apollo space junk bot flock

On an imaginary circumlunar trajectory, forever.

about apollo space junk bot flock


What is the apollo space junk bot flock?

The apollo space junk bot flock is a flock of twitter bots that tweet random Apollo radio dialogue.

The flock is implemented in Python and uses the rainbow mind machine library.

Each bot is given the entire contents of the transcripts of the corresponding Apollo mission, and the bot chops up the corpus and uses it to generate dialogue in the same style.

The text processing portion was implemented using leonardr/olipy on Github, which implements the Queneau assembly algorithm that is used by the bot flock to generate dialogue.

For more information about bots and bot flocks, see bots.charlesreid1.com.

Find the bots on twitter at the apollo space junk bot flock twitter list

@apollo11junk@apollo12junk@apollo13junk@apollo14junk@apollo15junk@apollo16junk@apollo17junk


Why build the apollo space junk bot flock?

The Apollo Space Junk bots are robots that create and publish tweets. But the tweets they create are randomly generated. The bots learn how to speak by being given a large corpus of dialogue, and they construct new dialogue by repeating and re-using language at the phrase level, instead of the letter- or word-level often used in random text generation algorithms.

The tweets have the same authentic sound as the original dialogue: dense and thickly technical exchanges, interspersed with moments where the humanity of the astronauts shines through.

The space junk bots take on a personality all their own.





















Contact charlesreid1

@charlesreid1 is a full-time data engineer and part-time bot-wrangler working on the intersection of cloud computing and genomics at UC Santa Cruz.

Get in touch:

twitter (at) charlesreid1.com

 

 

Image credit: NASA and 1960s U.S. taxpayers