All Things

Astroprof’s Page has an interesting discussion of the difficulties of science journalism.

I think the quality of science coverage is improving at many of the major newspapers at least. As Astroprof mentions, Mark Carreau has, for example, done a good job for the Houston Chronicle. Perhaps it’s a positive outcome from the Challenger tragedy, but it seems that about that time many of the media outlets here in Houston started giving a lot more attention to manned spaceflight. The “main” industries in Houston have long been oil & gas and real estate, but for quite a few years now space has also been accorded that sort of status by the Chronicle and several of the TV and radio stations.

An experienced, knowledgeable science reporter is hard to replace. I subscribed to Science News for years, but after Dietrick Thomsen and Jonathan Eberhart left, the physics and space coverage were just not the same. I doubt most publishers have the means to get into a bidding war for the limited supply of top talent, and no one could expect a relatively new science journalist to be able to match their reporting.

One of the problems with science and tech journalism is that folks in these fields often expect journalists to do all the work. Such a mindset would seem ridiculous in politics, where there’s whole staffs of hacks feeding carefully-crafted sound bites to the media and identifying “talking points” for their candidate’s every appearance.

Businesses likewise spend vast amounts on marketing and public relations, but most researchers, and even technical staff inside many businesses, somehow don’t seem to think these functions are part of their job. Of course, a lot of engineers, scientists and programmers aren’t that good at communications skills, or just plain don’t like to talk about themselves, but somebody in these research groups and engineering departments needs to take up the role of communicator, so the outside world can understand the value and needs of their efforts.

Journalists are under a lot of pressure with the kind of deadlines that most of us couldn’t even imagine, so it’s only smart to realize they’re going to need some help. That’s one of the things I’m trying to do with some of my sites, particularly AeroGo (for aerospace and engineering education) and RealCurrents (for current events), in which I’m trying to provide important but little-known background information and to point out things deserving more attention (which I generally categorize with the tag “Press Coverage Holes”).

Where there are failings in science/tech journalism, beyond just ignorantly trying to cover a field the reporter knows nothing about, I’d say that one of the biggest problems is that of naively swallowing pronouncements from big research groups without knowing what is going on elsewhere. We saw some of that a few years ago, for example, with some coverage of the Human Genome Project, that focussed too much on the government research, ignoring Celera Genomics’ private effort that ended up getting done first.

The result is that journalists are often lacking in understanding about the overall policy and business aspects of research, and consequently end up focussing too critically on superficial technical aspects. We saw that just this past week, when many media outlets were talking about the possible abandoning of the International Space Station, due to computer problems - what was a rather remote possibility, technically, while saying not a word about how NASA’s busily going about building a station they expect to abandon anyway, not too many years after completing it.

It seems to me that journalists ought to be a little easier on programs that suffer technical glitches that are really just part of the normal course of research & development, but be discerning enough to realize when an effort has really lost its way or when a policy has serious unresolved issues. With so much needless technical criticism, a lot of R&D managers are understandably gun-shy about the press, which just perpetuates the disconnect to journalists described above.

I wrote about Ford’s selection of former Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Alan Mulally as its new CEO on my blog AeroGo. As I note there, I don’t agree with William Clay Ford’s assertion that there are many parallels between Boeing’s recent challenges and Ford’s.

In a narrow sense, maybe yes, you can say that Ford needs to renegotiate union and supplier contracts, etc., but really Ford Motor Co. has been its own worst enemy, and is much more a victim of its own ineptitude and lack of decisiveness as any external circumstances. It was only a few years ago that it was the strongest of the Big Three, and now it appears to be the weakest.

If you want to draw parallels, a much better comparison could be made between Ford and Apple Computer than Ford and Boeing. As a long-time Apple user, I can assure you that Apple has long been its own worst enemy. Even when Apple did make outstanding products at intelligent price-points, for years it would suffer severe logistical problems that cut into the potential gains. Even in recent years, I suspect continuing skepticism of Apple’s ability to ramp up production of hot products is one reason folks underestimated its iPod business for so long.

The difference with Apple now is that it finally has a clear, focussed direction for its products and the brand is healthy again. In the same way, Ford needs to make up its mind what kind of car company it is and develop clear differentiators for each of its brands, whichever ones it decides to keep.

It wasn’t too many years ago that William Clay Ford was declaring that Ford was going to be a leader pushing for better fuel economy and lower emissions. Along came a few problems, and apparently that vision was tossed, and now, with gas prices up and highly dependent on truck sales, the failure to follow through on that vision is really hurting them.

Product-driven companies like Apple and Ford must set a course and stick to it long-term, and not constantly adjust to every external up and down, whether in the market for their products or their stock. Even recently, nearly a decade into Apple’s turnaround, analysts were calling Apple’s plans for the Mac unrealistic, that they needed to focus on market share, etc. Of course, the reality of the computer business has long been that significant market share gains are made on the mistakes of one’s competitors, mistakes which are all too common, and which even Microsoft has been making of late.

In other words, stability and staying the course are far too under-rated. On the other hand, there is one crucial difference between Apple and Ford - even when things were their worst, Apple had large cash reserves, something Ford may not be able to count on. But any “quick fix” that damages the Ford brands will probably just end up making things worse.

The sad thing is, William Clay Ford’s “greener” vision for Ford may well have been on the mark, and it’s a shame they didn’t stick to it. Perhaps a return to his vision coupled with Mulally’s demonstrated management ability can turn the company around. As with Apple, there’s probably a lot more life left in the Ford, Lincoln, Volvo and Jaguar brands, at least, if they can set a clear direction and stick to it. For a few years things may not look so good, but a consistent product vision will eventually yield leading products and strongly-differentiated brands.

I wrote recently at AeroGo about Inexpensive Ways to Start Learning to Fly. I cover a number of ways to get started, such as the EAA’s Young Eagle Program, Discovery Flights, the Civil Air Patrol, BEAPILOT, and Cessna Pilot Centers.

For those not quite ready to hop in a plane, I also mentioned a number of good publications to check out, such as Flying magazine, AOPA Pilot, Plane & Pilot, etc., as well as some good sources for video/DVD pilot courses. There’s also a link to EAA’s AeroScholars online educational program.

To make the most of this ongoing discussion, see my suggestions from last time.

I’ve written about Aviation Week’s just-released article on the supposed Blackstar spaceplane project, possibly run by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and aerospace contractors.

Long-rumored, apparently incorrectly, to be code-named Aurora, the project may have been cancelled but reportedly involved a mothership, a modified XB-70 Mach-3 bomber designated the SR-3, and several lifting body manned orbiters designated XOV-1, XOV-2, etc. The SR-3 was said to have been built using long-lead structural items for a third XB-70 that had been kept in storage.

In my AeroGo post I discuss some of the noteworthy features reported about the orbiters, in particular the report of a high-energy boron-based gel propellant that may have powered linear aerospike engines, a promising rocket technology that NASA was developing in the 1990s for the X-33/VentureStar shuttle replacement, which was ultimately cancelled.

I also note a few questions that may now be answered, and others that remain.

I’ve begun to tackle the subject of flight instruction on my site AeroGo, so if any of you out there have always toyed with the idea of learning to fly, you might want to see this post and then check back every once in a while.

Better yet, get a Xanga account and then subscribe, and you can get an email alert every time AeroGo is updated.

In this first post, I discuss some of the basic issues involved in choosing among the many schools and flying clubs, etc. that offer flying lessons.

I also note how options are expanding and costs likely heading down as a result of the new sport pilot/light sport aircraft rules, and there’s a number of helpful links for more info on these changes, as well as sites that can help you locate a flight instructor or flying club.

It’s been a very busy month and I’ve got a lot of things to write about, mostly small items worth mentioning. Hopefully I can get to several of these over the next few days. One thing I’ve been wondering about is what effect the rapid growth in investor interest in MySpace is going to have on other social network and blogging sites.

When the business press writes about social networking, they usually identify three sites - MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga - as the big three. I’ve really only spent much time on Xanga, where I have my site AeroGo.

AeroGo is the site I’m most interested in driving traffic to, and so inevitably I’ve been wondering how much the increased investor interest is likely to impact Xanga. They seem like an obvious candidate for acquisition, considering the valuation MySpace got from News Corp.

Well, today when I looked on AeroGo, instead of the usual message asking me to upgrade to Xanga Premium, there’s this:

“WE’RE HIRING!

Xanga is looking for a few good programmers and systems people to join the Xanga Team. Click here to apply. ”

This is an encouraging sign, I guess, that the Xanga folks are looking to increase the offerings of their site. It seems to me that there’s certainly more potential there, especially with the Blogrings, though these need to be cleaned up and tended to some extent, to get the worst of the silly stuff out.

One thing that bothered me about Xanga was the seemingly exclusive nature of a social networking site, i.e., that it was only for casual/social and not more interest/topic-oriented interaction. I wanted to do something specific to aerospace, and at least to some extent network with people interested in this topic, but it seemed almost too “serious” for a social networking site.

So far, AeroGo seems to have been pretty well received by the members of various Xanga aerospace-related blogrings (see to the left of my page for some of the best). I’ve even had a few very nice and grateful comments, which were certainly encouraging.

As I’ve noted, I think there’s a lot more potential with sites like Xanga and MySpace. MySpace apparently is oriented mainly toward music and dating (though the latter may prove problematic, and the site is now in the news frequently over concerns in this area). Facebook is positioned around college, and now high school, communities. Xanga obviously needs its own particular niche as well.

In this regard, I was surprised to read that Xanga’s goal initially was to provide a place for writers to “publish their work on the Net.” Now I wonder if perhaps I had Xanga figured out right after all.

Of course, Xanga has limitations, and I’m now working on a more extensive hosted AeroGo site, though I’ll keep AeroGo Xanga as a way to connect with those who are interested. Nevertheless, I wonder if Xanga’s best focus would be as a topical networking site, for hobbies, education and careers, rather than music or school.

Another thing I’ve been suspecting, but don’t really know how to confirm, is that more folks beyond the college years are getting interested in social networking sites, and that many are feeling more comfortable with Xanga. This is something investors might want to consider, especially since the out-of-school population is a lot bigger and generally has more spending power.

I’ve written about the Falcon 1 launch, now scheduled for Friday afternoon, on my site AeroGo. This is a potentially important milestone for commercial space.

I’ve also noted some recent developments with Blue Origin and SpaceDev, which has announced a new manned spacecraft project called Dream Chaser, based on NASA’s HL-20 lifting body design.

Friday Peter F. Drucker, often credited with founding the field of management science, died at his home.

It was perhaps ironic that Drucker died on Armistice (Veterans) Day, as he once attributed the quick start in his career to being placed early in positions that should have been given to men in the middle of their careers, except Europe in the 1930s didn’t have such men. They had most all died in the War. Gifted with the ability to see and clarify trends years ahead of others, Drucker left Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and London, for the U.S., in 1937.

Drucker was one of a handful of prescient Austrians of the 20th century, able to see past the blur of rapid technological change and political upheaval to discern more fundamental social issues and the need for moral action. Unlike Ludwig von Mises‘ analysis of macroeconomics or F.A. Hayek’s work in sociology, Drucker ostensibly focussed on management of profit and non-profit organizations (including government), and managing oneself. Nevertheless, his insights into social trends were some of his most valuable contributions.

Drucker’s own preference was for French economist J.B. Say, who supposedly coined the term “entrepreneur” around 1800. Innovation and “knowledge work”, a term Drucker himself originated, were always important topics in his writings, including his valuable Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Drucker frequently emphasized the need for receptivity to the unexpected market and for disciplined abandonment of yesterday’s successes. In this he seemed to parallel the thought of yet another Austrian, famed economist of innovation Joseph Schumpeter, with his similar concept of “creative destruction” as the driver of growth in an economy.

Regarding Drucker’s impact on my own life, I first discovered his works as a sophomore engineering student, while volunteering with an organization known as the World Space Foundation. WSF was trying a new, non-profit approach to space exploration, and garnered some attention for its work on developing a solar sail spacecraft, though its greatest contribution was likely in the area of Earth-crossing asteroid research.

At this time NASA was really in a funk concerning lunar exploration, which had completely dried up (and would remain so for another dozen years, until the military’s Clementine spacecraft and, after a long history of determined development, Lunar Prospector). I was intrigued with the possibility that maybe we could do a lot with even modest funds in a non-profit context.

Having already concluded some time previously that innovative organizational forms might play an enabling role in space development, over the next couple of years I developed an appreciation for management science and for Drucker’s works in particular. Drucker’s thought-provoking books have always proved fascinating, even if not so easy to apply directly, and were an engrossing introduction to the study of management.

Eventually I concluded that a non-profit organization would have a difficult time maintaining enough control to pursue a long-term research program, but that for-profit enterprises might do this effectively, though much discovery and innovation in the areas of organizational and individual function was still needed. This area of research, in fact, has been my primary focus for the past 18 years.

Perhaps Drucker’s best-loved book is The Effective Executive, originally published in 1966. Drucker described it as a real-world treatment of the subject, and argued that effectiveness was a set of practices that must be learned - and practiced - starting with the executive’s managing of his time, not the work itself. Newt Gingrich, after capturing the House of Representatives for the Republican Party and becoming Speaker, credited the book with guiding his success, which led to a new surge in its popularity.

One of Drucker’s strengths was his ability to see that management, as a discipline, transcended particular organizational forms. He was equally interested in improving effectiveness in both the profit and non-profit sectors, and his latest brief but valuable work, published this year, was Managing Oneself.

It is in the profit realm, however, that Drucker’s comments are sometimes most difficult to unravel. His discussion (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Ch. 6) of the role of business, and of profit in particular, is thought-provoking yet seemingly incomplete. Similarly, some of the concepts brought out early in Managing for Results beg to be pursued at a conceptual level rather than with the detailed analysis of product contributions that follows.

As with any great researcher, Drucker was as adept at asking the right questions as answering them. I continue to find his works profitable reading, however that may be defined!

I wrote about justifying R&D investment on my sites AeroGo and RealCurrents, and how an understanding of the techniques of targeting and scaling of R&D investment is more important than merely raising funding.

I’ve written about the Chinese and Indian space programs on my sites AeroGo and RealCurrents.

One of the things I’ve thought about doing with All Things is adding a list of various things I want to learn about. Actually, it would have to be limited only to top priority things, since there’s always a million things that I’d like to learn about, if only I had the time.

Two things that would be near the top of such a list would be the X-Plane flight simulator, which I do have but rarely can find the time to use, and the Eclipse software development tools framework, which I keep deferring downloading and installing, waiting until I’m ready to start so I get the latest version, since it keeps getting better and better.

As the title indicates, this post is about Eclipse, not X-Plane, though my reasons for wanting to learn them share some similarities. Both packages take a broad view, with an architecture that is intentionally very extendible, allowing the toolset to be used in a lot of different ways. Both continue to rapidly improve, and both seem to already perhaps be the best toolset available.

While X-Plane is limited to flight simulation, it allows a lot of manipulation of aircraft, flight dynamics, etc., to where it’s becoming possible to do serious engineering with the package. Hopefully it will continue to grow in scope and capability.

With Eclipse, scope is perhaps the key word to use in describing it. As I understand it, its newly-redesigned plug-in architecture and general design make it suitable for use with most any language, potentially, and all kinds of add-on tools.

It’s starting to look like, outside the Microsoft .NET/Visual Studio ecosystem, that most all software development tools vendors are either moving to Eclipse or risking marginalization. Borland, long viewed as one of the best tool vendors, is now embracing Eclipse. Others such as Sun and JetBrains still seem to be holding out, but I wonder why.

I can’t help but think Eclipse might be the best opportunity to come along in software in a long time (and a potential threat to Microsoft). Rather than fighting, tools vendors should realize it’s what customers want. It’s certainly very interesting to me, the kind of person who needs more structure than the average programmer type, but doesn’t want to be limited by just a few choices. Now, if I can just find some time to learn Eclipse!

I’ve written some of my initial thoughts on NASA’s just-announced Moon-to-Mars plan involving a larger capsule and a shuttle-derived heavy booster on my site AeroGo.

I’ve written some about the Tuskegee Airmen on my site AeroGo, and about efforts underway to preserve their history.

I also noted how I’ve been surprised journalists haven’t given much coverage to Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas’ indications in interviews (such as with Charlie Rose) that he’s working on a film about the airmen, and that it’s something he’s wanted to do a long time.

I’ve held off mentioning this until I had several posts on it, but I’ve recently started a Xanga blog, AeroGo, that may be helpful to anyone interested in the aerospace field, especially high school and college folks.

I’m going to use the site to give out information about the aerospace field that could help those trying to make educational and/or career choices. It will be very practical, tell-it-like-it-is stuff, what may be hard to discover for those not already in the field. My aim is to give readers exposure to a lot of stuff they might not hear about otherwise, but could benefit from knowing.

I picked Xanga because it has a pretty well-developed blogring setup that allows me to connect with a number of different aerospace interest groups in that community. Of course, if you know someone who might be interested, I’d appreciate your pointing them to my site.

Today I discussed some of the new crop of space companies that may give NASA a real run for their money, and eventually move commercial space into manned spaceflight.

Friday I finally got around to taking out our birthday boys (2 in July). One stop was to see the fairly new Imax film Fighter Pilot. We saw it in a 2-D theatre; I don’t know if it’s also in 3-D or not. It’s about the U.S. Air Force’s Red Flag exercises, which are based at Nellis AFB in Nevada and similar to the Navy’s better-known Top Gun school.

I was impressed with how many aircraft they managed to fit in roughly a 48-minute film. Of course there were F-15s, -16s, and -18s, but the A-10 also got a lot of coverage, as well as an E-? AWACS aircraft. The AWACS displays were really impressive, but it still looked like it would be hard to keep track of all those aircraft in the sky.

Apparently Red Flag is a substantially larger-scale wargaming operation than Top Gun, or maybe the film just didn’t distinguish that from the training. There were quite a few other aircraft shown briefly. Some of my favorites were of the B-1, the F-117 (I like its looks more and more over time!), and of course the cockpit views.

One thing I couldn’t help notice is how many flares are used nowadays, to counter potential IR missile threats. I wonder whether all that is controlled by software or just the pilot. One thing they were trying hard to convey was the sense of how much firepower these machines carry, but I don’t really think they succeeded there.

Helicopter gunships and A-10s are awesome fighting machines, though now increasingly vulnerable to ground attack. I have seen A-10s doing a lot of low-level maneuvering in Louisiana, near Ft. Polk (perhaps the aircraft were from Barksdale). Those aircraft can make a run, turn and come right back. It must be truly awful to be attacked by A-10s or some of the big helicopters such as the Russians used in Afghanistan. After going through that I don’t doubt that a lot of those fighters (some now our enemies) really are tough.

It’s hard to complain much about what wasn’t covered because of the film’s length. Overall, I liked it quite a bit. The best parts were definitely scenes of aircraft in flight. If you like aerospace, and have been working too long lately, it might just be the something different you need for a break. I definitely would like to see it again if in 3-D.