Addendum to RIO Investigation

Thank you for the email.  I will put my website back online just in case you need any further details.  I have run several more case studies of Cesar Ocampo’s research versus my Mars Pathfinder.  They are all on my website, but I will summarize my investigations since I submitted the documents:

You don’t need to dig into the technical details.  (1) Ocampo was a new professor in 2000, never taught before; (2) he took over Roger Broucke’s classes in Celestial Mechanics I, II, and Theory of Orbits – far afield from his much more basic learning in orbital mechanics; (3) Ocampo published a paper in August 2001 on the Earth-moon system (citation below).  This means he was extremely busy during that year – how was he to create a groundbreaking app like the first test of Copernicus?

“Single Injection Earth Return Trajectory Options for Small Spacecraft”

• Authors: Cesar Ocampo, Shawn Hayes (University of Texas at Austin), and Robert Twiggs (Stanford University)
• Venue: Presented at the 15th Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites (Technical Session II: Commercial Applications) in August 2001.
• Overview: This research examined classes of high-energy trajectories injected from Earth-centered orbits to deep-space destinations (such as lunar flybys, near-Earth asteroids, or comets) that utilize third-body perturbations to safely return to the vicinity of the Earth later.

I have learned more about the software:  (1) Ocampo used FORTRAN, as did I; (2) his “game” was created using Winteracter, the same software I used to create my Mars game; (3) all of his papers up until that time were on the Earth-Moon system; (4) He had just knocked out a wonderful paper on trajectories in the Earth-Moon system with Dr. Broucke – why the sudden shift to Mars? (4) The Earth-Moon landscape at that time was extremely well known because of all the Apollo moon missions since 1969, whereas the Mars topology was absolutely a total unknown – NASA, Japan, the EU, and the UK had lost a total of six missions in the previous few years – this is not the environment where you want to set up a brand new test case to apply for a million-dollar NASA grant.

About the research itself: (1) I used Roger Brouckes Runge-Kutta 7/8 integrator (with his permission, and this is always noted inside the FORTRAN code), which is the only integrator capable of reverse integration over any more than the extremely small distances in the usual trajectory algorithms; (2) Ocampo’s software integrated over very long distances, as did my Mars Pathfinder (which did reverse integration over half the trajectory); (3) all other integrators would diverge and never reach a solution; (4) Therefore, Ocampo had to have used Roger Broucke’s integrator.  (5) Given their close association, he may have had permission.  I don’t know, but he should have credited Dr. Broucke.

I have learned since that submission that (1) Ocampo had his own game that he used in his classes beginning in the fall of 2001; (2) my own Mars game had been online since early 2000, and was an elaborate 3D Windows game – with practically the exact same parameters: where to apply the thrust, the flight path – the whole package. I have only the published papers on Copernicus, so that’s as far as I can go without the actual original documents.

I should state, because to date I have only implied, (1) Ocampo, Wallace Fowler, PAM Abusali, and David Hull were all in my 2000 presentation of my original DOS version – basically exactly Ocampo’s game; (2) They knew exactly what my program does.  It’s actually extremely simple – backward integration from the midway point + hitch a ride on the Sun-Mars free return orbit.  Which means (2) they knew exactly what they were doing when they expelled me – Ocampo was on the November 2001 ad hoc committee that ultimately secured the immediate dismissal.

I do appreciate your “following the university’s standard procedures” on this.  I’m sure nothing will come of it, so I am building all the terrible things they did to me into a new “Grad Student Help Desk” where I have set up an AI to give information to grad students about their rights.  Which means that what Texas did to me will be a lasting example of the power of campus bureaucracies and the entities they work for.

The AI on my website is a good place to ask questions, and I’m happy to assist in any way.

Bill Clark

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Dr. Steinhardt,