I’ve introduced most of the team already, but of course, I need to introduce myself as well:
I’ve been interested in space technology and science-fiction since I
was a small child, and I’ve been actively involved in free-culture since
before the word was coined. Lunatics! is a unique
opportunity for me to put all of my skills and training to work on one
project. As both an astronomer and a life-long space advocate, I’m very
familiar with the reasons for going to the Moon and settling there (and
also Mars and other places). And I have some pretty good ideas about how
it can be done, having seen a lot of different proposals over the
years.
I’ve also been interested in visual arts, cinematography,
and film since I was a teenager, and for awhile I was a declared Film
major at the University of Texas, before switching back into the
sciences and graduating in astronomy. I’ve studied sound, film,
and video technology and am familiar with image and signal processing
from a variety of different perspectives, both scientific and artistic.
I also learned a lot from directing an earlier free-culture project
(The Light Princess adventure game project in 2000), which although it
never got off the ground as an actual game, did succeed in collecting and
focusing artistic talent on a free/copyleft project at a time when a lot of
people were saying that couldn’t be done. It was through that project that
I met our character designer, Daniel Fu.
I think all of these experiences have prepared me well for both directing and producing Lunatics!
A space advocate since childhood, Terry Hancock has been an active
member of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
and of the National Space Society and of local chapters in Texas
and California. He was one of the organizers of the
1996 Southwest Regional Space Conference and of the 2004
and 2007 International Space Development Conferences.
He was also the 2000-2001 editor of the Odyssey, the
chapter newsletter of OASIS, the LA chapter of NSS, and
the 2007-2009 webmaster for the NSS of North Texas.
Terry received a BA from The University of Texas, majoring in
Astronomy. He went on to work as a research assistant, writing software for such
projects as the McDonald Observatory Planet Search program in Texas (for
Dr. Bill Cochran) and the testing at the University of Arizona/Steward Observatory
of the NICMOS infrared imaging chips for the Hubble Space Telescope.
Later he worked with data from that same camera for astronomical research
at Extrasolar Research Corporation in Pasadena, California (for Dr. Susan Terebey).
He later went to work for Caltech/JPL’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
(IPAC). In 2003, he left Caltech to focus on Anansi Spaceworks projects.
He now resides in Texas.
Since 1999, he has been active in the open source community, learning
the basics of open-source project management through several small
SourceForge projects. In 2005 and 2006, Terry worked remotely on a
freelance basis as the News Editor and, later, Deputy Editor for
LinuxUser and Developer magazine, a London-based international
magazine covering Linux and free-software topics.
He is an advocate not only of using free-licensed open-source software
but also of applying its free-licensing methodologies to other areas,
including the arts, electronic and mechanical design, and space development.
