Recent Posts

• Cal Poly SLO Students Tour Lockheed Martin, Sunnyvale
• NASA wants your input!
• How can celebrities help raise awareness of STEM careers?
• Sometimes Workforce Development Is Rocket Science
• Journey to Palomar
• A Hands-On Approach to Workforce Development
• Who Owns the Moon?
• Kennedy vs. Obama on Space
• Partnering with NASA
• Calling all Aerospace Industry Professionals

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NASA wants your input!

November 3rd, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Industry Space  

Wayne Hale at NASA has created a blog post asking for your input.  I don’t want to paraphrase the whole thing, but the main point is that NASA is preparing to inform the next president of the agency’s current status and issues.  Dr. Haile is asking for your input on what the largest issues facing NASA are.  This is a great opportunity to participate in your space program.

How can celebrities help raise awareness of STEM careers?

October 28th, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Big Idea Space  

What would you ask a celebrity to do in order to help encourage students of all ages to study Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)?

The space community has broadly expressed the shortage of students graduating with STEM skills in order to become the scientists, engineers and technicians of the future.  It has even been called a crisis.

Carrying this important message to young students is not without challenges.  In an industry that traditionally does not produce many products directly for consumers, there is little focus on advertising.  This results in the voice of the space community being overshadowed by the myriad commercial entities that are collectively vying for the attention of these young minds.

The entertainment industry, through the likes of the Star Wars franchise and movies like Iron Man, do provide some level of visibility to STEM careers.  The space community has recognized Hollywood for raising awareness.  In addition, the space enterprise community have also expressed, through the California Space Enterprise Strategic Plan 2007-2010, that a more direct endorsement of the value that STEM careers bring to society and our economy is needed.

The importance of addressing the STEM workforce issue is expounded by the current global economic crisis.  Some celebrities have spoken out to share their solution to global economic woes but the Planetary Society’s Board of Directors has made a strong statement that “Space is not a luxury,” and carries with it long term economic benefit.  They also make a convincing argument for the benefits derived from the inherently international community around space activity.  But the benefits to be brought from space enterprise activity depend on a healthy aerospace workforce.

So, with this global issue in need of increased awareness, what is to stop celebrities from using their star power to bring some attention to it?  How would you like to see star power applied to the STEM issue?  A press conference?  A book?  A blog post? A benefit concert? A YouTube video? Interpretive dance?

Please use the comments to tell us what you think would be an effective way for celebrities to bring awareness of STEM careers to young students.

Sometimes Workforce Development Is Rocket Science

October 22nd, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Industry Space, Student Space  

MOJAVE, CA – Learn by doing has long been the motto of many California State University campuses and at the Long Beach campus (CSULB), that’s just what they are doing. In conjunction with Garvey Spacecraft Corporation (GSC) and the California Space Authority (CSA), 42 students from numerous campuses have successfully launched a 500 pound liquid-fueled rocket over the skies of the Mojave Desert. Funded by the US Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative, the project was heavily focused on demonstrating the effectiveness of ambitious hands-on opportunities in preparing the next generation of the nation’s technical workforce.

“The space enterprise community has expressed the need for hands-on lessons that will teach to the workforce issues it faces,” stated Andrea Seastrand, Executive Director of CSA. “This exercise is exactly the type of opportunity to provide real-life, real-time learning.”

The rocket, known as Prospector 12A (P-12A) and developed by GSC and CSULB, carried payloads that were designed and developed by students of CSULB, Santa Clara University, Saratoga High School and the University of Kentucky. Their mission was to collect data about the rocket’s aerodynamic performance, the rocket’s trajectory, and to record video for further study.

“It was an exciting experience and learning process for these students and their mentors,” said Professor Bob Twiggs of Stanford University. “The Saratoga High School students asked me to say ‘thanks’ to the WIRED program for this opportunity.”

Recognizing the activity as an experience the students will remember, Dr. Eric Besnard, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at CSULB, commented that “this launch represented the culmination of weeks of close collaboration between industry mentors, students and faculty and as a result its lessons about systems integration are all the more valuable.”

According to John Garvey of GSC, “this launch represents another important step in our long-term goal of developing a dedicated nanosat launch vehicle that can put these kinds of student payloads into orbit. The P-12A rocket reached an altitude of 3,000 feet before returning to earth.” All payloads survived the launch and returned intact and the student investigators were intensely focused on retrieving their hardware and data.

“To ensure we retain our leadership in the global space economy, it is imperative that we step up our workforce training efforts to fill the coming gap that will be caused by retirements from the existing workforce,” concluded Mrs. Seastrand. “It is exciting to know that CSA was instrumental in providing this highly relevant opportunity for students.”

Journey to Palomar

September 23rd, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Meeting Space, Student Space  

There is a new documentary about the events leading up to the creation of the observatory at Palomar Mountain in San Diego County.  Astronomers were the first space explorers, and this documentary covers the work by George Hale and others on creating the first of the telescopes that started to give us the kind of data that changed our understanding of the universe.  If this doesn’t immediately strike you as an interesting story, it may help to note that Palomar was the biggest telescope in the world at the time and that it took over twenty years to complete it, starting one year before the beginning of the great depression.  The mirror itself took 11 years to finish, and moving it to its final location at the observatory was national news at the time.

Their will be a webcast for students and educators to take place on Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time.  Participants in the interactive session will have the opportunity to ask questions directly to a panel of leading scientists inlcuding Nobel Laureate Dr. John Mather, Science Director for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope; Carnegie Observatories Director, Dr. Wendy Freedman on the Giant Magellan Telescope; and Caltech Optical Observatories Director Emeritus, Dr. Richard Ellis on the Thirty-Meter Telescope.  The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Derrick Pitts, television personality and Chief Astronomer at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia.  This will be a great opportunity for any young student interested in space science or astronomy.

A Hands-On Approach to Workforce Development

September 19th, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Your Work Space  

I attended the Space 2008 Conference last week in San Diego to present some of our recent work on workforce development (including this blog), and found that the workforce issue was a major topic of discussion.  Lieutenant Governor Garamendi spent a significant portion of his time addressing the audience on this topic, along with others.

Also presenting at Space 2008 on the workforce topic was Richard Rieber, a young engineer at JPL who has been working on a program called Phaeton that struck me as a brilliant meshing of the conflicting requirements that are typically put forth by the incoming workforce and some of the typical needs of management specific to the space community.  The program is centered around providing short term (~3 years) rapid development and prototyping projects that require new hires at JPL to apply their skills to the full cycle of a project, while providing access to their more experienced co-workers.  While the missions under Phaeton are mostly not focused on creating flight hardware, they are intended to provide useful technology development back to JPL, for instance, raising the TRL of a new technology so that it can become eligible for incorporation into future NASA missions.  In the mean time, the participants have developed skills and experience that will benefit their future assignments.

As with most things, the key to effectiveness is in the details.  The projects under Phaeton are conducted in a lab dedicated to these projects.  This allows for the work environment to be set up in a very “Millennial” way.  Reconfigurable common workspaces, combined with a slightly more casual area and an “engineering bullpen”.  Documentation is completed via wiki, and the IT infrastructure is set up to allow for most of the work to be done via laptops.  The engineering workstations and other equipment are clustered together and common to all of the projects.  The overall effect is that space and time are made flexible and team work is enabled through the physical arrangement of the lab and through the collaboration oriented knowledge management setup.

The program is staffed in such a way that about half of the young professionals’ time is dedicated to Phaeton activity, while the rest of their time goes to their “regular” duties.  The mentors are staffed to provide guidance on an as needed basis.  Other experienced engineers contribute to technical oversite and project milestone reviews.

The most interesting aspect of this program to me is the fact that Phaeton was started by young scientists and engineers at JPL.  Rieber and his team are working to bring the program up to full capacity (approximately three concurrent and phase staggered projects).  It will be interesting to see how the program progresses.  I am sure their work will encourage other young talent to follow in their footsteps.

But what does this mean in the context of the space enterprise community?  Could the Phaeton model be the beginning of a trend for the aerospace community?  As space companies, government agencies, and research facilities are required to compete with companies like Google for top engineering talent, will they begin to adopt more and more of their workspace practices?  A trend towards the “Googleization” of the aerospace work environment would be an interesting development.

How many other organizations in the space community are doing something similar with their work environments?  Answer in the comments!

First LOX-Methane Rocket Launch

May 6th, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Student Space  

An fantastic example of what can be accomplished with cross-sector collaboration.

Home sweet Phobos

April 10th, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Babble Space, Factoid Space  

NASA released an amazing image of Phobos taken by the MRO. For some reason or other, the first thing I thought of when I saw this was Doom. Interestingly enough, the real Phobos doesn’t have strong enough gravity for the types of activities depicted in the game. What are your favorite games that take place in space? The Dig is my personal favorite…

Strange fads in the tech community

March 24th, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Babble Space  

Here is a strange thing happening in the tech community right now. People are forming into random teams to compete in made up games for fun. Its happening via twitter. Is this something that could ever happen in the aerospace community? Is this sort of distraction even appealing to people in the aerospace community? What do you think?

Warning Signs of Tomorrow

March 6th, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Babble Space  

Somebody twittered about this, and I decided it was something that should go here. Hopefully we actually need some of these some day, some of them hopefully not.

It seems like something that could be the result of Bruce Sterlings Internet of Things.

Generation Y, what will we be known for in 50 years?

February 29th, 2008   By Matt   Filed Under Big Idea Space  

Having just returned from the 3rd Exploration Conference in Denver, and having had time to think more about the potential role of Generation Y in NASA, the aerospace community, and humanity (I know, I know, you are thinking “get the supersoaker“, but that’s what happens when I get a window seat.), I think we have the chance to offer an answer to the question in the title of this post.

Past generations often claim fame for amazing accomplishments like the invention of computers, Internet, global communications, landing on the moon and about a thousand other things that have completely changed the world. Subsequent generations have had the benefit of building on these accomplishments.

So….what are we going to do as a generation that changes the world forever?

There are a few things moving already that will definitely have a bearing on this. Things like social networking, peer media, virtual worlds; all the things that Gen Y is already doing as a group. But youtube videos of people accidentally injuring themselves and captioned pictures are not likely going to have the same kind of lasting impact as, say, the first application of semiconductor technology has had. While Gen X and Gen Y have obviously been very busy creating and populating a huge infrastructure of what are converging towards pervasive communication tools, they have often been disregarded as senseless toys by those who don’t use them.

But that’s about to change.

With projects like NASA’s CoLab and its associated activities like the Participatory Exploration Summit, Open NASA and especially the Next Generation Exploration Conference, these very Generation Y tools and interactions are starting to get used for something more than just entertaining each other. They are starting to become a part of how Generation Y does serious business. Yes, that’s right. Your knowledge of Web 2.0 participatory applications might actually be useful in the “real world” in the near future.

What am I really getting at? At the 3rd Space Exploration Conference, moderated by George Whitesides, of the National Space Society, the NASA CoLab team and other panellists presented some of these ideas to the NASA community. The audience at the conference had very few members of Generation Y in it. The presentations were very different from any others during the conference. What kind of reaction could this type of exchange receive? In most instances, this would be a recipe for complete disaster; a true generational communication gap opportunity. But instead of being rebuked, the panel was met with questions that indicated serious consideration of their message had occurred. Not all of the feedback was 100% positive, but that’s part of a healthy conversation.

Am I saying this was an arrival at a finish line? No. This was the creation of a foothold for the dialogue to continue around incorporating more of the Generation Y perspective into NASA projects. This was the starting gun.

Having participating in many of the conferences, summits and other activities that lead up to this panel, a commonly expressed concern has been something like “How do we know that NASA will listen?” and “How do we know this will be more than just a report in a binder on a shelf at NASA HQ?”

This panel is how.

So, “What will Generation Y be known for in 50 years?” I think some of the things presented during the panel and the CoLab philosophy are good candidate answers. What if with the next generation of space exploration aboard Orion was not recorded in the history books as “humans going back to the moon”, but as “the first time that the entire world touches the moon”? I think we just got one step closer to realizing this, but the dialogue must continue in order to get to that finish line.