Open Secrets/Open Stack
Kim Philby - Garry Kasparov - T. Keith Glennan
32 Apollo Astronauts - 32 Chess Pieces
The Space Race - Sally Ride
32 Planetary Roads - Space Roadbotics
My Sally Ride collection is by far the best part of my online gallery of space memorabilia, almost like being invited to watch the launch. It probably once belonged to a reporter. Employees were not invited. I’d only been at NASA for about 2 weeks at that time. I don’t remember any other shuttle flights as being personally relevant.
My focus was on different projects starting with the Grumman Design 698 V/STOL aircraft. I eventually moved over into AI, but I didn’t work on games. I worked on an aspect called explanation-based learning. Over time I became more interested in studying my own mind, and after a Dai-Satori experience triggered by a backpacking trip to Thailand, I spent a large part of my life chasing satori. I have brought a lot of those ideas, about the evolution of human consciousness, into the planetary mapping project.
The younger generation isn’t interested in space memorabilia, so there is a lot of it flooding the market as the Apollo generation dies off. Prices are amazingly good, as long as you don’t care about authenticated signatures and flown items. I like recreating my own career online. Putting it all into the context of space roadbotics is something like playing a game of chess or solving a puzzle. I don’t remember a lot of colleagues as being important to my career, but the astronauts are important to my planetary maps. It’s the best of NASA without the office politics.
Catch-22 exposed the absurdity of war, but Brazil is a better depiction of the bureaucratic aspects of government. Let’s put it this way: if you don’t see someone highlighted in my gallery, I probably won’t name a planetary road for them. I’m particularly interested in historical “firsts” in space and the people involved.
Although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I think the highest form of human intelligence is best represented by those who can do what has never been done before: inventors, astronauts, aviators, innovators, artists, musicians - anyone who is breaking the mold in significant and disruptive ways. It’s too easy to imitate what others have done; it’s a lot harder to find something that hasn’t been done before and then beat everyone else to the finish line.
More Information:
Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
1997 Match: Deep Blue won 3½–2½. Notably, in the final and decisive Game 6, Garry Kasparov played Black and lost in 19 moves.
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/09/nx-s1-5684150/deep-blue-ibm-garry-kasparov-1996-ai-machine-learning
The Imitation Game
The title is in reference to The Turing Test. The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," while working at the University of Manchester. It opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, Can machines think?'"
Because "thinking" is difficult to define, Turing chooses to "replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words." Turing's new question is: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?"
https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-enigma-of-alan-turing/
