Education

What next after the Space Shuttle?

9 July 2011 By Avinash Meetoo 11 Comments

Now that the Space Shuttle has officially reached its end of life, I woke up this morning with two very profound questions: (1) how will the International Space Station be resupplied? (2) how will the USA conquer Mars? Let’s try to find answers for both of them.

How will the International Space Station be resupplied?

For many years, the International Space Station was serviced by the Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecrafts (both launched by a Soyuz rocket), the European Automated Transfer Vehicle, the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle and the American Space Shuttle only.

In 2008, in anticipation of the Space Shuttle retirement, NASA awarded a contract to a company called SpaceX to resupply ISS from 2010 onwards. The founder of SpaceX is Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal a few years ago. The company will use their Falcon 9 launcher and Dragon spacecraft.

One interesting aspect of this arrangement is that, for a few years at least, the USA will depend on a commercial company for their access to low-level orbits. I’m not too sure the NSA or Pentagon likes this very much… but, oh well, life is never perfect.

How will the USA conquer Mars?

Mars is far and the Falcon 9 is not powerful enough to send a spacecraft there.

Barack Obama wants Americans on Mars by 2030… without investing a lot of money as the US economy is not in a very good shape. He has cancelled the costly Constellation program and, instead, wants NASA to reuse technologies which already exist to build a powerful heavy launch rocket and a spacecraft.

NASA has responded by announcing that, by 2016, it will build a Space Launch System (SLS), which reuses the engines of the Space Shuttle as well as its rocket boosters. The SLS will be able to carry a spacecraft very far in space…

… and the spacecraft will be the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), derived from designs and tests made during the Constellation program. The MPCV does not ressemble the Space Shuttle at all but looks more like the old Apollo spacecrafts. But, as you can easily guess, it’s a state-of-the-art technology beast and I’m sure the four lucky astronauts to Mars will enjoy their trip very much. (Let’s hope they don’t meet Alien.)

Thank you for making OSS2011 a success

24 June 2011 By Avinash Meetoo Leave a Comment

OSS2011: Le Logiciel Libre, 2011 et aprÃ¨s

Thank you to all participants for making this seminar on Open Source Software in Mauritius such a success.

All the members of the organising team (from left to right: Vara Appavoo / UoM, Ajay Ramjatan / LUGM, Begum Durgahee / UoM, Anwar Chutoo / UoM, Jayantee Gukhool / AUF, Anuja Appavoo / UoM and Avinash Meetoo / LUGM) worked really hard to get everything right. Of course, we were far from being perfect but, still, we were happy as all of us, organisers as well as the numerous participants, learned a lot during the day and met interesting people.

Special thanks to LUGM members who were present on that day especially Logan Velvindron who talked about how he has managed to mitigate the effects of denial of service attacks in OpenBSD. Special thanks also to Ajay Ramjatan who brought his own computers to demonstrate a variety of Open Source Software to the participants. His focus on multimedia software was a refreshing change from what we generally are shown during such an event.

The presentations from institutions like the MIE and UoM were very interesting as well as those from the other students (I was very impressed!) and private companies.

Of course, I loved the interactive session from 13:30 to 15:00. I had the pleasure of being the chairperson for that session and I found the discussion very lively and enriching. I loved how young people and older ones (like me…) could share the same kind of vision for our beloved country.

In three weeks, Anwar Chutoo and his team will finalise a report on the conclusions reached during the event which will then be circulated to all participants.

Once again, thanks to all who helped: organisers, presenters as well as participants.

See you all for OSS2012.

(Thanks to Irfaan Lamarque for the nice picture)

OSS2011: Seminar on Linux and OSS on 22 June 2011

20 June 2011 By Avinash Meetoo Leave a Comment

As the founder of the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM), I am delighted to, once again, tell you that there will be a Seminar on Open Source Software on 22 June 2011 at the University of Mauritius.

The seminar is organised by LUGM in collaboration with the University of Mauritius and the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie and will be held at the Burrunchobay Lecture Theatre at the University of Mauritius (Google Map)

The programme for the day is as follows:

09:00 – Official opening
09:15 – First presentation session: Policy on OSS in Mauritius
10:30 – Second presentation session: Students contributing to OSS
11:15 – Third presentation session: Real world use of OSS
12:00 – Lunch break
13:15 – Three working sessions in parallel: (1) OSS in industry (to be chaired by myself), (2) OSS in education and (3) OSS at the level of the Government.
14:30 – Synthesis of discussions held

I would be more that happy if you could participate in the seminar and contribute to the discussions based on your extensive experience on using open source software at work. More information about the event can be found on http://cse.uom.ac.mu/oss/fr

Please note that the seminar is open to everyone but, because of logistical constraints, it is important to confirm your presence by IMMEDIATELY registering at http://cse.uom.ac.mu/oss/fr/inscription_invite

I would like to thank Ajay Ramjatan of LUGM as well as Jayantee Gukhool, Director of AUF, and Anwar Chutoo, Lecturer at UoM, and his colleagues for making this seminar a reality.

Please feel free to disseminate to friends, colleagues and relatives :-)