I wanted to understand space, so i started building

A few years ago, maybe 2022 or 2023. Or maybe it was 2024. I don't remember the year properly now.

i thought i need to understand what has happened till now.

I was reading about all these missions humanity has already done outside Earth's orbit. I wanted to know where they went, how they got there, and what kind of thing they actually did. Then I started reading about every single thing around those missions too.

So I was keeping track of it. Whatever mission I read about, whatever I understood about its route, I wanted it somewhere I could come back to.

why should i just keep this track for myself?

why can't i just make it public for everyone?

That actually came to me as the idea of Mission Atlas. I had this collection of things I was trying to understand, and I could make the collection public while I was working through it.

The space thing didn't begin there though.

i have always been fascinated by space since the first time i read the book martian.

I think I read it in 2012 or 2013. Not sure which one. I kept reading about space after that, and then the first company I worked with was Spaceonova around 2019 and 2020.

Even after I left space, I kept reading. I kept in touch with the industry and what people were building. I have always wanted to build something in space, or work with companies building something ambitious. That never really went away.

Mission Atlas is basically the public version of what I wanted to keep track of. A directory of the missions humanity has done beyond Earth. Where they went. What they did. And then the part I'm still working toward, which is how they actually got there.

I want to click on one mission and follow it from Earth's orbit to the destination. Date by date. There will be a timeline, kind of like a scroller, which takes the trajectory and moves through it. The trajectory part isn't finished yet.

And because I'm trying to build that, I have to understand what I'm putting there. That's where I started learning all these other things.

While I was building Mission Atlas, I understood the concept of a slingshot and how it works. I understood ion thrusters and how they work. I started understanding different kinds of rocket engines, how they are built, and why they are different.

Then there are questions like why the Roman Space Telescope used Falcon Heavy but Falcon 9 can put a human crew into orbit. I wanted to understand why the rockets are different and why a mission ends up with one instead of the other.

If I start to list things out, this blog will get too big so i'm not going to list everything. There are more missions, engines, and small things I had never understood before. I know more about them now because at some point the thing I was building needed me to know.

This happens with other things for me too. If I have to read an academic book, I understand it better when I try to build something around what I'm reading. Same if it is one concept. Same if I'm trying to understand a whole industry.

Sometimes I build a product around it. Sometimes it might be hardware. It doesn't matter that much what the thing is. Once I'm making it, I have to keep learning enough to make the next part.

Learning in public, learning by building, whatever. I don't know what the proper name is. This is just the way I end up doing it.

And I can do that slowly. A little thing today. Another thing tomorrow. It doesn't feel like I have to sit down and somehow understand the whole space industry before I can begin. I can add one mission, notice what I don't understand, read about it, and come back.

I don't think I sat down and decided I wanted to study slingshots, ion thrusters, rocket engines, and launch vehicles. I wanted to build Mission Atlas. Those things came with it.

i learn by building things.