Leaving Hydrology, back to Spectroscopy

On my way out of the central Nevada project area for the last time. 03.30.10

Well, this is again a tactical time of transition for me.  I’ve worked the last two years as a geohydrologist with Parsons in the deep Neavda wilderness performing hydrologic and meteorological measurements and analyses for the Southern Neavda Water Authority.  Tomorrow, due to budget cuts, is my last day.

I’ve been lucky enough to use this unfortunate (and terrifying) turn of events as an opportunity to shift back to the Nevada Test Site, this time leaning on my gamma spectroscopy experience.  I think a foray into Health Physics can only be beneficial to someone interested in working in an environment where high-energy radiation is one of the greatest threats:  Orbit. 

We’ll see.  I’m thinking of also taking this opportunity to engage in masters work, specifically using resourced-asteroid material as radiation shielding, which seems like a clever health physics/planetary geology crossover…

In any event, one can’t help but be retrospective at a time like this, and I’m hoping time will prove that having worked on the East-Central Nevada Groundwater Development Project, a project both so unbelievably vast (can swallow Rhode Island) and remote (far fewer than one person per square mile,) can only been seen as uniquely advantageous experience for a hopeful future field planetary scientist.

Wheeler Peak from Bastian Creek during a fairly substantial dust storm, 03.30.10.

Thus closes one chapter, and thus another begins.

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