{"id":496,"date":"2006-06-02T12:18:31","date_gmt":"2006-06-02T19:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/?p=496"},"modified":"2006-06-02T12:27:32","modified_gmt":"2006-06-02T19:27:32","slug":"droids-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/2006\/06\/02\/droids-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Droids in Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure there is a purpose in all this besides a science project . . .<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2006\/01jun_spheres.htm\">NASA &#8211; Droids on the ISS<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-images\/0606\/droid.jpg\" class=\"right\" \/>Six years ago, MIT engineering Professor David Miller showed the movie Star Wars to his students on their first day of class. There&#8217;s a scene Miller is particularly fond of, the one where Luke Skywalker spars with a floating battle droid. Miller stood up and pointed: &#8220;I want you to build me some of those.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So they did. With support from the Department of Defense and NASA, Miller&#8217;s undergraduates built five working droids. And now, one of them is onboard the International Space Station (ISS). <\/p>\n<p><em>Inset image: MIT undergrads flight-test a prototype droid onboard NASA&#8217;s KC-135 reduced gravity aircraft. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2006\/01jun_spheres.htm\">Read More<\/a>]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Didn&#8217;t NASA Astronauts refer to the reduced gravity aircraft as the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vomit_Comet\">vomit comet<\/a>?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure there is a purpose in all this besides a science project . . . NASA &#8211; Droids on the ISS Six years ago, MIT&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aerospace","category-rocket-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}