hope.

But more than that...

Hey! High Frontier is now on Kindle!

Robert Smith — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:12:32 GMT

Lookie that, some fine soul at the Space Studies Institute put the High Frontier out on Kindle for a new age of Space enlightenment. Oh, it was me ;-).

Today I was introduced onstage at the Space Access Society conference in Phoenix by Gary Hudson, SSI President, as the Space Studies Institute Evangelist, so I was honored to do the announcement of the release of the exclusive Kindle edition.

Go get it darnit. It is truly an important and fascinating book. Plus we worked pretty hard to get it turned into a nice Kindle version so, as a good good friend, you know that getting it and reading it will make me happy.

http://ssi.org/2013/04/the-high-frontier-is-now-on-kindle/

Anyone know the Space Artist Pat Rawlings?

Robert Smith — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:11:44 GMT

There is a project that I'm working on that was originally a publication with a cover by artist Pat Rawlings. My client would like to get his permission to use the art he did for them but we're having the darndest time getting in touch with him.

His own web page seems to have dead phone/email information. Searching around got me a gallery in Texas and an answering machine number that I doubt is still monitored.

We could just dump it for something genericly "spacey" but for the reasons he talks of in this YouTube video, we really want to use his original.

Anyone have a line on the guy? Can you tell him to update his web page?
Updated!

The High Frontier. Huh. Not what I expected.

Robert Smith — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:03:25 GMT

In the early 1970s America had proved its leadership in Human Spaceflight but among the nation’s youth an anti-technology mindset was growing. Princeton Physicist Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill, inventor of the revolutionary Colliding-Beam Storage Ring technology that is now the basis of all high energy particle accelerators, asked his students if they could come up with a working Space Colony system to permanently and happily house and employ tens of thousands of regular people AND cleanly power the Earth.

Yeah, win win plus win.

Could it actually be done? Here's a pointer you might like.

more...

Looking for a gig?

Smith — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:19:38 GMT

Time flies.

I got two emails from budds saying 'you're on LinkedIn a bunch and your site hasn't had anything new for a month... you available?'

I'm on LinkedIn a bunch because old friends started doing the Recommendation Game (a great feature of the LinkedIn system, by the way... really gets you involved, and it's fun.), and I wanted to return their favors.

Do I want a gig? Hmmm... everyone has a price. But, I actually have one and it's pretty darned cool.

Office 2013 Picture Manager

Smith — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 23:43:55 GMT

Miss the Office Picture Manager from Office 2013? Me too, but I miss companies fixing things reported as broken even more.

This is from page 3 of the MS Answers forum in the topic "What replaces office picture manager in office 2013?"

Quote of the Year 2012

Smith — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 20:58:03 GMT

Cosmic Radiation. Now we know more of how to protect ourselves

Smith — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 11:22:20 GMT

"Yet another reason to ditch space colonization fantasies and focus on earthbound environmental problems."
- Alex Sevins post on MSNBC's "news" site

Ugh. Several days ago the story broke that researchers may have found a possible link to brain inflammation from high mass, high energy particles. And the implication jumped to the hot-button scare-title "Alzheimers".

Looking for Dandridge Cole's Ultimate Human Society?

Robert Smith — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 12:02:30 GMT

Amazon lists Dandridge Cole's Social And Political Implications of the Ultimate Human Society as unavailable. It is... but there is a way to get it.

After a good deal of investigation, I can assure anyone looking for this title that the search will be fun but fruitless... if you are looking for the exact title. There was a presentation at the 1961 AAS meeting and the book following the meeting (Advances in Astronautical Sciences Volume 8 - Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Astronautical Society Dallas January 16-18 1961) lists the article BUT the book itself only has a half page abstract with a note that the reason they didn't print the complete text is that it was published as a two part series in the September and October 1961 Space World Magazine under the title "Macro-Life".

Times they aren't a changin

Smith — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:52:08 GMT

I truly do dislike using Dylan as a catch, but it's tradition. Unfortunately, this shows that it is not the only tradition that refuses to go away.

"Dear Editor:
The following may indicate what
the rest of the world thinks of our
space program:
I was in a park in Hakata in southern
Japan this summer wearing an
L5 Society t-shirt. A middle-aged
Japanese came up and asked me what
the t-shirt meant.
I replied in halting Japanese that it
was an international organization
promoting space development, space
manufacturing and building human
colonies in space.
The gentleman nodded, looked up
at my blue eyes, and said, "Ah, you
are Russian!"
Jack D. Kirwan
Tucson, Ariz."

That's from the September 1986 edition of the NSS's Space World magazine.

Shhhh... there is something big quietly happening...

Yeah yeah Windows Surface and smithvids

Smith — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:43:24 GMT

Time was when I was all about being a year ahead of the Redmond releases. Time isn't that way any more for me. Got a bit tired of the growing restrictions. Call me an old guy but it just ain't Bill's Redmond anymore and the heaps of heaps on top of heaps isn't the "You can do what *you* want on Microsoft" that made me leave the IBM fen DOSes ago.

MS sent a gift surface unit and I really love the thing for looks, LOVE the keyboard to death (and I am a Unicomp user). BUT, RT kills flash for the little guy and that I hate. Hate.

This site is 100% hand coded using .Net power (not .Net-playtime abstractions) but for Vids and Audio it is a real paid-for Wowza server and my own SWFs. Till I get done with my current work and can get in and recode for the lesser power of HTML5, here's how to get Flash if you are on RT.

Fritz Lang 1929 Woman In The Moon

smith — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:44:07 GMT

Winform Designmode

Smith — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 12:33:36 GMT

Coding out and about without my libraries drive and hit that old, old, old bug of user controls not making it easy to tell you when you're in Designmode if you nest subclassed UCs. Felt like a noob fool, had to waste time running through all of the forum posts of hacks that still don't work.. till I found this one. It's not mine but it's better than mine in that it works (for me) across the nesting scenarios even when called from a grandchild control. Now I'm glad I forgot my drive :).

The code is in an Anonymous comment, in case that page goes away, I put it here.

Why does the simple DesignMode feature that was spot-on in the VB5/6 era still elude the VS team after ten years of .Net?

Thanks Anonymous!

Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Amazon review

Robert Smith — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:12:02 GMT

Tried to read this in high school, but couldn't get into it. Tried it again recently because I was impressed by other RAH audiobooks. As Neo once said "Whoa". The audiobook took a little bit to get into but after sticking with it it started to smooth out and, OMG, this is truly more than just a simple book. It is a handbook, a manual for many things or at the very least a solid threshing out of many of the tactics required but not immediately obvious as required in relation to achieving a major political and\or societal goal.

A few weeks ago I noticed that the media reports of the status of the former Eqyptian leader were almost a full overlay of the presentation of the Warden after the takeover. Like the "new guard" had been following a playbook. It worked in the novel and appears to have worked out here in the real-ish world.

Von Braun. "Hero"?

Robert Smith — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:52:48 GMT

" I just read your post about Von Braun. Just so you are aware - it is a known FACT that he personally was aware that thousands of slaves lived in atrocious conditions and were worked to death to manufacture the V2 rockets that he invented to randomly kill thousands of civilians.

Aside from this he did this not to protect his homeland but to help the most evil man who ever walked the face of the earth attempt to take over the world and eliminate Jews from the planet. He sold out to Hitler because he funded his life long dream to get to space.

I do not claim to be perfect by any means nor do I attend church ever. However I am Jewish by birth not by belief & many of my relatives died at the hand of the Nazi & Von Braun's boss Hitler. To minimize his involvement & to call him a hero is offensive to all Jews."

Reply:

Iran has no "Weapon" when they finish their processing?

Robert Smith — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:35:18 GMT

Legal line item details are not my direct forte and exact specifics are not all that important when it comes to Political campaigns. But still.

Tonight in the VP debate Mr. Biden again used a statement that has confused me for more than just this Administration's term. To paraphrase what seems like a decade of assurances:

'They may have the bomb soon, but they don't have the delivery mechanism.'

Really?

The feeling of Mojave

Smith — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:50:39 GMT

It was two of those moments that make your head start playing the Police's Synchronicity Part 1.

I was up having lunch at Mojave Air/Spaceport last week and I realized that I love that place. It's not just that the food at the Voyager is better than most anything closeby Hawthorne Airport, it's just something about the feel of big desert and big sky and that no matter which way you look there are regular cool folks working on making the biggest dreams come true. The place, and some of the people walking in off the runway, has the slight smell of grease and effort like my Dad's old shop where he moonlit his giant lathes on projects for PrattWhitney. It's not Silicon Valley branding and slick... it's banging tin.

It just feels "right."

And this time my internal pattern-matcher found it even more "falling into place" because...

Spacecraft Tech Expo LA 2012 Letter to Neil

Smith — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 21:52:54 GMT

Michael Lopez-Alegria's letter to Neil Armstrong from the Spacecraft Technology Expo, May 10th 2012, Los Angeles Convention Center.

It is very important that you take to heart that respect for the national hero's unequalled accomplishments during the Space Age is in no way being denied by this letter from one professional Astronaut to another. I was there, I saw the man speaking, this was a tough thing for him to do. You could see it on his face.

Lopez-Alegria felt that these points had to be said in counter to Armstrong's recent words and writings against the opening up of Human Spaceflight, and even though not one news or Space organization covered it it was important, and you should hear it.