Man, the unknown: Fleeting impressions of an uncertain mind - Breakwell Memorial Lecture

The paper briefly touches upon the historical evolution of mankind and the role of technological innovations in it. In particular, it focuses on a few seemingly simple concepts and their applications to spacecraft dynamics and control, which illuminated my understanding, stimulated interest in the subject, and have left lasting impressions. These include: solar pressure induced dynamics and control of spacecraft; integral manifold for periodic systems; tethered systems: discretization for flexible space platform, its dynamics and control;and manipulators with slewing, deployable links; to mention a few. It has been an exciting pursuit where the reward lay in the effort itself, Limitless, and hence necessarily unknown, is the potential to which the man can rise to decipher hieroglyphs of the universe. Also limitless is the secret of nature. The search will continue until the end of time as, eventually, the inscrutable rests in silence. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.