Category Archives: Community/Partners

ISPCS 2009 – Day 1: Mission and Methods

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I am back in Las Cruces, NM, attending this year’s ISPCS, and just like last year each panel and each conversation leaves me with new ideas and new perspectives.  I promise to write a full report on the entire conference when I return to Dayton, but in the mean time I wanted to share the two highlights of Day 1.

First, a reflection on Mission.  One of today’s panels was a presentation by Jeff Greason about his experience serving on the Augustine Committee.  Jeff talked about a number of aspects of the committee’s work including launch vehicles, destinations, and enabling technologies.  But I was most stuck with what he had to say about the committee’s review of the reason to send humans into space, and the difference between the reason we do a thing and the benefits we get from the thing.  Jeff explained that in discussing the reason to send humans into space, we often get caught discussing the benefits (doing good science, building international relations, developing new technologies to name a few).  The problem with getting caught discussing benefits instead of the reason is that there are lots of ways to go about getting the same benefits as space flight, but none of those address the real reason to send humans into space, namely, as the committee puts it: to extend human civilization beyond Earth.

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How to build community?

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What’s the first step of community building?

One easy first step would be to get people to start using this website.  An increase in traffic requires no paperwork, no additional funding, and directly relates to one of our main objectives:  “promote the development of a spacefaring culture.”  But how? you ask.  Well that’s easy.  Simply post stuff, blog about stuff and encourage your friends to do the same.  You can help us by reading and commenting on posts, asking questions, or adding links or ideas of your own.

A blank forum is less likely to be used than a frequented one, so help us out.  We want to hear from you!

 

Excerpt from “The Art of Community” + the FIST principle

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fan of synchronicity. Therefore, they will understand why I am abnormally excited to connect one element from the first few pages of The Art of Community with my fundamental belief of “rapid acquisition” as explained  by the FIST principle AND a poignant and timely email from Dad (thanks Dad!).  The concepts have to do with risk and the benefits and consequences of dealing (or not dealing) with risk appropriately.  The sections below are the ideas that coalesced together in a brilliant stroke of insight!  B-)

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1) From THE ART OF COMMUNITY by Jono Bacon

“Theory Versus Action: Action Wins
A … much more subtle risk that can bubble to the surface is becoming too focused on theory. Theory has an important place in community leadership. Heck, I have just spent the last several sections talking about social capital, belonging, economy, belief, and other theoretical dispositions. However, you will note that the hardcore theoretical content is confined to this chapter. The emphasis of our work should be on getting on the front lines and trying out ideas instead of burying our heads in a book. Sure, read and learn, but use reading and theory to help you decide where to focus your practical efforts. The most critical lesson here is that you should never replace practical experience with theory.”

2)  From “THE PURSUIT OF COURAGE, JUDGEMENT, AND LUCK” by Dan Ward

“Trust and Luck
It bears repeating that risk management is a human endeavor. We contend the best risk management strategy can be summed up in a single, terrifying word: trust. Trust your team. Trust your contractors. Trust your customers.  Trust your boss. It takes courage and judgment to trust, but failure to trust is an unacceptably risky strategy. [The authors explained the importance of trust in “The PM’s Dilemma,” Defense AT&L, May-June 2004.]
Of course, risk management is more than just implementing approved methodologies with courage, judgment, and trust. Luck is a pretty important piece of the puzzle as well. What does luck have to do with risk management, you might ask? Just about everything
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Those of a more scientific mindset may prefer to refer to University of Hertfordshire professor Richard Wiseman’s research. The aptly named Wiseman executed a 10-year study of luck. He published his findings in a book titled The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind (2003) in which he observes that luck perception and luck production are both related to personality factors such as optimism, extroversion, openness, and low levels of anxiety.

Wiseman’s research showed that while people who describe themselves as lucky are not more likely to win the lottery, they are more likely to experience positive outcomes in other, less random activities. For example, a person’s extroversion creates a large social network, which can lead to “fortuitous” connections with people and resources. Openness to new experiences leads to action, as John Nash said in A Beautiful Mind, “The probability of my success increases with every attempt.” Turns out, he was really on to something. The bottom line: Luck is real, and you probably want an optimistic, open, extroverted, lucky person leading your risk management team.
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Yes, there are always ways to avoid or mitigate the risks involved with program management and technology development. However, when we mitigate away all the risks, we virtually guarantee mediocrity.”
3) Subject: FLEX YOUR RISK MUSCLE

“Bull’s-eye every time?  If so, you’re standing too close to the target.  If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.  Differentiate between errors of commissionand errors of omission.  The latter can be more costly than the former.  If you’re not making many errors, you might ask yourself, “How many opportunities am I missing by not being more aggressive?”  Everyone has a risk muscle. You keep it in shape by trying new things.  If you don’t, it atrophies and you’re no longer able to take chances.

• Try a new recipe.
• Invest in a new idea.
• Tackle a problem outside your field of expertise.
• Propose an idea to your boss.
• Let a subordinate take on one of your tasks.

As Arthur Koestler put it:  “If the Creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he certainly would have meant for us to stick it out.”

— How can you flex your risk muscle?
— What new things can you try?
— What recent risks have you taken that strengthened your risk muscle?

RogerVonOech, creativethink.com

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Thanks to Jono Bacon’s book The Art of Community this material used under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license; Thanks to Dan Ward’s articles on The Fist Principle available for download in the public domain; Thanks to Roger von Oech © 2009. All rights reserved, http://creativethink.com/ or http://blog.creativethink.com/

The need for a common analysis platform in open design

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There are several barriers preventing engineers from sharing their work (that is the underlying analyses, as opposed to just the results). Some are cultural, such as the norm for journal article (publish equations, methods, and tools, not data files), and some are technical (using different tools, or different formulations). I believe the technical barriers reinforce the cultural ones, and are more straight forward to address, so I would propose looking at those first (this is actually a similar approach to the course of open source software, where early efforts focused on developing the tools that enabled people to share their work, including open source compilers and version control).

So, let’s take a look at one of the technical barriers: using different tools. One solution might be to use open source analysis tools (and they do exist for many specialties). Unfortunately, this would involve convincing engineers to use new tools, which at best means requiring the to learn how to use them and interpret their output, and at worst means convincing them that the tools really work (good engineers gave a heavy skepticism of new engineering analysis software). What if we turn the problem on its head? Instead of finding the one set of tools to use, we make it easy to switch between tools. I am thinking of a vendor neutral analysis description language. Engineers develop their analysis in this neutral format and then use translators to write vendor specific input files. Then if the engineers want to share their analysis, they send the neutral format file to someone who then uses a translator for the tool of their choice.

Now, I don’t imagine this would be easy. Their are many disciplines with many tools in each. But, imagine how much easier it would be to share one’s work. If anyone knows of an example of this, please let me know.

Concept refinement: Worldwide hackerspace network for sattelite ground stations

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Motivation:  To help facilitate the operations of manned orbital spacecraft and increase communication and telemetry coverage.  The distributed nature of hackerspaces make them good candidates to increase the opportunities of ground-station contact with orbiting spacecraft.

Ideas:

  • Approach hackerspaces that meet minimum requirements to help Mach 30
  • Compile an instructions kit and directions for setting up a remote ground tracking station
  • “Employ” thier help with the tracking and communications for orbital operations.

Needs:  sky visibility, roadio communication, spacecraft telemetry tracking

Take pics from space for $150???

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That is just what some MIT students did with entirely off the shelf gear.  Check out the story here, and their website here.  They go into some detail about how they did it, but I wonder if they would consider posting the full plans as an open design project.

Update 9/15/ 2009

Here is an update from Andy about this project:

“RE Pcsw from Space:  Their website has an update today saying that they plan to post a step-by-step soon and hope to have the stop action series of photos on youtube tonight.”

Also, on a technical note, “from space” is a slight over statement.  Turns out the pics are from an altitude of about 17.5 miles, or about 25% of the way to space.  However, the pics are of the edge of space (you can see the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space).  I wonder what night photos pointing down would look like (or up for that matter).

Update:   09/16/2009

This same story was picked up on the NPR Marketplace Morning report this AM.

In addition to general coolness I want to point out how quickly this went viral.  Stories about groups of people doing cool things with just a little bit of money are crazy contagious.  I think this could be an important lesson for us–when we are ready to move forward, what can we do to emphasize rather than hide our small group with a big dream identity.

Update:  09/24/2009

Here is another team’s flight report, this time in HD Video.

So, I have been thinking, what could we do along these lines?…  and I had an idea.  What about launch two just a few seconds apart so one takes pictures of the other?  How cool would it be to have pics of the mission at altitude, in addition to the pics of the Earth and space?  Any takers?

Update:  03/22/2010

Check it out, Arduino used in high altitude balloon.  The project is call the Ferret (project page).

Update:   02/07/2010

Another cool link…  Arizona Near Space Research