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Check out the book here https://amzn.to/2Z5utRP
James Miller has decades of experience working on spacecraft navigation. He has also worked extensively in programming computer systems to conduct navigation operations. We spoke about his experiences at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other firms as well as the recent book he published on Planetary Spacecraft Navigation.
(THE AUDIO PLAYER IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST.)
0:40 – Jim talks about his space career and how he got hired by Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
7:04 – Jim talks about a Voyager project he worked on with Lockheed that was never completed.
9:43 – Jim talks about the shortage of engineers in the early days of the space program.
12:08 – Jim talks about doing the wiring diagrams for a nuclear power plant. {NOTE: Mr. Miller explained by email that he meant he knew more than the Navy about the particular power plant he worked on, not on all nuclear power plants in operation.)
13:25 – Jim explains what analysis of a spacecraft involves.
16:26 – Jim talks about spacecraft analysis then and now.
17:54 – Jim talks about programming spacecraft computers.
21:00 – Jim talks about working on Minuteman missiles.
23:16 – Jim talks about his spacecraft navigation analysis work.
27:22 – Jim talks about designing a trajectory that saved a Japanese spacecraft mission.
28:45 – Jim talks about the theory versus the practical application of his idea and how he got into a 25 year academic feud.
31:48 – Jim talks about working with the Mathematics department at the University of Barcelona and ending his feud.
34:28 – Jim talking about being interviewed for a documentary and meeting Neil Degrasse Tyson.
38:22 – Jim talks about computer coding for spacecraft then and now. He talks about learning to code an analog computer.
45:02 – Jim talks about his approach to writing navigation software.
46:43 – Jim talks about how he got into writing papers.
51:04 – Jim talks about the two first stage rocket dual landing. He says that SpaceX is doing things that have already been studied before.
56:35 – Jim talks about current education for people who want to do spacecraft navigation.
58:27 – Jim talks about the three body equation.
Links of interest
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319789156
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Guests: James Miller
Host: Cris Alvarez
Tags: space, exploration, commercialization, science, Westinghouse, nuclear subs, Carnegie-Mellon, Lockheed Martin, precision re-entry, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engineer, analog computers, Mariner 6, Mariner 7, telemetry, Deep Space Network, propulsion, comgen, JPL, spacecraft, wiring diagram, attitude control, Minuteman, Viking, Atlas Centaur, orbit insertion, Lagrange multipliers, constrained optimization, gradient projection, Galileo, trajectory, Japan, University of Barcelona, mathematician, Princeton, Neil Degrasse Tyson, analog computer, Viking, Mariner 6, SpaceX, Elon Musk
Check out the book here https://amzn.to/2Z5utRP
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