Speaker 1: This is SLPN, podcast for the metaverse.

Speaker 2: Blue Hair, episode number 17.

Speaker 3: So how do you say that the first time never is the best time, especially on your own time? How’s it gonna go if you know that you’re living in your Second Life? It should be better than you thought, right?

I’m logging in, let’s begin. Why not do it with a grin? I got my Blue Hair. What’s she gonna do?

Pay it’s up to you. In the Second Life with my Blue Hair. How’s it gonna be? Do it, that’s the key. In your Second Life with your Blue Hair. Yeah!

Speaker 2: So this is Dejik Moriak. Also there’s Lewis Moten in the real life, and I’m here with a special guest. And tell me a little bit about yourself. Who are you?

Speaker 1: Thanks, Dedrick. Well, they call me Jet Burns in the virtual world, which is a name you select through the Second Life system of choosing names, but I’m Charles White in real life.

Speaker 2: Alright, and what do you do there in real life? Or in Second Life for that matter?

Speaker 1: Well, in real life and in Second Life actually. I work on NASA’s and Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Knowledge Management Team. Wow. Yeah, it’s kind of cool.

Speaker 2: So you pretty much look at the stars, or do you do anything with like controlling satellites and stuff?

Speaker 1: Well, I’ve been with JPL for about 23 years, and during the course of my career there was a time when I did look at stars. I worked with out at the Palomar Observatory for a very short stint during the Planetary Crossing Asteroid Survey under Dr. Eleanor Helene back in the 80s. And that was an immensely enjoyable, but brief period of time where I would actually sit in an open telescope and guide on a star, and we would look for asteroids that were crossing Earth’s plane. And the short time I was up there, we did discover five new asteroids. So that was kind of cool. But since that time, I’ll go ahead.

Speaker 2: I suppose that has to do with like planetary asteroids coming to hit Earth as well, or possible asteroids?

Speaker 1: Yeah, right, right. The PCAS project is mapping out those asteroids that cross the Earth’s plane. And the ones that we know about, we’re currently tracking, but this project was set up from the 80s into the mid-90s to look for asteroids that we didn’t know about, and could cause a dinosaur or humankind killing style impact. But that was very, very brief period of time, but it was my period of looking at the stars. I continue to look at stars as an amateur. But yeah, I’ve been on several flight projects, and I’ve been doing work in anomaly tracking and problem reporting.

Speaker 2: That sounds like a pretty interesting thing, kind of like tech support.

Speaker 1: Well, sort of. The problem reporting was anomaly tracking. If a spacecraft had trouble in space or on the pad or under development during design and build, assemble, or test, we call it eBat. The problem would have to be reported into a system that allows us to track, has the problem been properly reviewed, has it been triage, has it been graded to assess mission impact, and then who is signing off on the problem and who verifies and tests that it’s been resolved.

So it’s actually a pretty involved process, but it’s a much needed process to maintain the level of quality that JPL has in flying probes to the far ends of the solar system. But that was really exciting work.

Speaker 2: It sounds like it could be very risky as well when lives could be in danger.

Speaker 1: Yes, and especially lives during testing and ground operations for launch for JPL. After we launch a spacecraft, a JPL mission, all our missions are robotic in nature. So there is some danger before it’s launched that we take all possible precautions to mitigate. But this particular system did not track the astronauts. That’s another NASA system. Okay. So I didn’t have the same level of restrictions placed on a manned flight system that I had on robotics.

Speaker 2: All right. So what inspired you to go ahead and work with NASA?

Speaker 1: One man in particular by the name of Dr. Carl Sagan. A lot of people don’t even know who that is. I found out.

Speaker 2: He pretty much explained things in very simple detail, but it really made you feel little and important at the same time. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1: And he always had a way of saying billions and billions that people remember. When I was just going into college and just getting out of high school and that there was a television show on TV called Cosmos. And there were no VCRs at the time, you know, in consumer grade VCRs. So I audio taped it on cassette tapes, the entire PBS series of Cosmos.

And I would play it over and over again until you could actually see through the tape. And Carl Sagan would just talk about JPL. And at the time I just said, you know what, I’m going to aim my career to work at JPL because that’s just awesome work.

And that’s where I want to be. And ironically, or fortunately, when I was at JPL, I saw him in a symposium. He was only sitting three seats from me and I was just like a school kid.

I was like, oh my gosh. But I didn’t approach him at the time. But later I did approach him when he and I were alone on the JPL Mall.

And we sat down on a wall. I introduced myself and told him how I became a JPL employee. And we got to talk for about an hour or so. And I told him the whole story of what inspired me and how Cosmos did it. And he shoved his hand into my chest and shook his hand.

And actually he dropped a little tear and said, you know, he was really thankful for me telling him that story. Because it was right about that time in the mid-late 80s that, you know, he was getting a lot of flak from fellow scientists about producing Cosmos. And so he really needed to hear a success story from Cosmos. And I was happy to provide that because, you know, what he talked about inspired me. There’s no doubt of that. That’s how I ended up working at JPL.

Speaker 2: Sounds like you two inspired each other.

Speaker 1: Well, I don’t think there was much I could have inspired him. But it was pretty interesting. I mean, I did get, after he passed, I was able to, you know, say a few words at a JPL service for him. And then later I was invited to go seek the release of contact with Andrew N., his wife. So it was kind of a cool thing. But that, you know, again, one of those brief passings in time. Just one of those being the right place at the right time type of thing.

Speaker 2: Yeah. That’s a pretty interesting story. So you’re in Second Life with NASA. What do you do in there exactly?

Speaker 1: Well, when I first went into Second Life, I went in just to relax, you know, come home from a pretty stressful job and come into this virtual world and just hang out and entertain myself. And I noticed right away there was a capability here that is kind of close to what we needed in NASA for science visualization and engineering visualization. And it wasn’t long before I stumbled onto a volunteer facility called the International Space Flight Museum. The ISM is an all-avatar, all-volunteer, multinational group of folks who have built space rockets, not just NASA, but Russian rockets, Japanese rockets, Chinese rockets, from all over the world and they’ve put them on display and they have a rocket ride. You can fly up to a space station and there’s a lot of educational outlets and when I saw that, the light was definitely there that if volunteers are doing this and working together to create this type of excitement for the space program, well, gosh darn it, NASA should be there too because we’re a public company and this is where the public is, or not a company per se, but we’re part of the government and the government is of the people and here’s where the people are. So I was thinking we should be there as a venue and see how we can not just put up a display in a museum, but also maybe try to collaborate and try to participate in some of the space sciences. So it’s all still fairly experimental on how do we collaborate and work with various agencies and it’s going to take a long time for us to do this, but it’s starting to work. As a matter of fact, how we’ve met is through this work.

Speaker 2: Right. It’s been a long time ago.

Speaker 1: It’s been like two years.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I created that little countdown time or fixed the countdown timer.

Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, that was for the STS-118 launch, which we did the full launch coverage. It was the first shuttle launch that was covered from launch operations and landings and at the time I was the voice of NASA basically for that mission and your countdown clock brought us from, I think it was like T-minus 45 days all the way down to that instant where it started counting up. So yeah, you know, got a lot of comments on that and thanks again for building that. That was cool. Well, it was no problem at all.

Speaker 2: What advice would you give to others who are trying to use the virtual world platforms in their own organizations?

Speaker 1: Think lightly. It’s a real key. A lot of people are coming in with seriousness and you do need to be serious, especially on many, many levels. But there comes this point when the newness of it all wears off. When your avatar is in his suit and has long hair and me, I’m balding on top, but my avatar has long hair. Me, I’m 200 pounds, but my avatar is 160 pounds. So there’s criticisms that I should be a fat balding rocket scientist in my avatar, but I’m not. I’m not younger. My avatar actually looks older, but he has more hair. He’s a little skinnier.

Well, that’s how I see myself. And who cares? What’s the big deal?

Why do people get wrapped up around the axle on that? There has actually been some studies where people who are able to hide behind a mask, not just in virtual worlds, but in various other situations like on telecons and so forth, they actually participate more than they would when they’re in person at a meeting or in person in real life. And so this is an interesting fact that people should be allowed to contribute and be active regardless of the mode. So, yeah, it’s kind of hard to take somebody dressed up in a clown suit totally serious. You know, sitting at a table, there’s five people in business suits at a table, and here comes this clown talking about rocket science. Okay, that’s even hard for me. But it’s for some reason, it’s not as hard for me to see someone come in as a tiger or a unicorn or something else and be able to contribute that way as opposed to a clown suit. So it’s even challenging to myself.

I have to remind myself. One thing is absolutely true, though. It’s the communication that’s real. That’s what companies pay for.

That’s the value of this is the visualization and the communication, and that’s what this world provides us. And in the early days, the criticism to me by the engineers and scientists were, it’s not real. And after a while, I kept trying to argue that, well, the communication is real. But then I came to the realization also that exactly, it’s not real.

Exactly. There are things you can do in a virtual world you can’t do in real life. You can have a building and practice an emergency response scenario if a flight system goes awry or if a building catches fire or something happens. And you can practice emergency responses in ways that you cannot practice in real life. So exactly, it’s not real. There’s things you can do in an unreal environment.

Speaker 2: Part of that would be you don’t have to be afraid to mess up, whereas in a real world environment, even in real training scenarios, you mess up. You mess up everybody else who’s participating in a virtual world. It’s very easy sometimes to just start all over or start off where you left off. Yeah.

Speaker 1: And training is a win. I mean, right there, training and familiarization is, that’s a win right there because it’s easy to protect equipment. We’re looking at possible clean room training because there’s so many procedures when you enter a clean room.

And it’s much easier to leave a Coke can and a sandwich in a virtual clean room than it is in a real clean room and say, go find the problem.

Speaker 2: I imagine that people would not be afraid to leave feedback immediately in these scenarios as well. Right. Since there would be somebody they could directly feedback to and they’re still behind this persona of a mask, so to say. Right. They don’t have to be afraid to talk directly.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and we’ve seen some of that too. I think the second aspect of utilizing virtual worlds is understanding that it’s still an evolving technology. I like to say that the current virtual worlds are kind of in the biplane age of aviation history.

That’s about where they are. And people come in with expectations of moving commercial airliners full of 500 people between New York and London in a 747. Some day, but not now. The virtual world’s just aren’t there yet. And they’re going to have the ability to have major CAD models and more 3D interactive capabilities and imports and exports. But it’s those pilots that are learning to fly a biplane in a barnstorming exercise. And those companies that are enlightened enough to try this and learn to fly are going to be more adept when the more advanced virtual worlds come out. So that’s another reason we’re there too, is we’re learning a lot of lessons now that we’re going to employ and evolve.

Speaker 2: Alright. So I think we could wrap this up. Do you have any last words before we go?

Speaker 1: No, none on my end. I speak way too much.

Speaker 2: Alright. Well, it was nice talking with you. Thanks, Derek. No problem, Jet. Bye.

Speaker 3: Blue Hair, Blue Hair How’s it going to be? Do it, that’s the key In your second life, look at Blue Hair, Blue Hair