This is an Ignite talk. If you're not familiar with Ignite, the talks are all EXACTLY 5 mins. You get 20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds. It's a real challenge to not get behind on the slides.

Despite the challenge of giving a compelling talk in this format, I do really enjoy it.  It forces presenters to get the point in 5 minutes and you can get through quite a few really great ideas in a 90 minute session.

Is it just me or were several of those slides way shorter than 15 seconds? Hmm...

I've been working on some Android apps for a while and as of today, there are few Space related apps in the Android ethos.  I've been following the excellent work of people like Rob Schingler at NASA, and been reading the Oreilly book "Open Government".  It seems like a good fit to launch an Open Source Android project around the "new" NASA.

Ideally, we, the Android user and developer community should be able to contribute a little each to a project like this.

If you had a clean slate for an Android app with a NASA theme, what would you want on it?  What parts of NASA would you want in your pocket or purse, and always at your fingertips?

A few things I'd like to have with me are:

• a few excellent news feeds
• video from places like SpaceVidcast and This Week in Space
• Launch tracker and countdown
• OpenGov/OpenNASA tracking and a way to submit feedback

But that's just me.  Tell me what you want to see!

If you're interested in helping, the project page has just been put on Github.  It's just a skeleton project at this point, so let's light this candle and get to work!

The modern solution is to slam a RedBull and push through it.

This temporary and probably very unhealthy solution pales in comparison to something I've been trying to master over the last few weeks: the power nap.

I'm talking about a 20 minute sleep in the middle of the day.  There are many studies that show that sleep is essential to brain function in mammals and an improvement in reaction time after even a 5 minute nap is significant.  It's rumored that Albert Einstein was a frequent napper.

Our modern RedBull society views sleep as a weakness, but I say nay nay.  When done right, a 20 minute downtime is not only 3 bucks cheaper than a RedBull, but actually works better.  I find that I can work with that same clarity of mind for another 5-6 hours afterward that I enjoy in the morning.

The trick is to do it right.  20 mins, no longer.  Longer naps put you in a deep sleep cycle that can be hard to get out of.  You want to be restored, not groggy.

Using it as a substitute for staying up late every night playing World of Warcraft isn't right either.

It's not lazy, it's smart.  I'll bet you a case of RedBull that your doctor would tell you it's the right thing to do.

If you're not a space geek, let me back up a second since NASA isn't even on most people's mind these days and fill you in on what's going on.

The short short version.

We've had this space shuttle since the 1980's.  Technologically amazing, but pretty boring from an exploration standpoint.  As a result, the fine folks at NASA have performed amazing feats of technological greatness and the public has met this with a collective "ho hum".

In 2004, President Bush announced a pretty bold plan to phase out the Shuttle and reach towards returning to the moon by 2020. Programs are established, committees ensue, congress under-funds the whole thing and  5 years later, they are pretty behind. And by pretty behind I mean there is no freaking way it's going to work.

President Obama commissions a committee headed by Norm Augustine, a longtime space industry player, to put together a group to evaluate the current state of the program.

To put it mildly, things don't appear to be going well.

As a member of the general public, one might have caught a few minutes of the Senate Hearings on the matter last week and thought "uh oh.  Oh.  Wow, did she just say that?".

As an advocate of space exploration, I was actually a little embarrassed by the whole thing.

So today, NASA would like 3 billion dollars a year MORE in funding to put their goal back on track.

All week, I've been hearing rumors about the President making an upcoming John F. Kennedy style epic call to return to space exploration.

I really, really want for us to return exploring space.

Bad.

But if this whole thing was a movie, this would be the part when the scientists all throw popcorn at the screen and cry "Oh, come on." and "How convenient that they found water on the Moon right at that point."

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but my BS radar just went into high gear. For starters, what exactly does "significant" mean?

Here's to hoping I'm wrong.

This afternoon (June 24, 2009) at 2:30pm Eastern Time, the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the United States Senate's Appropriations Committee will be marking up the FY 2010 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill. For those of you feeling lost by that sentence, the plain English translation is: this afternoon, a group of Senators will be making edits to the proposal for the amount of money to provide to NASA and other federal agencies for fiscal year 2010.

If recent history and the Washington rumor mill are accurate predictors--and they almost certainly are--one of the first things that will happen tomorrow is that these Senators will slash the $20 million NASA requested for Centennial Challenges, the Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training (FAST) program, and the Partnership Seed Fund. With near certainty, the budget for these programs will be reduced to zero.

To reduce the budget for these programs to zero would be to allow a great opportunity to pass. Each of these three programs provides an incredibly amount of value to NASA, and helps stimulate the American economy by creating or retaining high tech employment opportunities. To cite one example among many, the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, one of seven incentive prizes offered by the Centennial Challenges programs, encourages innovative American teams to develop, build, and perfect vertical takeoff and landing rocket technology of the sort that will provide tangible benefits both to NASAs return to the Moon and to a variety of other civil, commercial, and military space applications. To date, NASA has paid out $350,000; and with the X PRIZE Foundation, the Northrop Grumman Corporation, and their partners supplying the operational funding, that $350,000 is a close representation of the total cost of the program to date. For that amount of money, NASA has incentivized approximately 75,000 person hours and the equivalent of about $12,000,000 in research and development--an astonishing 35-to-1 return on each taxpayer dollar invested to date. Along the way, teams have developed impressive subsystems, helped improved our nation's regulatory regime, and generated unique data for engineers.

One could easily list dozens of such examples for each of these programs: the SEED funds leverage taxpayer dollars by a factor of ~4 and help drive technological improvements that immediately and directly benefit each of NASA's Mission Directorates; the FAST program provides a unique and critical opportunity for new businesses to test out their hardware in a reduced gravity environment, shepherding the creation of new industries and new technologies that will likely generate tangible benefits well beyond the confines of NASA or even the aerospace industry.

The programs accomplish amazing things on extremely small budgets. The White House has recognized this, and a Statement of Administrative Policy (PDF version) released yesterday expresses concern that these programs, which use "public-private partnerships to advance important technologies and enable access to new sources of innovation through incentive prizes and partnerships" have already been identified for cuts by the US House of Representatives.

Concerned taxpayers can help breathe new life back into these programs. To show your support, please consider making a call to your Senator and Congressperson. Tell him or her that you support these prizes, even though you cannot know for sure if the eventual prize winners will live in your home state or district. Constituent calls to any member of congress are helpful, but calls to Senators Shelby (R-AL), Mikulski (D-MD), Hutchinson (R-TX), Feinstein (D-CA), and Voinovich (R-OH) may prove particularly useful. Calls to Senator Shelby are likely the most important.

Tough economic times call for financial discipline at NASA, just like in every other agency, company, or household across the United States. One of the best ways to do so is through programs like these: highly leveraged, innovative programs that appeal across party lines and that help strengthen the American aerospace industry.

via The Launch Pad: Successful NASA Program in Jeopardy!.