The project has received international press attention with coverage from over 400 independent news sources:
Reuters Associated Press Wired FOX News

I was employed for a year at Space Exploration Technologies as an Avionics Systems Engineer.  SpaceX is an aerospace company charged with making space flight “inexpensive and reliable.”  Flight 004 of the Falcon 1 rocket– designed from the ground up by quite possibly the most talented group of engineers in the world, successfully made it to space. I was involved with several different aspects of this launch and other vehicles:

• +Second Stage Thrust Vector Control System
• +Lithium polymer battery development for all vehicles (F1, F9, Dragon)
• +GPS Systems using the Javad GPS Receiver
• +Recovery operations of the first stage including “TrackerNet”
• +Electromagnetic interference emissive and susceptibility testing
• +Payload Interfacing at a system wide level

My biggest contribution to the company was my work on over the horizon telemetry solutions. The project named KSAT was designed to utilize pre-existing satellite networks that were traditionally used for terrestrial phone and data services. My team was charged with turning those phone systems into something that could be used from space. In essence– using a cell phone in space.

The purpose of the project is to save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in communications costs and solve issues pertaining to over the horizon communication. Unfortunately I cannot go into more detail about the project and it’s adjunct subsystems due to its confidential and proprietary nature.

The Story

The Balloon Project was an educational journey that took me through my junior and senior years in college. In total there were almost 36 units of independent study, research, and internships associated with the project. The project was featured in New Scientist, it won two statewide research competitions, and to this day administrators at my university swear to me “no student will ever be allowed to do what you did Kosta.” Not because they were unhappy with the outcome, but because the project bent or broke every rule in the traditional academicians handbook.

I wrote for over $14,000 worth of research grants with the endorsement of faculty advisers, but the advisers, for the most part, stayed out of the project. Instead of working in a laboratory setting, or under the guidance of a single faculty member I was required to seek out my own tools and facilities to make this project happen. This ended up being a wonderful way to work as I was not limited to one faculty member for my guidance. I was able to seek the opinion and guidance (as it was needed) from almost all departments– chemistry, computer science, physics, English, environmental science, and even art. I abused professors office hours and in turn built personal relationships with the faculty members who offered their insight and guidance. This decentralized and interdisciplinary methodology allowed me, the student, to have a breadth of educational experiences that I think are unparalleled at any other university.

Internships with the manufacturing industry were necessary to CNC machine parts as my school did not have any engineering facilities (or even an engineering major) to speak of. A drive of over 50 miles was required to get to the premises of World Class Manufacturing where I spent my evenings producing the parts that were designed to my own specifications. My interactions with the private sector were quite broad– there were even talks of the the air sampling system being purchased by an environmental research company.

Various government agencies were involved with the project including the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Park Services. Many e-mails, permits, waivers, and phone conversations with officials were required to allow this project to get off the ground.

My dorm room was converted into a laboratory and my roommates were enlisted as lab partners. It wasn’t uncommon to see strange things going on at all hours of day and night in my building as we were collectively known as “the troublemakers.” Thousands of feet of wire and balloon tether were spooled and de-spooled from winches, it often found its way wrapped around the halls as we desperately tried to untangle knots. A vacuum pump in our living room was used not only as a coffee table “conversation piece” but to evacuate sample chambers. Test equipment littered my bedroom as I worked day and night to complete the project. Stacked boxes of pneumatic and mechanical paraphernalia, breadboards littered with components, servers running in closets– I tried my best to make the best of the space available but the kitchen table usually fell victim.

The Balloon Project was a lifestyle, not just a project. It allowed me to experience science from not only a research perspective but from a political, managerial, philosophical, and artistic perspective. To me the project was more than just an exercise in research. It was my educational treatise– an idea fostered by an ideology of, “Learning by doing.”

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I am a part of the 405 South.  Man’s largest parking lot, slowly inches forward in the midday Sunday traffic.  Stopping. Waiting.  Inching.  My fingers tap tap tap on the steering wheel, my eyes they peer into the nearby vehicles.  An old black woman in a white mercedes rolling her head slowly from side to side– perhaps slowly dancing, perhaps stretching, perhaps trying to snap her own neck.  We sit alone in our cars and wait for the brake lights to desist.

I’m reminded of the night before.  Wildcat– the club in Santa Barbara where the bass rattles already overworked kidneys, the young adults raise their hands, bodies slippery with sweat.  The movement, of two hundred people packed shoulder to shoulder, front to back– grinding.  Packed so tight but still able to move, a liquid form of movement.  A knee interlocking with the back of a thigh, the curve of a spine perfectly fit to the belly of another.  Stacked like chairs, writhing like snakes.

And I’m back in traffic, there is no moving.  Just waiting.  So the black woman tries to dance alone in her car but glass, steel, and chrome–they only stack.  They do not snake.  She dances alone.  To the left a twenty something angel of a woman sighs a long sigh.    She drives something old, very old.  Rust and chrome. She glows, her car sags on its wheels, she closes her eyes.

I’m reminded once again of the night before.  The girl who danced without opening her eyes.  Navigating by touch, by taste, by smell.  Illuminated by the frantic lights she moves and I just can’t help but smile and close my eyes– pretending I’m dancing with her.

We lurch forward and the traffic quickens its pace, I drive on.

I’m on my way to the city.  Los Angeles, a place that I will soon call home in a few short weeks.  As soon as the freeway ends the traffic lights begin. Street after street after street.  I’ve got a big job now, and I’m no one in a big city full of everyone.  I’m looking for an apartment.  I drive through Compton– just to see where I don’t want to live.  I decide Compton would be a great place to take a girl with an adventurous spirit for a date.

I go to richer places.  Socioeconomic lines have been drawn across the pavement here with bulldozers.  East to West–the poor are afraid of water and the rich own boats.  I settle on Playa Del Ray and choke to death on the rich cake that is the cost of rent. A stones throw from the beach and what a beautiful view of the Los Angeles Airport.  I’m still looking.

I can’t see why you’d want to live here.

I’m reminded of the night before.  Waiting in line, the bouncer fingering my ID and looking me in the eye with an accusatory stare.  Walking through the front entrance only to be blown back out by decibel upon decibel of chest pounding music.  Stinking of alcohol the writhing snake of people are stacked with precision, no room for me– not an inch to even breath.

And I can’t see why you’d want to dance here.

But then both the bar and the dance floor open up and I find myself invited in to writhe among the masses. So I do, and its different, but I enjoy it.  I close my eyes and dance with the girl who has closed hers.  Our bodies intertwined on the dance floor, moving, breathing, touching, feeling.  Loving.  We ebb and flow with the tide of bodies.  The beat of the music reverberates through our skin and we lose ourselves entirely in the moment.

LA.  I will lose myself in you, to emerge a new found man.

He has tasted the waters of education. His body has sipped from the stale bottled water of conformity. They’ve strapped him to a desk in a classroom. A bottle of education hangs above him as it does for most students. Tubes filled with information feed them intravenously. It trickles into their veins and slowly travels to their brains. They have had no say as to what goes in. A soup of ready made curriculum drains into their compliant bodies.

As he struggles to remain conscious during his three hour educational feeding session a professor goes about his business, talking to no one who is listening. His glazed eyes roam the room, resting on the time-piece; Mecca for the eyes.

He snaps to attention; it is time. A prescription of homework is given, some take home education. The professor demands: Write this paper! Do this project! Show us that you know how to obey, come back and we will abuse you again. The internet provides instant answers and he goes back to not thinking. Alcohol provides soothing relief from the monotony. The desire to create comfortably stripped away with each long draw from the bottle.

Weeks of this; weeks of feedings and prescriptions for a semester. His brain, empty of experience, but full of information is bloated with facts. He knows not what they mean or what their use, context was never important in the classroom. Then it is time. He is bloated with information; it sits inside of him burning. He does not know where it came from or what it wants from him, but the final exams are here and with ease he pisses his education out. He pisses out his education and finally he can exhale knowing that his brain is free from that burden.

The professors-they’ve never asked him why he is here. They’ve never asked him what he has wanted to learn and what he plans on doing with his education afterward. He has asked for relevance, he has asked to trade out the bottle above him for one that suits his needs and goals better. He has suggested they ditch the intravenous education in exchange for a more independent line of study.

“Preposterous idea” they tell him as he stands quietly before his professors. “You are unable to learn without us. It takes a teacher to teach, it takes a student to learn. We have spent years in school ourselves and as you can see it has gotten us far in life. We have our well deserved tenure, great benefits, office space, and the power to mold your mind anyway we see fit. Independence does not promote learning; we have the PhD’s to prove it.” Anxiously they continue, “Go back to your desk and pay attention or we will lower your grade.”

With great fear he runs and straps himself back into his desk, a grade is more important than any education will ever be, that’s the way it has always been.

Casually he pretends to reconnect his IV. As he fumbles with the needle his bag of information jangles quietly against the others. The professor begins the lecture and as the classes’ glazed eyes slowly make their way to the clock he secretly and silently reaches into his backpack and pulls out a book, a book of his own selection.

He is ready to learn.

There is a cat, his name is Schrödinger. He lives in a box and he was put there by a group of scientists conducting an experiment. From within his box he can see four square walls around him. He can also see a strange machine, a can of poison linked to a radiation detector perched precariously above a single atomic nucleus. The scientists can’t see inside of Schrödinger’s box, they can’t see if he is alive or dead, breathing or not, sleeping or pacing. We can assume that he is in the box however, because we put him there.

We know that the atomic nucleus inside the box has some very distinct properties. For example, within one single hour the atom inside the box will either decay or not, there is a fifty percent chance that it will, a fifty percent chance that it will not. If it decays, the detector will take notice and promptly release a noxious poison which will kill our poor cat Schrödinger. If it doesn’t, Schrödinger will live.

Here lies the problem: When one hour is up and the experiment is over, is Schrödinger dead or alive? Has the random decay of an atom ended his life or has that atom decided to remain whole sparing Schrödinger’s life? To assume anything would be catastrophic, to make wagers would be appropriate, and to leave it up to God has its own ramifications.

When the experiment has ended, after one whole hour has lapsed, we haven’t a clue as to what state of life Schrödinger may be in. Because we have not observed the death of Schrödinger there is no evidence to support that he is dead. Because we have not seen Schrödinger alive, there is no evidence to support that either. The unobserved state is something that one cannot, with dignity at least, make any assumptions about.

Due to the precarious spot that science has left our cat there is no definitive way to speculate, guess, or assume whether Schrodinger is dead or alive. The only thing that you can say about Schrödinger, while he is in his state of being unobserved, is that he is both dead and alive. Only when we open the box and partake in a grand observation of Schrödinger’s fortune, only then can Schrodinger move from a state of in betweens to a quantifiable dead or alive.

This paradox is the basis for Quantum theory, the theory of the very small and finite world of atoms, particles, light and how they behave. The paradox of Schrodinger also nullifies any notions of something I call: the reasonable conclusion.

A blind man named Ishmel walks in from the cold and wet and sits down. His arse finds itself upon something firm, and to him it seems comfortable. He passes his hand across a smooth surface looking for the sharp edges of a utensil. A breeze blows past him as the sounds of rubber squeak against a hard floor. He asks the breeze how her day has been; he knows it’s her because he can smell her distinctly feminine scent, lilacs.

She responds, “Dreary.” After a short reflectory pause an interjection, “Would you like a menu?” As she taps her pencil against her waiters wallet she gestures towards the cook to bring the man a menu.

What is a menu to a blind man? What is a sunset to a blind man? What is the color blue to a blind man? By definition of the sighted a menu is a list of the dishes served at a meal or a bill of fare. But to a blind man what good is a list of dishes if he cannot read it? To him a menu is something that must be felt or heard in order to be understood. To a dog what is a menu, it is a piece of paper to chew on.

The cook, reeking of grease, places a slightly soiled menu in front of Ishmel. The waitress exits and Ishmel stares blankly at the parchment placed before him: An infinite selection, an infinity of compromise.

To the blind man what is a menu he can’t read? Perhaps it is a buffet of possibility, perhaps the menu will be the only thing served to him that evening. To the scientist what is a reasonable conclusion to draw about the state of his cat?

Perhaps the scientific homage, the great Theory, will shed some light on all of this ambiguity. After all, it is the theories that help make some sense of this existence in which we live; Right? Let’s review: Gravitational theory keeps us, well, grounded. The theory of evolution does a good job of explaining our heritage, and the big bang theory takes a stab at how it all started. The Heisenberg principle of uncertainty throws a wrench into the idea of the absolute stating that the interactions of matter at the atomic level cannot-will not be predictable, no matter how fancy a microscope you buy. Matter enjoys living in its probabilistic soup, unwilling to share what it plans on doing next. These theories are some of the roots, the pillars, of understanding that make up what we as humanity think we know as a whole, but what is a theory? Webster, enlighten us:

the‧o‧ry [thee-uh-ree, theer-ee], plural -ries.

• +A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

• +An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

“An assumption based on limited information or knowledge.” Newton must be turning in his grave!

How can this be?!

I have a theory as to why. My theory is that there is nothing factual, definitive, truthful, and that the ever so thoughtfully perceived understanding is in fact, a misunderstanding. I theorize that to classify anything as fact is to in fact make an assumption about the fact in question, thus nullifying said fact. A theory is merely an idea waiting to be told that it’s wrong.
The crunch crunch crunch of gears, the hum of motors, and the squeal of tight belts: They scurry, they rush. A gentleman, clad in a blue apron frantically rushes from machine to machine-wrench in hand he weaves between fast moving belts, ducks between dipping and diving armatures and slips into the guts of a beast.

Inside he searches for the soul of the machine, a single bolt that needs constant attention. Without it the whole contraption comes to a screeching halt, but tighten it too much and the gears will choke and the motors will sputter. Forever it has needed tightening at consistent intervals. He knows it is time to tighten by the sounds the enormous machine is making. Its whine has gotten louder, it is whining for attention.

As he frantically passes under pipes carrying molten grease, over thick wires that monitor and control the beat of the machine, through humid air that carries with it the acrid smell of progress, he winds around a corner and stops to catch his breath.

Deep within the bowels of mechanized endurance a moment of human silence is observed while the machine rumbles on all around him. A single moment where the man stops and reflects upon the task at hand: I created this machine, yet I am slave to it. Onward he rushes, progress is now.

The final stretch is upon him and he dashes to meet his mark. Crankshafts spin as pistons brace themselves for explosions. Gasoline drains into gaping valves and is immediately consumed, then belched out in an entirely different form. He spies his bolt thirty feet ahead of him and he quickens his pace, it is dancing in its socket, seconds away from unseating itself and bringing the whole operation to a halt.

As his legs lengthen in long strides, as he chokes down air, a spray of scorching liquid finds itself upon his face and before he can scream he is flying.

Through the air and over the grease spill he travels upwards and forwards. His arms helplessly reach out for something to grab onto. Deep within fast moving belts they find themselves. Immediately he is caught and upward further he is jerked. He soars 20, 30, 40, 50 feet. He pleads and curses the machine but it’s not listening.

The cogs are ahead. 64 feet is the altitude of the first set of pulleys. The machine was specifically designed to have pulleys at 64 feet. All machines are specifically designed. Not an inch before 64 feet did the gentlemen in the blue apron find his hands, which were specifically designed also, between the tight space between a thick rubber belt and sharp pulley. This situation is off nominal.

In one instant the skin and ligaments of his wrists were being torn into. In the next instant the bones of his wrist crackled then snapped. Shortly after, the belt met the apex of the pulley, complete separation. Without the slightest interest in self preservance the machine and its belts and pulleys screamed on as the machinist screamed in chorus.

And then he tumbled back down. His hands continued on their journey through the machine but the gentlemen pummeled down 64 feet towards the ground, a warm mist of blood filling the air. Meat slaps concrete, scalding hot oil sears skin, blood-thinner than oil sinks and oil languishes in its victory. The bolt, with the most ironic of timing, unseats itself and the machine comes grinding to a complete and total stop. Crimson silence-an awkward reality for the living, daily life for the dead.

The ramifications of rounding a bend to do ones job can be disastrous.

The uncertainty of a man’s life, dashed to bits by the certainty that is machine. The notion of control exercised by the act of human creation-I will make this machine to do specifically this, I will design this experiment to show me exactly this. I have written this theory that proves that there is no such thing as proof. I am a menu and have been designed to tell some people exactly nothing. I am human, I am in control. I am human I create. I am human I exist. I think, therefore I thought. I thought and now what? I assumed and I was wrong. I lived therefore I died.

A blind man couldn’t tell you if Schrodinger was dead or alive. A dead man couldn’t tell you if Schrodinger was breathing or aspiring to meow. A machine-man made indifference-could care less.

Certainty is nothing more than the assurance of uncertainty; uncertainty is nothing more than life itself. And I can prove this by the simple fact that I can prove nothing at all.

-Kosta Grammatis