Research reports: The 1980 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program

The Summer Faculty Fellowship Research Program objectives are: to further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty members; to stimulate an exchange of ideas between participants and NASA; to enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of participants and institutions; and to contribute to the research objectives at the NASA centers. The Faculty Fellows engaged in research projects commensurate with their interests and background and worked in collaboration with a NASA/MSFC colleague

The 1982 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program

A NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Research Program was conducted to further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty members, to stimulate an exchange of ideas between participants and NASA, to enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of participants' institutions, and to contribute to the research objectives of the NASA Centers

The 1981 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program: Research reports

Research reports related to spacecraft industry technological advances, requirements, and applications were considered. Some of the topic areas addressed were: (1) Fabrication, evaluation, and use of high performance composites and ceramics, (2) antenna designs, (3) electronics and microcomputer applications and mathematical modeling and programming techniques, (4) design, fabrication, and failure detection methods for structural materials, components, and total systems, and (5) chemical studies of bindary organic mixtures and polymer synthesis. Space environment parameters were also discussed

Review of A Monument to the Memory of George Eliot. Edith J. Simcox\u27s Autobiography of a Shirtmaker

The intensity of Edith Jemima Simcox\u27s passion for George Eliot has been known to a twentieth- century reading public since the publication of K. A. McKenzie\u27s Edith Simcox and George Eliot in 1961. McKenzie\u27s book is a combination of summary and quotation of a manuscript acquired by the Bodleian Library in 1958, This manuscript, entitled The Autobiography of a Shirtmaker, is a journal kept by Simcox from 10 May 1876 until 29 January 1900. Gordon Haight wrote the introduction to McKenzie\u27s book, relied on the Simcox manuscript in his 1968 biography of Eliot, and printed lengthy passages from it in The George Eliot Letters, Vol. IX (1978). Yet, as Constance M. Fulmer notes, more than half of Simcox\u27s journal \u27has never been published in any form\u27 (ix). Fulmer and co-editor Margaret E. Barfield have produced a new annotated edition of this intriguing text which will be of interest to readers of George Eliot, scholars of late nineteenth-century culture, and to historians of women\u27s sexuality. Among the many advantages to the recovery of this unique work by two women scholars is its record of one nineteenth-century woman\u27s passion for another woman. While I wish that Fulmer and Barfield had done more in their introduction to suggest the implications of their own scholarship, the complete Autobiography is now available to be read through the lens of recent revelations about and interpretations of Victorian women\u27s sexuality as focused by historians like Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Lillian Faderman, Martha Vicinus, and Sheila Jeffreys among others. Writing before this important research, Haight cautioned readers against seeing the obvious: \u27The Victorians\u27 conception of love between those of the same sex cannot be fairly understood by an age steeped in Freud. Where they saw only beautiful friendship, the modern reader suspects perversion\u27 (McKenzie, xv). This defensive pronouncement is particularly curious when we consider that Simcox herself struggled with what she called her \u27unwholesome reveries\u27 (16) and \u27unhealthy dreams\u27 (45). Haight compares Simcox to fictional characters created by Henry James and George Meredith in The Bostonians and Diana of the Crossways. These male authors have dissected \u27the twisted psychological strands without apparent horror of what the schoolgirl today labels Lesbianism\u27 (xv). In fiction, as with Simcox, \u27we must avoid reading back interpretations that could never have been suspected when they were written\u27 (McKenzie, xvi)

Advances in Low-Cost Manufacturing and Folding of Solar Sail Membranes

Solar sail membranes must have a high area-to-mass ratio and high solid volume fraction when stowed. In order to meet mission requirements, current solar sail projects, such as NASAs Near Earth Asteroid Scout, require metallized sail membranes with thicknesses on the order of 2-3 m. These very thin membranes do not retain creases like thicker membranes, solar panels, or paper models. For Cubesat-class spacecraft, volume, rather than mass, is often the driving requirement for deployable structural elements. These two factors make it both difficult and highly desirable to characterize the practical differences between solar sail membrane packaging methods with laboratory demonstrations. This paper presents lessons gathered from lab work with solar sail membranes at a 10-meter scale

Simulating the Water Requirements and Economic Feasibility of Corn in the Midwest

An evaluation of the economics of supplemental irrigation when using a surface water supply must be site specific in order to account for variations in soil moisture holding capacity, watershed area supplying the runoff, climatic conditions, and proposed irrigation management procedures. With the use of farm specific simulation models to determine grain yields, availability of irrigation water, and economic expenditures involved in irrigation, an economic evaluation of supplemental irrigation can be performed, In the model presented in this report, the Duncan SIMAIZ model is used to predict grain yields using long-term daily weather information. SIMAIZ also determines irrigation water demand for the crop. The Haan Water Yield Model is used to predict flow into a reservoir using the same weather information. By knowing daily water flow into a reservoir and water demand for irrigation, a reservoir size is determined which will supply water at all times for the study period. Simulations are then run by incrementally reducing, by volume, the size of this reservoir, thus limiting the availability of irrigation water, and resulting in reduced irrigated yields. An economic evaluation is performed for each reservoir size. Costs and benefits included are: initial cost of constructing the reservoir, yearly reservoir maintenance cost, yearly irrigation costs of operation, and additional income resulting from the increase in grain yields. After the project life has been assumed, the model determines the capital available for investing in an irrigation system for a given year and reservoir size. By ranking these values, a probability distribution is obtained indicating the probability of making money in any given year. By using the Central Limit Theorem, these results are converted to the probability of making money over the life of the system. A sensitivity analysis examines the sensitivity of capital available for investment in an irrigation system to select input variation. The results indicate that great care should be exercised when assigning values to some inputs, while for others, a reasonable estimate is adequate. This model can be used as a tool for evaluating which irrigation practices, if any, are economically feasible. An example of its use is shown