Session 1 Notes

Introduction

• Participants: 4x6-inch card with name (printed from roster in small letters, as to be called in class in large) and "Words or graphics du jour" box.
• DD, JAL, JPL, SCI, NASA, ESA
• Design: DD as bungling uneducated designer (products, websites, ads; to wit the Cassini free scale model). So I will convey info about space & space travel, and it is, for the most part, the participants' job to interpret in terms of design influences; we'll touch upon how s/c design, mission design, works. Participants and I will bring up design-related impacts and ideas as we proceed, but it's going to be participants more than I.
• In a nutshell: I'm here to serve as a resource for your finding out anything and everything about real-world space and space travel. And to serve as a guide for your progress in designing a creative project for showing on the last session. What I can't answer I will try to research.

  Whatever avenues of design you might pursue, you will have a rich base of knowledge to reach back to and draw upon regarding our situation in space and the basics of interplanetary flight.

  Examples: Go to a "space movie" and critique the ways in which the spacecraft move, or their appearance. Is their "artificial gravity" made purely by suspension of disbelief, or is it generated in real ways? Would real habitats be possible on Venus, Moon, Mars, Europa, Titan? What would they be like (if not 100% impossible) and why?

• Course content. Where we are, what's the environment and scale, how we travel among the planets, where else we might travel, and where we cannot, science instruments as senses, various spacecraft designs, communications, trajectories, gravity assist, orbit designs, navigation.

  No math. But we'll talk a little basic geometry.

  Physics? Light!

  Topics, speakers. Tonight's speaker. Rooftop. Projects. Maybe take one of my demos and set up, possibly refine, as your project. Or join other project. Will ask for project selections in session 3.

• Reading, quizzes, feedback. Hand out syllabus, objectives-feedback sheets. Hand out glossaries.
• Use of studio room: will largely be discussions, demonstrations. Some hands-on tasks. Ok to work on projects in studio room during sessions.
• Have camera running on sink drain; will make sense later tonight.

Projects

From Syllabus: Each participant is encouraged to design one original project to be completed by the end of the course, to discuss it during conception and development with the instructor (and perhaps other faculty) as advisor(s), to research it and complete it, and to exhibit it at the final session to a general audience including faculty, friends, family, students, and the general public. Alternatively, a participant might choose to collaborate with another participant or two on one such project. Participants may do some work, as appropriate, on their projects during studio-room sessions during the course.

Disposition of the project materials after the show will conform to Art Center's policy and stipulations.

Projects to be envisioned and specified by participants. While a participant will most likely invent a unique expression of some concept or experience or impression, etc. related to interplanetary flight, some possible themes for projects might include something like one or more of the following:

• A set of posters and/or other media and/or campaign inviting the audience to the 7th-week show of participants' projects.
• A presentation in some media, effectively "Connecting the Public to Space Exploration." Media could be a website, a poster set, a booklet, a demonstration, etc.
• A functioning Gravity Assist Mechanical Simulator.
• A poster debunking some movie's artificial gravity or the motion of its spacecraft.
• An assembled spacecraft scale model with illustrative media.
• Simulation of atmospheric or ring occultation experiments using lasers as an analogy to radio waves.
• Demonstration of the Doppler effect.
• Demonstration of the effect of focusing sound waves as an analogy for focusing radio waves.
• A display of the difference between backscatter and forward scatter illustrating its relevance to space exploration.
• Scale model of the solar system, or of the heliosphere, including an automated "crawler" which moves at a rate illustrating the speed of light to scale.
• Display of existing websites related to interplanetary flight, with quick summaries and/or icons of each site.
• Imprinted t-shirts.
• Speculative view into other-worldly lifeforms and habitats.
• A realistic (or a speculative) view of a real (or a contrived) interplanetary operation in progress.
• Political expressions relating to interplanetary exploration.
• Realtime display of live data as it is coming in from Mars or Saturn, etc.

Tonight's main topic: Location

• Terrestrial planet (rare, fragile) in solar system
• Other stuff in solar system: asteroids, comets, meteoroids, dark stuff.
• Solar nebula
• Star, stars
• Galaxy, black hole
• Galaxy cluster(s)
• Galaxies generally receding

Guest Speaker

• Dan Goods, the Artist in Residence at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Art Center grad (yyyy)

  Graduated with honors from The Art Institute of Seattle 1995; Summer Research Fellowship Caltech 2001; BFA in Graphic Design, Valedictorian and graduation speaker Art Center College of Design 2003, and was hired that year as the first Artist in Residence at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Design and build scale models, set up in the Wind Tunnel room:

• Our solar system, from Sun out to Saturn
• Black pedestals. Talc.
• Speed-of-light crawler
• Take down model and replace with model of heliosphere, from Sun/planets out to the heliopause.
• Speed-of-light crawler