Everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Mercury Project
User:Rick DeNatale
From RixWiki
* Name: Rick DeNatale * Email: rick.denatale at gmail.com * Country: USA
Contents |
About Me
Hi, I'm the proprietor of this site.
I'm a picker, I'm a grinner, I'm a lover, I'm a sinner, I'm a joker
But seriously.
Why I'm Doing This
I've long had a desire to build the ultimate Mercury spacecraft model. It dates back to the very early 1960s when I was part of a team within my Boy Scout Troop to build a "full-size" Mercury capsule for the annual Skills of Scouting show in my home town. See Rick DeNatale/Troop 23 Capsule.
I've also had a long career in Computer Science, having recently taken early retirement from IBM. I've been interested in areas such as object oriented programming, and collaborative work systems. One of my friends and colleagues in my computer career is Ward Cunningham, who invented the first Wiki website which allowed anyone to edit a collection of pages, while allowing peer control over the result. Properly used this can result in a steadily improving body of knowledge. Ward's original wiki has inspired many successors, the largest of which is probably the wikimedia organization which hosts several wiki-based projects the most visible of which is Wikipedia.
I started looking at various open source wiki software packages last year, at first just to provide a personal knowledge base for how I was configuring my computer systems at home. I started out with a package called TWiki which is a good simple wiki implementation.
Evolution of the technology and goals for this site
The release of the Atomic City Models 1:12 Scale Mercury kit inspired me to start a wiki on space modeling, focused at first on gathering reference data and construction tips on Mercury spacecraft models in general, and in the Atomic City kit in particular.
At first I used TWiki since I had been using it for a while. After I opened up the Mercury site to others, who wanted to upload pictures, it became apparent that TWiki was not the best choice for what has become a very photo and graphic laden site. TWiki is basically a text based wiki which allows photos and other files to be attached. I realized that I really wanted to make pictures and diagrams a more integrated part of the articles. This led to a switch over to mediawiki, the software which is used for the wikimedia projects. I've been very happy with the result.
As the site has evolved over the past six months, the focus has become both broader and more narrow. Broader, in that I have been gathering information about more aspects of Project Mercury than just the spacecraft, starting to gather information on launchers, recovery ships, and people associated with the project. And narrower as I see this as being focused on the Mercury Project rather than ultimately being a broad space modeling site.
In this spirit, I've recently registered the domain name mercuryspacecraft.com and this site can be reached by that name as well as the old one.
Ulterior motives???
As I said, I've recently taken early retirement, so I've got a fair amount of time to play with this stuff. On the other hand, I do have a slight interest in the possibility of collecting some of this information and putting it out in a revenue producing form (like maybe a book). If the wolf starts beating at the door, or my wife starts beating on me, I might look at some other ideas such as putting some google ads and/or sponsored links on the site.
I'm working for myself!
The above not-withstanding this is a labor of love. Please take a look at Rick DeNatale/how do I get Rick to put stuff on this site?.
I've had some nibbles from folks who want me to participate in a commercial venture using information from this site. First let me point out that this site carries a Creative Commons license which allows use of this work for non-commercial purposes, and as long as you give attribution to this site. Commercial use of material unique to this site requires that you contact me for permission. Of course, a lot of the information here is NASA material which is not original to this site, and can't be copyrighted anyway.
A request to hurry up and research everything I need about X so that I can produce a commercial product Y, and I'll pay you with a copy or two of the finished Y is likely to be ignored at best. While I was happy to provide Scott Alexander, David Weeks, and Rick Sternbach with the information I'd gathered about the mercury spacecraft exterior data markings for the Atomic City kit, and was happy to receive a couple of kits in exchange, and I was happy when Rick sent me some copies of his Space Model Systems decals out of the blue, in general my time is more valuable to me to commit to a project in advance for such payment.
If you are thinking of a similar request for a personal non-commercial project please see Rick DeNatale/how do I get Rick to put stuff on this site?.
Modeling and Space Interests
I'm a modeler, I've been a member of IPMS/USA since the mid-1980s. I've been attending the IPMS/USA National Convention for every one of the past dozen or so years. I've been a judge there for the past ten years, first in Aircraft, and for quite a few years now in the Space and Science Fiction Category. I've been active in my local chapter IPMS/EagleSquadron in any number of capacities as long as my senile brain can remember.
I'm an enthusiastic amateur historian of technology, particularly of the history of manned spaceflight, and even more particularly of the pre-Apollo programs. There's just something about those McDonnell built spacecraft that does something to me.
I had a, very small, part in the Atomic City Mercury Project. David Weeks who knew that I'd been doing some research on the external "data" markings on the various Mercury Spacecraft, put me in contact with Scott Alexander, who produced the kit, and Rick Sternbach who was doing the decals. I gathered together what info I had, and pushed a bit to get some more (sometime ask me to tell the story of how this led to a phone call from Guenter Wendt and get it to Rick S. Peter Johnson also provided a wealth of information on the markings of the Sigma 7 spacecraft which lives close to him.
Professional
By profession I'm a software engineer, I've recently retired after 30+ years at IBM. Playing with Linux based systems has become a recent (a)vocation which led to this wiki site among other things, as mentioned above.
Other Interests
My other interests include Golf, although my back doesn't let me play very often. I have however finally figured out how to have an enjoyable afternoon on the links with my wife. For others in a similar situation, the secret it to play super ball. If you are a golfer you'll understand what that means, and if you aren't it doesn't matter.
On the linux front, I've been playing with home automation as well as some other web based applications.
In my dreams, I'd love to be a film maker, the closest I've come is that I guess I look like a slightly shorter-haired version of Peter Jackson if you squint.
If you are interested in cooking, my wife and I keep our favorite recipies on-line. The url is http://www.denhaven2.homeip.net/ReciPants/recipe_search.cgi?cmd=show_advanced ReciPants is another collaborative tool, like the TWiki pages you are looking at now, you can register for a userid and share *your* favorite recipes with us. Sorry, but the logon registration is separate.
I also have a blog at http://www.denhaven2.homeip.net/blog/ where I occasionally hold forth on some of the above topics as well as politics, although this has pretty much fallen by the wayside since this wiki has taken over much of my life of late. Note: I'm a progressive which means that my views tend to be somewhat to the left of folks like Limbaugh and O'Reilly, if you are a fan of those guys other than as comedians, consider yourself warned.
