Addition of Chapter Website Links

I have added some of the Chapter websites to the side of this site.  This allows chapters that utilize their chapter websites prior and outside of the main blog to continue to use their sites without having to post everything to the main SAWE blog.

Please still post to the main blog!  We want to link the Chapter sites so they do not become obsolete and can still be used as means of communication among chapter members.

I only added the Texas, LA, and Hampton Roads sites currently, as they appear to be the most utilized sites.  If you wish for your chapter site to be added as a link to the SAWE blog please let me know and I will add it.

Thank you for all those that have subscribed thus far, posted, and have reached out to be involved in the blog.  This is what we hoped for and envisioned when we first talked about a blog. Please continue to reach out to your chapter and make sure people are subscribing! That is the easiest way to be involved and be kept up to date on posts.

Melissa Rapier

Los Angeles Chapter Meeting – Speaker: Dr. Jeffry Padin

The Los Angeles chapter held its first meeting of 2017-2018 on Tuesday, September 12, 2017 at the S Building on Northrop Grumman’s Space Park campus, Redondo Beach CA.  Dr Jeffry Padin of the Aerospace Corporation was the evening’s featured speaker.  After a delicious meal of Chinese food, Dr. Padin gave an impassioned presentation about the unique corporate culture at SpaceX (Dr. Padin is a manufacturing and design liaison between the Aerospace Corporation and SpaceX).  Many companies try to understand and improve employee engagement – SpaceX seems to have found the magic ingredient !
Dr. Padin’s presentation was enthusiastically received by an audience of 18 members and guests.  Honored guests included new members Maben Jimenez (the Aerospace Corporation), Kushal Patel (also the Aerospace Corpoartion) and Randy Quon (Northrop Grumman).  Also in attendance were Ron Fox (SAWE Executive Director and Honorary Fellow), John Hargrave (Honorary Fellow), John Nakai (Honorary Fellow), and Mike Notarangelo (Fellow).
John Nakai and Yi-Ling Tam (both from the Aerospace Corporation) led a brief discussion of Tailoring Instructions for ANSI/AIAA S-120A-2016 Documents Status.  This impacts both Launch Vehicles (TOR-2017-02292) and Space Vehicles (TOR-2017-02395).
All in all, a very successful start to 2017-2018 for the Los Angeles chapter.  Kudos and Thanks to Yi-Ling Tam (Los Angeles chapter President) for arranging the speaker, and also the food and to Oliver Philippi for arranging the facility.
Respectfully,
 Dan Rowley
Los Angeles chapter Vice President

In the news, Space related, Cassini

Cassini Spacecraft Makes Its Final Approach to Saturn

From Wikipedia :

With the launch vehicle adapter and 3,132 kg (6,905 lb) of propellants at launch, the spacecraft had a mass of 5,600 kg (12,300 lb). Only the two Phobos 1 and 2 spacecraft sent to Mars by the Soviet Union were larger. The Cassini spacecraft was 6.8 meters (22 ft) high and 4 meters (13 ft) wide.

How to interact on the blog

I will do my best to hit all the points on how you can interact on the blog.  As I stated from the beginning this will be a bit of a learning curve to start, but I hope that you stick with us and utilize the blog as much as you can!  As I am finishing writing up this blog post, I realize it may be long, but I believe it hits a lot of the questions on how to interact with the blog.  I have tried to test everything out myself so that I can speak to everything as best I can, hopefully I am not wrong on anything!

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU FIND SOMETHING DIDN’T WORK AS I STATED! I WILL UPDATE THE POST TO REFLECT ANY ISSUES AND HOW TO WORK AROUND THEM!

Subscribe to the Blog

On the right side of the blog, the last menu allows you to subscribe to the blog via email.  This will allow you to receive notifications of new posts!

Create an Account

You do NOT need a account to interact on the blog, you will have limitations but those will be addressed in each section.  I do highly recommend that you register an account, this will allow you to do more as well as subscribe to the blog to be notified when new posts occur

To create an account, on the right side of the site you will see “Recent Posts”, “Recent Comments”, “Archives”, “Categories”, “Meta”

Under the Meta section you can register an account, this will also automatically make you a “Subscriber” to the blog.

After you register an account, you click the username and password to login, this is not necessarily a WordPress account, I believe this just registers you to the SAWE blog.

When you login, it should take you to your profile, please make sure you have your name filled out, and chose your full name to be displayed. This way we aren’t trying to guess on who a user is that comments!

Commenting on Posts:

The easiest way for members to interact with the blog is comment on posts.  This provides us feedback on our articles, and we believe the discussions that can come from the blog will provide us something that sending out email blasts and newsletters couldn’t.

  • You do not need a login to comment on posts
  • At the bottom of a post you can “Leave a Reply”
  • Provide your comment, name, and email address
  • You may also check to be notified when follow up comments occur, so if you forget about a post, you will see when you have responses to your comments! You can also check to be notified of new posts by emails
  • Admin has to approve the comment, this helps us weed out spam bots from posting on all our posts.
    • If you have an account, once you are approved for a comment once, you do NOT need approval on future comments
    • If you choose to not have an account and provide your name and email for comments, you will still need to be approved for all comments
  • As we start posting regularly, I will check the site daily to approve comments.  I am also notified of comments via email so I will see when things are happening and will approve them as soon as I can.
Posting to the Blog

If you wish to post an article, update, etc. to the blog — first off, thank you!  This is exactly what we want.

  • You DO need an account to be able to post to the blog.
  • Once you have Registered an account as discussed above, you will be a “Subscriber” to the SAWE blog.
  • Once you are a “Subscriber” to the blog, I can change it so that your role is not a subscriber, but a contributor or author.  This will allow you to be able to post to the blog
  • You will need to contact me and let me know that you wish to be able to create blog posts, otherwise you will be a subscriber
  • If you do end up being a contributor or author, I will send a separate email to you on how exactly to post and things you can add (i.e. categories, tags, etc.) if you are having trouble figuring anything out!
  • Another option is to post through me, if you have a write up or an article that you want posted you are more than welcome to contact me (Melissa.rapier@sawe.org) and I will post for you.  I have no problem doing this!
Other comments
  • Remember that this is a public blog.
  • If you are a blog poster, keep this in mind if there are things you do not want on the public blog, we can and will link stuff back to the SAWE website where users will need to log in to view

Thank you if you made it this far and read everything, I hope that I hit on all the main points and cleared up any confusion.  Please do not hesitate to ask questions if you continue to have any, I will do my best to answer them.  Looking forward to the future of this blog.

Melissa Rapier

(Melissa.rapier@sawe.org)