I recently saw an uptick in the number of subscribers to this blog. Some of you joined this journey for the space related content that I started publishing in 2021. Others joined in for the engineering content I recently published.
So I thought this would be a good time to reintroduce myself and preview what’s coming up next.
First of all, welcome — I am grateful for your support. There’s no greater gift to a writer than someone willing to read their ramblings.
I totally understand the overwhelming amount of information, newsletters and commentary out there. The firehose of information is way too much to keep up with. So I appreciate any time you spend reading this during your busy day!
Why I started writing?
From the beginning I wanted to write about a topic that was interesting to me and I knew others would find it interesting as well. That topic clearly was Space. Or more specifically — Astrophysics. Everything about it fascinated me. The historical figures, its role in human conflict, our robotic ambassadors and the future of human spaceflight. Even the obscure topics like Black Holes and Gravitational Waves fascinated me. I was like a kid discovering a new passion.
To top it off, my writing coincided with very public successes for the scientific community. Like the first detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO in 2016, first picture of Black Hole by EHT in 2018 and Artemis launch to the Moon in 2022.
I had front row seats to the groundbreaking scientific achievements and in some way, participated in it by doing science communication.
I recently extended that coverage with a new podcast series that highlights scientists and other science communicators.
Software Engineering & Space Exploration
As a software engineer by trade, writing about Space gave me something else to think about outside of work. I also thought there were plenty of sources for software engineering related content. But as I have published more articles, I am now more comfortable sharing lessons from my professional experience. What better topic to talk about than the industry I have spent more than a decade in!
One interesting thing about software engineering is that it applies to multiple industries.
I have been lucky to see how it benefits the financial and healthcare domains. Its applicability in the space industry is also not a stretch. Starting with when Margaret Hamilton and her team wrote the on-board software for Apollo missions that allowed humankind to land on the Moon. Or more recently the critical software that is autonomously controlling rovers on Mars. Or doing data processing on a colossal scale for various astronomy projects.
Beyond applicability, both fields have strong overlaps as both are technical, need teamwork and depend on planning. Then there’s “science fiction”, which both sets enjoy.
So as a software engineer, it wasn’t a big leap to share my interest in space.
What’s next?
Well “sky’s the limit”. For now, I’ll stick to writing about these two topics more regularly. I might stretch to cover human conflict, climate hope or my travel experience. All of that will go in the ‘Random Tidbits’ bucket.
What I won’t be doing is moving my accounts across platforms or making my writing harder to find. I want to connect where you are and not worry about missing features on one platform or the other.
So I hope you’ll continue to support me by coming along for this journey!
Love the way you put down your thoughts and share them with others
Wishing you all the best in pursuit of sharing knowledge…keep writing !!