You need to get used to kOS scripting language but it is extremely powerful. You can script your whole mission from launch to landing to return. So it can be used for autonomous probes simulations or to automate parts of the mission (Apollo style).
That is spot on I think, some people will spend a whole lot of their personal time on work tasks just because they like it. The issue could be with the colleagues that clock-in/clock-out and see him work on personal stuff and think they can do it too.
For some reason, reading about "believe we understand root cause" made me think of: "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable."
Even though the time estimate was not that accurate and that it constantly changed based on workload, I found it useful to get an idea of how urgently I need to plug my laptop.
Google products have one connecting line in them. They make it easy to adopt and are used to collect data. Whether it is user data or users helping in training a system (captcha, Google voice, ...)
It certainly seems like a basic/simple topic but it is hard to see what other branches you could have covered except maybe laser diodes. Would you put those in a separate category or they could be considered as a flashlight with a very narrow beam?
It would be great to get a tutorial on how to assemble the project and how to use the software. I am also curious to know where the camera was placed on the mirror. The NoIR cameras are quite "raw".