Great week with lectures on auditing and balance sheets, the launch services market and the popular space tourism industry. In the field of team project we continued with our literature review. Finally, we went to see Twilight on Friday. Although the movie was incredibly bad, I had a lot of fun; we kept trashing the movie until the very end. Quite hilarious.
Week 4 was quite varied. We visited Strasbourg’s Observatory, worked on Team Project Oceans, a lecture in Satellite Business consulting and a legal workshop I enjoyed a lot. I also met with Dr. Buckley to talk about my internship. Even though there are opportunities in several parts of the world, SES still is my number one choice. I hope this year they re-open their Associate Program. Looks like a very interesting position.
This is an excellent list of scholarships related to Space Studies:
http://www.outofthecradle.net/archives/2009/11/scholarships-for-space-studies/
Enjoy!
Although I had been researching for a week the impact of fisheries in the world’s oceans, I still had to spend most of my Sunday perfecting the two-page report we have to present tomorrow. Which is good since it helped me to shape the report and gave me time to hear interviews to specialists in the field. Some of the information I gathered:
– Small, family-owned fisheries account for 50+ % of the fishing of the world and employ 99% of the fishermen (Monterey Bay Aquarium report)
– Since the nice-looking fish are almost depleted, commercial fisheries are capturing uglier fish, selling them with a different name. E.g. The new Chilean sea bass was the Patagonian tooth fish , the new Anglerfish was the monkfish (interview to Professor Daniel Pauly).
– Fish consumption worldwide is growing year by year, and as the purchasing power of developing countries increases, they will want more fish:
World capture and aquaculture production. Source: FAO
As a consequence, the world is losing USD 50 billion per year because of overfishing, almost 30% of the fisheries have collapsed and, according to FAO, the next target of illegal fisheries is the Antarctic krill. Not a very wise move.
But not everything is gloomy in the horizon. There is still hope according to these scientists, thanks to responsible fisheries and decision-makers in governments (a clear example of this is the Peruvian fishing industry).
Now, the million dollar question is, how can Space Technologies help?
This is going to be a really interesting Team Project.
The third week has passed by and I still feel the effects of jet lag. Although my mind is more focused, my body craves for at least 10 hours of sleep per day. Kind of hard with the amount of work we are dealing with.
This week was business week: financial analysis, cash flows, RFP (Request for Proposal) principles and a workshop on how to write a Business Plan. The idea behind all this training was to prepare us for Assignment 2-2: how to write a proposal for a fictitious International Space Agency’s Call for Proposal.
Between Thursday and Friday we wrote a 15 page document for a lunar orbiter capable of firing a set of penetrators to the moon’s poles. I learned a lot during this assignment, specially on ESA’s approach to Risk Management.
We also managed (how I don’t know) to work on Team Project Oceans. I chose fisheries, so I spent the whole weekend doing research on this topic. The social highlight of the week? A beer@Dubliner’s….to discuss TP Oceans 😛
I never thought I would say this but jet lag is killing me. I’ve changed two major time zones (Peru – Korea – France) in 15 days and I can really feel how unfocused my mind is. I hope that next week I’ll be better.
Anyway, each day is a new experience for me since I’ve never lived alone before, so maintaining an apartment has become quite a challenge. I think I will buy a robot from iRobot to clean the house. I love cooking, I hate cleaning.
Last week we started working on Assignment 2-1: How to design a spacecraft that could go to the moon and deliver a set of penetrators. These penetrators would penetrate (sorry for the redundancy) the lunar soil in pre-chosen sites and gather data for scientific research.
After a week of very hard work (after all, we also had lectures and the Team Project) we made the presentations to the faculty. I think that our group did a very good job but other teams did better (for example, SLAM).
SLAM’s team presentation on Assignment 2-1. Source: Manuel Antonio Cuba.
Fortunately my thesis from my MSc. in Industrial Engineering is on the Space Launch Services industry; that helped me a lot to evaluate the rocket and upper stage required for the mission. Unfortunately I forgot to mention how we would deal with ITAR since our upper stage was manufactured by ATK and our fictitious company was not an American corporation. This issue was raised by Professor Tolyarenko during the Q&A.
Regarding the lectures some of them were repetitions from SSP09 so there wasn’t much of new stuff. However I really enjoyed the lecture on Risk Management. After the lecture we had an exercise that followed, in a very simple way, the different processes involved in Risk Management. This information would have been very handy when I was Account Delivery Manager/Project Manager at HP.
This week has been crazy. I arrived from Korea on Sunday, had dinner with a family friend of mine at Paris, took the TGV to Strasbourg on Monday morning , checked in at the hotel, took the tram to ISU and registered.
Although there were no classes on Tuesday, we had introductory sessions with the faculty & the administrative staff. After that I started to look for an apartment which was quite urgent since staying at a hotel was destroying my budget (I didn’t find a place at the local hostel). Alas, I arrived too late. Almost all apartments were taken. Lucky for me I had been in contact with a Teaching Associate who had left her place a couple of weeks before.
The impressive Strasbourg’s cathedral. Source: Manuel Antonio Cuba.
It is a nice place two blocks away from Krimmerie station, which is perfect since it only takes me 15 minutes to go to ISU station at Campus d’Illkirch.
My recommendation for future students that come from a SSP: start looking for a place through www.appartager.com. You may find a cheap place to stay for a month until you find a better option. Unfortunately hostels are always full and they won’t let you stay for a long period of time, so don’t count on them.
Regarding classes, I really enjoyed the lectures on International Liability Regime and Space Law Liability with Dr. Philippe Achilleas. At the end of the week we had a workshop on Liability Law that helped us understand how complex Space Law is (and it was a lot of fun, at least for me).
We also had to choose our Team Project. For me it was pretty clear that I would go for Team Project Oceans. Analogs was too technical for my liking while Oceans will let me explore the sustainability of the seas for industrial activities. I hope I will be able to work on fisheries, a topic I enjoy a lot since Peru is one of the main exporters of fish meal in the world.
During the First Plenary Event at IAC 2009, the heads of each one of the agencies made a brief presentation on their agencies goals and accomplishments.
One the most interesting presentations was made by Madhavan Nair, the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. Among other things he talked about the direct application of space technologies to make life easier to the Indian people.
One clear example is the Village Resource Center, where rural communities have access to a plethora of services like tele-medicine, tele-education, e-government, among others.
Tele-education in India. Source: ISRO
With a population of 1.1+ billion, a GDP per capita of 2 900 USD (in comparison, Peru’s GDP is 8 500 USD) and population growth of, approximately, 1.55 % per year, it is quite obvious that the Indian government needs all the tools at hand to improve the quality of life of Indians. *
* All figures were obtained from the CIA World Fact Book.
During the First Plenary Event at IAC 2009, the heads of each one of the agencies made a brief presentation on their agencies goals and accomplishments. One the most interesting presentations was made by Madhavan Nair, the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. Among other things he talked about the direct application of space technologies to make life easier to the Indian people. One clear example is the Village Resource Center
http://www.sambhavindia.org/Pages/isro.html
where rural communities have access to a plethora of services like tele-medicine, tele-education, e-government, among others.
With a population of 1.1+ billion, a GDP per capita of 2,900 UDS (in comparison, Peru’s GDP is 8,500 USD) and population growth of, approximately, 1.55 % per year, it is quite obvious that the Indian government needs all the tools at hand to improve the quality of life of Indians. *
* All figures were obtained from the CIA World Fact Book.
Today I heard another great podcast from The Space Show. This time was an interview to Dr. Frans G. von der Dunk from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln LL.M Space and Telecommunication Law program, talks about the nascent space law, gives some examples of liability in the space arena and talks about space property.
First and only Space and Telecom LL.M. Degree in English in the World. Source: University of Nebraska – Lincoln.
So, if you are interested in becoming a space lawyer, then go to their site. You may find what you are looking for.