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Ask HN: How can I use my web development skills for space exploration/tech?

• zeristor 9y ago
  I'm in a similar situation. You could look at working on your own Remote Sensing projects perhaps. I've also plan to make something akin to Asterank, yes it is there and working, but I think it is an amazing idea and would just love to do something similar in my own way: http://www.asterank.com http://www.asterank.com
• program247365 9y ago
  I was also thinking about creating a community around this. I was thinking about creating a Slack for folks interested in the webdev + space exploration/tech scene. Anyone interested? Afaik, this is the only thing close right now: https://spacehack.org/ https://spacehack.org/
  • 52-6F-62 9y ago
    I'd be interested in such a thing if that's a plan. Maybe a Keybase group to try and avoid [purely] shitposting types, and a board for persistent posts that maybe aligns with similar rules?
    • program247365 9y ago
      Mmmm, wasn't that familiar with Keybase. That looks nifty, and very encrypted. I do agree that the Slack chat is ugh cuz free plans are limited. But I've seen open Slack (or insert fav chat/forum software here) do well, even with just a good community guidelines (e.g. https://github.com/randsleadershipslack/documents-and-resources/blob/master/code-of-conduct.md https://github.com/randsleadershipslack/documents-and-resour...) But either way, if peeps are interested in this, I'm game to start a community somewhere for this, been thinking about this for a while: https://www.dropbox.com/s/m3hjn4drrv2yzng/spacehackers.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/m3hjn4drrv2yzng/spacehackers.png?d...
    • program247365 9y ago
      'spacehackers' on Keybase if peeps want to join. I'll be thinking about persistent posts idea as we chat.
      • program247365 9y ago
        should it be an 'open' team or 'closed'?
        • 52-6F-62 9y ago
          I think open works. Keybase at least promotes consistency between accounts. It can always change, yeah?
          • program247365 9y ago
            Yup. Opened now.
    • program247365 9y ago
      https://github.com/spacehackersclub https://github.com/spacehackersclub
      • program247365 9y ago
        Site is up, hosted by github pages: http://spacehackers.club/ http://spacehackers.club/ Would love feedback on how to organize https://github.com/spacehackersclub/awesome-spacehackers https://github.com/spacehackersclub/awesome-spacehackers Things I'd like to add * jobs section like the ones mentioned in this post? * open source projects involved in aerospace that are looking for contributors? Would love to hear other ideas, join the keybase chat for spacehackers.
        • program247365 9y ago
          Also on Twitter if anyone wants to follow there: https://twitter.com/spacehckrsclub https://twitter.com/spacehckrsclub
• tylerlh 9y ago
  Spacecraft generate tons of telemetry that needs to be ingested, normalized, and visualized -- there's room for web dev in this space (no pun intended). I spent some time working for a company that builds imaging satellites. My role was working on the UI team, building real-time telemetry monitoring and alerting software using web technologies for ground control. It was definitely one of the more interesting places I've worked at.
  • djellybeans 9y ago
    That's one of the areas that I've considered or entertained about, interpreting telemetry data, visualizing it, or even delivering it in real time. I am not as familiar with satellite companies as I am with companies that create launch systems. Do you know of any that would be good to look for? As an aside, I would probably need relocation assistance, and that would be a desirable point to have for a company.
    • tylerlh 9y ago
      You could check out DigitalGlobe, Planet Labs, etc. You can also look at companies that take data from the satellite mfgs/operators and repackage it for customers such as Orbital Insight.
  • vogt 9y ago
    I've been an interface designer for web and mobile apps for about 6-7 years now. I really want to design interfaces in this sort of context (flight, space flight, ground control, etc). Any advice?
    • tylerlh 9y ago
      Just apply. Most of the designers I worked with didn't come in with prior experience in space tech, nor did I as an engineer.
• thematt 9y ago
  You can come work for us at Blue Origin! My team members do a lot of web development and we're recruiting heavily right now. We hire everyone as Software Engineers, but there are a variety of specializations people come in with and focus on -- web development included. https://www.blueorigin.com/careers https://www.blueorigin.com/careers
  • program247365 9y ago
    Nice!
  • djellybeans 9y ago
    That's pretty great to hear. I'd like to know what your web development team is doing for the purposes of your company. Incidentally I have been been through the hiring process with Bezos' more familiar company before. What is the hiring process like on the technical level at your company?
    • thematt 9y ago
      The web development that happens is typically for: * Systems that analyze flight or test data * Systems that enable manufacturing, supply chain, or other supporting business activities * Systems that are considered to be "customer experience" related * Infrastructure systems that support the other software engineering teams Our hiring process is straightforward. The dev teams review resumes for a fit based on experience and skillset. Next comes a phone screen where we'll ask a series of basic programming questions. If you're in the Seattle area we skip the phone screen and invite you in for a tour and ask you the same questions in-person. Next we do a full interview, which occurs on-site at our headquarters and typically lasts most of the day. You'll interview with multiple software engineers from different teams. The questions you get asked will be deeply technical and are usually real world problems we have had to solve.
      • djellybeans 9y ago
        Most of my more recent experience has been in web agencies, and SaaS. For SaaS in particular CPQ software to help business clients quote product prices for many arbitrary configurations. I don't have as much experience with infrastructure in the large scale, however. I also had a short contract job as a game developer so maybe that can be useful for applications that require real-time performance. I live in the Midwest. I know that with Amazon they had offered me a paid round-trip flight from my city to go to their final round interview. I declined only for personal things to handle at the time. If I ever get to that point with Blue Origin, would that company be able to do the same?
• program247365 9y ago
  Had a phone interview with SpaceX recently, they do have some web dev positions: http://www.spacex.com/careers/list http://www.spacex.com/careers/list
  • djellybeans 9y ago
    I remember applying to SpaceX in February, for a Full Stack Enterprise Software Engineer position, and got a rejection letter. I'm not sure what the reason for rejection could be, but it may be that I don't have enough experience with large scale systems.
• megaman22 9y ago
  I wonder, in ten or twenty years, how many rocket scientists will have been inspired to that calling by spending way too much time fooling around constructing rockets to try to escape Kerbin's atmosphere?
  • modzu 9y ago
    at least 1 i hope
• jvanderbot 9y ago
  All NASA centers have a need for web front-end designers and data visualization interfaces. [source: I work at JPL]. Feel free to apply, we could use you. To "build chops" I'd suggest doing some side projects in displaying data, especially using data sources like http://stuffin.space/ http://stuffin.space/
  • toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Any advice on finding an ops gig working on the Deep Space Network?
  • djellybeans 9y ago
    Would I need experience working with large scale systems to have a chance? My web experience is mostly in small startups for SaaS, and web agencies that build e-commerce sites and blogs for small-medium businesses. I have not worked on anything that gets used by the millions, or requires fine calculations. Will I be at a disadvantage?
• eduren 9y ago
  I'm in basically a similar situation right now and I'm honestly wondering if going back to school for a more engineering focused degree would be the best move. Does anybody know how a Software+Aerospace engineer would be valued at an aerospace company? Most job listings I find are basically one or the other.
  • mirashii 9y ago
    There's a few areas that these would overlap in, like ADCS and AOCS. That said, I wouldnt call both necessarily mandatory to work in that space, more often you find people who have gone deep in one and picked up enough of the other to contribute. Software engineers (in my personal experience hiring), especially senior ones, are harder to find and hire than aerospace engineers today. Depending on an area of focus, you can be just as involved with key decisions in the spacecraft design as a software person. Feel free to drop me a line, I'd be happy to talk for a few minutes about your experience and what you want to do and give you what insight I have into the industry.
    • eduren 9y ago
      >Depending on an area of focus, you can be just as involved with key decisions in the spacecraft design as a software person. This is really interesting to me and I'd love to hear more. While it seems obvious that spacecraft rely heavily on software I've been under the impression that much of that work is done by aerospace/avionics engineers and is more driven by the hardware teams and hardware requirements (which is all fascinating to me but I am stumped on how I would transition into a career focusing on that). What sort of areas of focus are you thinking of? I think I'll drop you a line to chat, thank you for offering!
  • sigstoat 9y ago
    > Does anybody know how a Software+Aerospace engineer would be valued at an aerospace company? like an aerospace engineer who wasted a bunch of time; they generally consider the introductory programming classes aerospace folks take to be more than sufficient. (they're wrong, but good luck convincing them of that.)
• mirashii 9y ago
  My company (spire.com) often has a variety of software positions open depending on your level of experience. You can drop me an email (in my profile) if you're curious.
• elkos 9y ago
  Feel free to check the SatNOGS (https://satnogs.org https://satnogs.org) project. It is a satellite open ground station network coordinated via the web. Especially as a web developer you might be interested in the SatNOGS Network https://network.satnogs.org https://network.satnogs.org and the SatNOGS Database https://db.satnogs.org https://db.satnogs.org sub projects Lots of documentation of the project can be found at https://wiki.satnogs.org https://wiki.satnogs.org and an active community forum at https://community.libre.space/c/satnogs https://community.libre.space/c/satnogs
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• typpo 9y ago
  I built http://www.asterank.com/ http://www.asterank.com/ and still maintain it after its acquisition by Planetary Resources. It is open source and its code has been used in a surprising number of space-related projects. If you're interested in getting involved, you might help modify the Asterank engine to be a better general-purpose framework for 3D space visualizations. This would benefit the space community as a whole by making the project a lot easier to adapt for commercial and educational purposes. Code: https://github.com/typpo/asterank https://github.com/typpo/asterank I'm also on an open-source NASA grant where we're implementing web-based asteroid data analysis tools. It's a bit earlier stage but still room to get involved. Code: https://github.com/typpo/astrokit https://github.com/typpo/astrokit Email me (hn@ianww.com) if you want to talk about either of these!
  • djellybeans 9y ago
    Hey typpo, data visualization and space exploration sounds like a great combo for me! I will email you shortly. Your website is pretty great I think has lots of potential. I have experience programming in 3D graphics too, and have tried to find another project for use in the web.
• pdfernhout 9y ago
  Below is an excerpt from something I posted in 2003 to an Slashdot article on "Jeff Bezos' Shot At Space": https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62113&cid=5821178 https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62113&cid=58211... While it is excellent to see multiple billionaires pursuing cheap access to space (CATS), this seems like a problem that will be much easier to solve as new materials and processes come along (diamondoid jet nozzles, fusion, etc.) in the near future. Several of these entrepreneurs are of course already using newer materials and processes (composites, active dynamics, small ground crews augmented by fancy computers and software) relative to what NASA is stuck with in maintaining an aging Shuttle. While I would never say such innovative effort is wasted, it would seem that launch technologies, while sexy, might really deserve somewhat lower priorities than the issue of what to do when we are in space. The fact is, we can launch people now, and relatively off-the-shelf technology (e.g. Ariane or Saturn V equivalent rockets) if manufactured in large quantities are probably Cheap-enough Access To Space for the next ten to twenty years (until nano-tech makes far better launch systems possible) especially if we are willing to accept 5% human casualties for launch (which is probably a far lower casualty rate than most human settlement travel activities historically). There is also an issue of focus -- people focus on reusable vehicles, but the reality is that it is so costly to get things into space that there is not much point in returning either people or equipment after they have been launched. At best, Apollo era reentry capsules for people who want to come back to earth are good enough. For example, the space shuttle costs so much to launch relative to its production cost it should really be left in orbit as usable equipment (since anything in orbit is worth its weight in gold), and people returned in a small capsule if at all. Even if launch costs are greatly reduced, I think that a general outward trend of humanity will still reflect some of this economics (short of a space elevator). For example, in the USA, most people who went "West" during the 1800s probably never came back East. So where is a key area of research that should be a priority among NASA and Billionaires, but is not heavily pursued? The issue is what to do in space once you have gotten there. Because if there is a reason to be in space, then people and collectives will work to get there. And the reality is, that right now, if we could get there, there is nothing to do there short of look around and come back. And if that were the case, Space would not deserve much more investment than say tourism to Mt. Everest. The reality is that we don't know how to support human life in space -- in large part because we have only spent a pittance on thinking about that issue systematically compared to the issues of CATS and Planetary Exploration. Frankly, while we support human life on earth, we have very little meta-knowledge formally about how to do even that. And, most of figuring out how to support human life in space at a nuts and bolts level requires non-sexy activities like sitting around and staring out the window, talking, sending emails, building databases, building software tools, building some small physical prototypes on tabletops and outdoors, and just plain thinking (the hard stuff). This is all the preparation needed for the spiritual voyage into the (physical) heavens. Biosphere II was an excellent start in some ways, although the science mission was a bit dodgy at first and it seems Columbia (the recipient) seems about to abandon that effort for cost reasons --- and in any case, Biosphere II focuses on the wrong question -- we know biospheres can work and replicate (although scale is an issue) -- what we don't know is how to replicate the mechanical infrastructure (e.g. glass pane making machinery) behind them. A lot more money has gone into studying ecosystem food webs than industrial ecologies of pipe webs and assembly line webs (and frankly, a lot of people don't want their "proprietary" manufacturing processes studied or gossiped about by academics.) Almost everything proposed as a reason to launch into space doesn't make sense, as much as people have touted various suggestions. The closest might be He3 mining for aneutronic fusion if we otherwise had that technology, but even that issues (energy) is probably more easily solved through conservation, energy efficiency (e.g. R60+ home insulation), and photovoltaic and wind etc. alternate energy modes (which are rapidly proving cost effective for many applications, and will be only more so with new processes and materials over the next twenty years). Asteroid mining turns out to not be that useful, since recycling is a much better idea. Zero gravity turns out to not be so valuable after all for manufacturing, since most of the processes can be done on earth, or alternative materials used. And so on for various other issues. Exploration is noble and important as a long-term spiritual quest, but it is a dubious priority in the short term considering how much ground based telescopes can do quickly on earth, how valuable cheap robot probes are, and how we are already slaughtering the other terrestrial intelligences (Muslims, Aborigines, elephants) and extraterrestrial intelligences (whales, octopods, etc.) we know of without much concern or attempt to communicate and pursue any sort of cosmic brotherhood. The only really sensible thing to do in space is to live there under various social and technical systems. People like Freeman Dyson, Gerard K. O'Neill, and Marshall T. Savage and many others have discussed these issues. We aren't able to pursue this because we don't know much about how to support human life on earth. We have little understanding of the Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science Buckminster Fuller proposed back in the 1930s or so. Economics is a multi-trillion dollar joke, with economists having about zero knowledge on how technical economies really work or develop (otherwise, why have no developing nations left that category in one hundred years?) We need to better understand how life is supported on earth both biologically and technically so that we can replicate it out there, and so we can then use asteroid resources, sunlight, and empty space to support quadrillions of conscious souls pursuing diverse ends in some sorts of diverse collaborations (such as J.D. Bernal proposed in the 1920s). [See also NASA dreams under Carter: http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/ http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/ ] As a bonus, once some people live in space, mine asteroids for their own purposes, capture solar energy for their own purposes, use self-replicating manufacturing systems for their own purposes, then CATS really becomes CATE (Cheap Access To Earth) and for spacers who might be 1000X more wealthy than groundhogs in terms of materials and energy and innovation and cooperation, CATE would be easy, and CATS then piggybacks as a slight imbalance in CATE tourism (although why most spacers would want to go anywhere near a gravity well would probably be a deep psychological question with profound moral overtones like "spacer's burden" and all that rot). So, while it is great to see all these billionaires pursuing CATS, it would be great to see more people pursuing DOGS (Design Of Great Settlements). Since NASA is stuck running an obsolete space ferry it has little attention left over for DOGS. Since Billionaries are doing the sexy CATS stuff, that leaves the rest of us to go to the DOGS. And disclaimer: DOGS is essentially what I am working on with the Pointrel Foundation and related activities, but unlike Jeff Bezos (a sort-of classmate from Princeton -- Hi Jeff!) what I am working on with just my own spare time (not being a billionaire, and frankly, realizing even a billion bucks is not even a bone to throw to the DOGS) is how that issue of what to do if we got into space could be pursued the same way Debian GNU/Linux is pursued. And, I find, when you pursue such a space settlement design science in the right spirit, the work is also immediately applicable on Earth as sustainable technology (such as our garden simulator -- intended to help people grow food wherever in the cosmos they live). My wife and I published a paper on how an open source / free software collaboration style approaches could be used to make DOGS happen in the 2001 Space Studies Institute symposium on Space Manufacturing and Space Settlement. ... The OSCOMAK site http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/ http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/ is a much earlier vision along these lines [and includes a link to that 2001 paper]...