The Crowded Sky: 2 (semi) close shaves

This week marks the confluence of two types of events we typically devote very little attention to. On June 28 a suspected piece of man-made "space junk" was detected on a course taking it within 1000 feet of the International Space Station. And the day before, an asteroid, "2011 MD", passed within 7500 miles of earth -- that's closer than the orbits of geosynchronous communications satellites and even the constellation of GPS spacecraft.

Space Solar Power redux: now that's what I'm talking about

The Economist Magazine (both web and print versions) recently had an interesting article on the possibility of collecting solar power by a platform in orbit and then beaming it to collection areas or a point of use on earth.

From NYT: Set-top boxes - threat or menace?

New York Times of 25 June 2011 had an interesting article about the energy use of the very ubiquitous TV set-top signal converter boxes and DVRs. While I agree with the intent of the article, I think the hyperbole of the lead in paragraph warrants some critical assessment:

"Those little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator and even some central air-conditioning systems."

Understanding Human Rating Considerations: Flight Test hours

Just picked up a copy of the Everett, Washington Herald. In it was an article noting that Boeing has just passed through 3,500 hundred hours of flight testing on their 787 Dreamliner.

The annals of cynicism - particle physics division

This from the New York Times --

At Particle Lab, a Tantalizing Glimpse Has Physicists Holding Their Breaths

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: April 5, 2011

Physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are planning to announce Wednesday that they have found a suspicious bump in their data that could be evidence of a new elementary particle or even, some say, a new force of nature.

Space flight commercialization – where are we? Part 1

I've seen a number of interesting web postings on commercial space flight lately, mostly driven by release of and subsequent reactions to the Aerospace Corporation's report to the NASA administrator. Here are some links worth examining if you're curious and have some time:

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2011/Aerospace.pdf

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2011/04/aerospace-corp-1.html

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/03/25/47966597.html

http://check-media.blogspot.com/2009/12/total-number-of-flown-to-space-to.html

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=33167

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2027613,00.html

http://news.discovery.com/space/spaceplane-flight-aeronautics.html

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/860/1

You will notice that some of the material is not quite recent. I find it a handy reality check to revisit predictions made a few years ago to see how they've held up. It seems that in some aspects, commercial human space flight is akin to limitless clean power from nuclear fusion: just about to happen, but perpetually “X” years in our future. The passage of time appears to be a reasonable filter for what is possible, practical, and feasible from an engineering, scientific, and economic perspective. It allows the decoys and red herrings that are politically and ideologically driven to naturally fall away. And we can't neglect Yogi Berra's seminal observation on the subject: “It's hard to make predictions – especially about the future.”

Over the next few entries, I will discuss some of the issues surrounding the general topic of “Space Commercialization”.

The first observation is that space flight is already commercialized and has been almost from its inception. Private firms have been designing and building communications spacecraft since the early 60's. Other firms have bought them and financed their launch and operations. The big jump is to human spaceflight, which itself dates back to an era when it was politically and socially acceptable to call it “manned space flight”. Because of the complexity, costs, and inherent risks and liabilities associated with human space flight, it had always been the exclusive realm of governments. But even at that, commercial, i.e., “profit driven” private concerns (the industrial half of Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex) at a minimum collaborated on the system designs and delivered the hardware to the government in the form of NASA or the DOD. Even in the Soviet Union, the mysterious design bureaus behind their space program behaved as much like entrepreneurial ventures as any other segment of their command economy.

So “commercial” doesn't really hinge on any sort of distinction about pursuing a profit in the classical capitalistic manner, right? In fact, we can easily imagine a commercial entity anxious and enthusiastic to shed the shackles of the limited profit margins and growth prospects imposed by having the government (any government) as a sole or major customer.

Commercial human flight then becomes the application of market-driven discipline in what you design, build, and offer for sale; how you select, target, and market to your highest value customers; the use of best commercial practices and processes driven by a time-to-market imperative in design and implementation of your product line; and a clearly explainable value proposition both internally for your board of directors and shareholders, and externally for your prospective customers. I will examine the various possible business models for commercial human space flight (CHSF) in the next installment.

But first, I need to dispel the biggest red herring concerning CHSF. This is our second observation. The news media makes much of announcements about opportunities for suborbital flight to the topmost reaches of the atmosphere, and they do so almost totally uncritically. Don't get me wrong: suborbital flight is wonderful and cool. I'd love it if I got a ticket as a birthday present, in the same sense that I'd get a big charge out of taking a ride in that F-4 Phantom II that I see (AND HEAR!!!) shooting touch and goes at Ellington Field. What each person reading these words needs to do is to ensure that everyone you speak with understands that flying a suborbital ballistic arc above the stratosphere, while impressive, is not space flight in the “where the heck are all those bucks we've spent on NASA going to?” sense. The amount of energy invested in reaching and maintaining orbit is on the order of 50 times that required for the suborbital ride, and most challenging, it is all of that energy that has to be safely managed and dissipated on the return to earth. That's what makes it rocket science.

Closely related to this lack of understanding on the part of much of the public, and apparently eagerly embraced by much of the media, is a very important and widely used commercial practice: announcing your desire or intent to do something (design, build, deliver, make economically viable...) and treating it as precisely synonymous with actually having done the thing itself. Funny how something that doesn't quite exist always appears far more attractive and technically superior to that which does exist.

Please stay tuned...

Project management tip for the day

Just finished a review of a proposed project. The usual things: cost, schedule, resources, risk, technical objectives, fit with tactical and strategic objectives...

One thought popped out that I want to share with this community:

Plan the project staffing based on the work that needs to get done. Don't plan (and size) the work to be done based on the staff you have on hand.

What I encountered was what I thought to be a one person stress analysis task but three stress analysts proposed to be working the project. The rationale given to me was, "Well, I need to cover these other two, so I stuck em in here."

That is a very human and humane impulse, but if we pad our work like that, soon enough everyone will be out of a job. I asked the team to find legitimate options for the other two analysts to work on other projects, and after a few phone calls, we found some no-kidding-around useful tasks for them, and in fact brought help to a project that was in danger of falling behind schedule.

Charlie Sheen notwithstanding, I will declare, WIN-WIN!

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