Category Archives: Interesting articles

Fast Food, USAF, Teams, and Motivation

Posted on April 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

This site contains my opinions and ideas only, not the opinions or ideas of any organization I work for. It’s my idea playground, and I’m inviting you in. Welcome!

Just letting you know right now–the only thing space-related in this series of posts is the organization I currently work for. The series is mainly about leadership, motivation, and what worked for me, as well as why. If that’s not your gig, I get it. There will be more space topics later, I promise.

The organization I work for was very attractive to me when I applied to work with it. It still is, even with some caveats. I knew I wanted to work with this group because: they were fun, worked with the space industry, and got the job done.

Notice my priorities–fun, then space, then mission.

These all tie together, sometimes shifting in sequence, but help me come back to work smiling (normally I don’t even think of it as work). I’ve been more motivated at work in these last four years than during the 16+ years prior to that. This situation, plus recent events I won’t get into, have me thinking quite a bit about teams and motivation. How do you motivate a team of already motivated and capable individuals? I’ll dive into those concepts in a second, but first, a little about me why I lead and motivate the way I do.

Why I “lead” the way I do

I’m a pretty easy-going guy, I think. I like having fun. I’m an introvert, but weirdly, I like working in teams. I like helping people on teams. I get along with most people I work with, with most becoming friends, and take a certain amount of pride in that. I think about things, including orders, but I tend to be very quick in execution. I appreciate logic and fairness in work, don’t expect those from others, but try hard to apply them. This can make me cynical at times. I am lazy–which helps me trust people. I always initially trust people–until someone shows me differently. Trust means I am loyal. I am internally motivated, and so despise attempts at making me fearful, which means I can be stubborn.

All the above traits are useful to me when I lead and follow, and I embrace each one fully. My motivation comes from not letting me or my team down. For the organization I work for now, my peers are amazing, and I don’t ever want to let them and the team down if possible. They aren’t superhuman, but the fact they feel comfortable enough to let the human side peer through the veneer of professionalism speaks volumes to me.

My leadership style fits me to a “t.” It’s not for everyone because it takes a lot of work and trust. And it won’t fit in every organization–particularly fear-based ones.

But let’s go back in time to previous jobs and compare where I am now with where I was.

Differences in leadership and leadership opportunities between the USAF and a fast-food franchise

It was initially the same deal when I worked for the United States Air Force. The mission of serving the country while operating space technology was cool. I thought all people in the organization were on the same team. Sometimes it could be fun. But my motivation started waning very early on, way before I was aware of it. Why was this?

There are many factors, but the biggest one is: I couldn’t trust my leaders. The Air Force has few good ones, and occasionally they rise to the top. But what the Air Force wants in a leader and what I thought a leader was supposed to be, well, we were not aligned. This is not because I was expecting perfection, but because I was expecting application of the methods I had learned about and used in prior jobs. Or at least maybe I would learn about new, useful management methods. But, no.

Before I joined the Air Force, I was a shift manager for a fast-food franchise. I wasn’t happy, but the job paid the bills. I made sure teams of unmotivated teenagers and underachievers kept the restaurants running while keeping the restaurants up to health and sanitary specifications. I learned more about leadership as a shift manager than anywhere else. Since then, most of my leadership role models have served as examples of what not to do. Let’s talk about my time as a shift manager and how motivation works among the most unmotivated of employees–the fast-food shift worker.

You see, I was good at my job in fast-food, even if I didn’t like it. Unlike my current job, it wasn’t fun at all. I was so good at my work there, however, the franchise used me to help open new locations, shifted me around to different restaurants to help run them during personnel shortfalls and more. The “real” managers wanted me to hang around after college and become one of them. I laughed, because I knew I’d go crazy if I continued to do so.

My rejection of the work wasn’t because the franchise treated me badly (it didn’t). It was because the customers were just so terrible sometimes. Fast-food doesn’t really attract happy people–it mainly attracts those in a hurry who want the minimal nutrients for minimal amounts of money. Some of these customers believe fast-food employees are defenseless emotional punching bags for their personal use. I will tell you now that lack of motivation in a job does not equate to low intelligence or defenselessness.

But what does a person do to motivate not just fast-food employees, but oneself, too? More about that in the next post.

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Posted in Interesting articles, Opinion

Which is the “Good” Future?

Posted on April 13, 2018 | Leave a comment

Old space monty.jpg

This site contains my opinions and ideas only, not the opinions or ideas of any organization I work for. It’s my idea playground, and I’m inviting you in. Welcome!

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, in part because of SpaceX’s success with its Falcon Heavy (FH) launch. And, in part because of the inevitable responses to that success from the expected originators of those responses.

Responses were predictable.

A certain, seemingly interminable, government rocket-building program put shields up, throwing out all sorts of reasons why the FH just won’t compete (the reaction and attitude seemed like the Black Knight’s reaction to getting his legs and arms chopped off (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno)). Many people came to the program’s rescue as well, writing op-eds, histories, and comparisons. Similarly, a SpaceX company rival coaxed industry writers to show the genius of another rocket on the CAD screen. The ‘genius’ as quoted by one writer, was parachuting the rocket’s engine cluster back to be snatched out of the air with a helicopter. That was funny!

Look–I get it. A company that incumbent launch service providers never expected to make it off the launch pad seems to be eating their lunch. It’s making them look like they’re all standing still. Ditto for the government human launch program. The fact the company has created three different rockets–Falcon 1, Falcon 9 (plus iterations), and the Falcon Heavy–within 16 years of its founding, might have something to do with that. The same company is working on a fourth rocket.

The company did not just design and create three different rockets, but it also constructed its own engines, its own landing system, its own cargo spacecraft, and more. Each action was likely viewed by some as an encroachment on territory and expertise of incumbents across the board. Never mind that territories and expertise in those organizations seemed to be encompassing necrotic programs and business models fully dependent on taxpayer funding. The kind of changes SpaceX pushed were too much–too successful. Competitors’ pride turned to envy, feelings were hurt, and the bottom-line looked a lot less certain. So, yes, defensive press releases and plans were to be expected.

Government and incumbent plans are for one kind of future, whereas SpaceX’s reusable rockets seem to be from the future. But which IS the future?

Certainly the immediate, short-sighted goals of maintaining contracts and jobs isn’t the future of the industry–although some companies seemed eminently poised for that future. The goal of maintaining a nation’s prestige through building the rocket equivalent of an Eiffel-tower to shoot into space (with ever-changing goals of WHERE to shoot into space) seems fairly old-fashioned. It certainly was done over fifty years ago and seems to be a step back towards that age. So maybe not the future, in spite of great marketing. What’s next, Ferris wheels in space? Wait a minute…

Whether we, or by proxy, congress, decide to go with those futures, or to allow some other to unfold, will it matter? The future will have its way with us, no matter what we think and do. We can try to stuff it back in its box. We can come up with protectionist laws. We can build systems that can only come from a Rube Goldberg (https://www.rubegoldberg.com/) fever dream. We can write up heartfelt and snarky, dare I say, trollish/tantrum responses to a company’s successes or failures. But the future comes, whether choices are made…or not. We can be a part of the future, work with it, or become irrelevant. The future doesn’t care.

There are indicators of a type of future coming to the space industry. Not just in the United States, but globally. SpaceX as the most active launch service provider and rocket developer seems to be the industry’s harbinger. It’s giving us glimpses of the future, but perhaps not the way we think. Since SpaceX is doing interesting things, let’s take a look at the company’s recent achievements:

  • SpaceX’s Falcon 9 1st stage landing attempts were all successful during 2017.
  • SpaceX uses “drone” ships to act as ocean landing pads for a few of these returning stages. And they work.
  • SpaceX is aiming for quick-turnaround times–as little as an hour–between rocket landings and launches (not necessarily with the Falcon 9).
  • SpaceX launched two broadband test satellites, the TinTins. The company plans to orbit thousands around the Earth, and a few around Mars, too ( http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-seattle-2015-2015-01-15).
  • SpaceX automated the flight termination system for its rockets during launch.

These actions of just one company highlight possible trends towards a likely future. These are trends already embraced by the public in other areas, and growing by the year, rapidly. More on that in the next post.

P.S.: The next post will be a little while. Next week is a bit full. If I have time to write, well, it will be a miracle.

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Posted in Interesting articles, Opinion, Space Operations

Turning to Fiber to Move the Competition Along

Posted on April 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

Reticle

This site contains my opinions and ideas only, not the opinions or ideas of any organization I work for. It’s my idea playground, and I’m inviting you in. Welcome!

In the last post (here), I wrote a few guesses about who might want to pay for something like SpaceX’s Starlink or O3b’s broadband constellations. The upshot of that whole exercise was to find out that perhaps the world’s poor probably won’t be the funders of these constellations.

Even if these constellations might be cheap.

This might seem a little obvious, but cheap is relative. When Elon Musk talks about the billions of dollars likely needed for SpaceX’s constellation (https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/companies/elon-musk-dares-to-go-where-others-failed-with-internet-from-space/ar-AAvfNSu), it’s really expensive–for a communications satellite constellation. Especially for companies operating satellite communications/broadcast constellations now. I wrote a little about their operations and costs earlier: https://themadspaceball.com/2018/03/21/traditional-space-broadband-and-the-changing-reality/.

So how are these proposed broadband constellations considered cheap if the current operators are shaking their heads about the costs and complexity? Broaden the scope. Consider that, in essence, a constellation like Starlink is broadband infrastructure, but it’s in space, around Earth. These constellations aren’t competing with the operators of geosynchronous satellites. Geosynchronous satellites are handicapped by huge distances, cost lots of money to lift to their perches, make juicy and fairly easy targets, cover at most 1/3 of Earth’s surface, etc. Instead, the proposed constellations are competing with existing infrastructures back on Earth.

For those of us living in the U.S. for the past decade, there was a time when we hoped that Google, the search/advertising company, would help accelerate broadband development while reducing costs. The company started in with Google Fiber in Kansas city. Many cities envied this development. Why? Existing broadband monopolies believed customers didn’t need any connection faster than what they offered, but still expected people to pay high prices (a new Google Fiber story is here: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zmwkdx/eight-years-later-google-fiber-is-a-faint-echo-of-the-disruption-we-were-promised). I referenced this situation in another previous article (https://themadspaceball.com/2018/03/23/examining-a-potential-competitor-to-traditional-space-broadband-operators/), but American readers probably don’t need the reminder of the situation our lawmakers have created for us with broadband.

But back to Google and Google Fiber. Google went on to wire up Austin, Texas. But progress has been slow for its deployment through the rest of the nation. One possible reason is money, but another definite reason is just installing the infrastructure in these cities. A 2012 article noted a Goldman Sachs analyst did some math and figured out it would cost $140 billion to wire up all of U.S. households with fiber (http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-it-would-cost-google-to-build-a-cable-network-2012-12). That same analyst estimated Verizon paid $15 billion to wire up only 17 million homes.

Isn’t $15 billion the upper limit of Musk’s estimate for deploying his company’s Starlink constellation?

Wiring up 17 million people with faster internet access for $15 billion makes Verizon’s, and other broadband monopolists’, reticence to wire up the rest of us unlucky schmucks a little understandable. They know they can’t do it, and keep subscription prices low. But if those companies had the ability to “fiber up” half the world for $15 billion, that might be enough incentive to rush in and do so. A whole world of potential broadband customers for that price–maybe even double–why wouldn’t investors be interested?

And people are interested. It’s one of the reasons why stories regarding these proposed broadband constellations surface regularly. Governments and militaries, once they figure out the advantages of such a constellation, will likely also be interested–if they aren’t already. Combine this interest with obvious increases in data-demand not just by consumers, as well as the necessity for growing on-orbit spacecraft to deliver real-time observations of the Earth and its citizens.

Which is full circle to how this series began. A nonsensical assumption in a Wired article (whose editors really should have just let lie on the clipping floor) that people of the world don’t want these digital connections. In spite of examples in very recent history showing rapid adoption of networked technology in countries where the infrastructure and markets are conducive to such adoption.

Will these poorest of the connected bear the brunt of paying for these constellations? No, because there are too many other possible interested parties for such broadband constellations, with little risk to them. The timing seems right. The price to implement these constellations seems doable. The political landscape over broadband seems right. The data demands are growing, with evidence of the world’s populations gaining more advantages than disadvantages through using this data.

Whether the “other 3 billion” want internet from space or not, the Magic 8-Ball’s “the signs point to yes” answer seems appropriate in these circumstances.

We will see.

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Posted in Communications satellites, Interesting articles, Opinion, Space Operations

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Who Will (Want to) Pay for A Few Broadband Constellations?

Posted on March 29, 2018 | 1 comment
Milpoor

Yes–some images from the Usual Gang of idiots.

This site contains my opinions and ideas only, not the opinions or ideas of any organization I work for. It’s my idea playground, and I’m inviting you in. Welcome!

In the last post, I noted that the proposed, but preposterously large, low/medium Earth orbiting broadband constellations will be cheap.

Some technology and economies of scale will possibly play into that, but that’s not the kind of cost-savings I’m referring to. Let’s start with price estimates for creating the Starlink constellation from Mr. Musk: $10 to $15 billion (https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/companies/elon-musk-dares-to-go-where-others-failed-with-internet-from-space/ar-AAvfNSu). Others have given much higher estimates for the constellation, as high as $40 billion. This is a lot of money, even for satellite operations. I could finally buy a Nintendo Switch with that kind of money. Maybe two.

But, those satellites will be in an orbit that takes them over nearly EVERY SINGLE SQUARE METER of the Earth’s surface. As noted in the previous posts, this means the satellites can transmit, receive, and relay information, very quickly, in the service of a potential global customer base. And while some of the messaging the entrepreneurs have been trotting out for these satellites implies they are for poor people in poor regions, those aren’t the ones who will fund it.

There are implications within this kind of space network–military and intelligence ones. Again, the following paragraphs are conjecture, based on some observations of what’s happened in the past and happening now.

This kind of constellation is very distributed. It’s very difficult for an adversary to disrupt physically. It would probably cost a troublemaker more to shoot a satellite down, than the cost of the satellite itself.  And a few thousand would probably need to be destroyed. So these broadband constellations almost fit the model for redundant military communications, worldwide (http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Volume-29_Issue-6/C-Wegner_Adang_Rhemann.pdf). They don’t even have the terrestrial broadband network’s downside of possibly having cables cut somewhere under the sea (Think that’s made up? Some folks are concerned-updated 31 Mar: http://time.com/5223237/russia-targeting-undersea-internet-cables/).

A few upsides for the military is not needing military “space operators” communications satellites, or needing to worry about leasing from certain geostationary communications satellite operators over certain areas of the Earth (http://spacenews.com/42261pentagon-report-says-commercial-bandwidth-is-four-times-more-expensive/). Just like the regular internet, a deployed soldier could theoretically have access to a very, very fast network, immediately. While it’s doubtful the military will be very trusting of commercial communications networks, they might stop needing very costly and specific military communications satellites for enemy target practice.

Heck, the USAF is used to paying billions for a single satellite, and tens of billions for satellite systems (http://spacenews.com/the-end-of-sbirs-air-force-says-its-time-to-move-on/). These proposed broadband constellations will be a bargain, not need a typically over his/her head DoD acquisitions officer, and will probably become operational closer to original scheduled dates than any government system ever has.

Signals intelligence satellites and organizations from various nations will have a field day trying to shadow these satellites to have a peek at the radio traffic going through them. But since these are broadband satellites, common internet security standards will generally separate the smart from the targets.

This sort of communications network could benefit space stations, like the International Space Station. It could aid with space situational awareness satellites. It could help relinquish some geographic dependencies for certain kinds of other constellations and ground networks. And this kind of data would be small potatoes compared to the day-to-day internet traffic we have on Earth today.

This is also a multi-way street, by the way–a traffic circle of Parisian proportions. Militaries from other nations, some who have never invested in space, will probably benefit from these broadband constellations. It’s likely governments will realize this, too. Some will attempt to build rival constellations, probably not as successfully, because other populaces in other nations may not trust those constellations.

Again, these constellations are worldwide. If the operators work these intelligently, they will be pure dumb pipes. And anyone willing to pay to access them, will be allowed access. Why wouldn’t the governments from many different nations invest money to help build it? Why wouldn’t they pay to use it? It’s much cheaper than the alternative. And they might end up subsidizing the very poor’s access to it.

But that’s still not what I meant by cheap. More about that later.

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Examining a Potential Competitor to Traditional Space Broadband Operators

Posted on March 23, 2018 | 2 comments
25790223907_9ea3e63180_z

Image from SpaceX. The Tintins were launched on this particular Falcon 9.

This site contains my opinions and ideas only, not the opinions or ideas of any organization I work for. It’s my idea playground, and I’m inviting you in. Welcome!

At the end of my last post, I asked: What is new, the thing that makes the upcoming satellite broadband operators sure they’ll get return on investment?

Here are my guesses, and we’ll start by looking at SpaceX’s Starlink demonstration satellites, Tintin A and Tintin B. These satellites were launched a few weeks ago.

Based on this FCC document, the Tintins are probably the Microsats mentioned within: https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=185534&x. The satellites described are very small, but not cubesat-sized. Each one is about 1 meter cubed, with a mass around 400kg. By comparison, the Hispasat communications satellite which was launched a little later weighed over 6000 kilograms and about 27X9X7 meters in size (http://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=1144453, pg 13).

The small size of the TinTins is significant. It means SpaceX can load up a Falcon 9 with at least 20 of these. Probably more, based on the LEO/GTO mass specifications of the Falcon 9: http://www.spacex.com/falcon9. SpaceX needs to load up many, many Falcon 9’s with these Microsats/Tintins to get 12,000 satellites into orbit (http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellite-launch-paz-youtube-2018-2). The company would also have to maintain a launch rate exceeding anything the company has achieved so far.

Even if the company used the Falcon Heavy instead of the Falcon 9, deploying 12,000 satellites might take a while. If the Big Falcon Rocket becomes a reality, then all bets are off. There likely is the benefit of using one’s own rocket fleet to launch one’s satellites.

Back to the satellites, and lots of conjecture.

The small size and mass of the satellites may mean the satellites are very, very inexpensive when compared with the costs of building geostationary satellites. The number of satellites means SpaceX may benefit from assembly line production of satellites not yet seen in the space industry (although I would bet that China could change this very, very quickly). Looking at what the company did with rockets, the satellites themselves are probably not anything special. We see some of that already on the FCC filing. When SpaceX constructed its rockets, it did not to introduce anything exotic and stuck with tried and true technologies. The company just made them better and used them differently. It helps the company that it also seems more willing than most to take risks.

But the satellites themselves probably aren’t the reason SpaceX and other companies building similar constellations are confident. The confidence may be more about the market, politics, and lack of choice.

In the United States, people generally have put up with very, very mediocre or worse broadband. Even paying more for broadband is no guarantee it will be fast or good. But the other side of this monopoly is there is no real alternative to the one cable provider–and DSL is not a cable competitor. This means, then, that at the very least, citizens in the U.S. might be very willing to jump the cable-monopoly ship with no hesitation, IF the other alternative is significantly better, with significantly better customer service, and is cheaper. Politically and mindshare-wise, cable companies are viewed with the sort of contempt and resentment reserved for tax collectors. It’s one of the reasons why trends like cord-cutting are growing annually (https://bgr.com/2018/03/20/best-home-internet-vs-cable-2018/).

Data communications is growing. Streaming television requirements may demand more bandwidth as images become higher resolution. People will probably have more than a smartphone with them (they may not even have a smartphone–but that’s a discussion for another time), which means more communications devices per person. This implies networked communications isn’t even close to becoming saturated, as devices that serve our needs become smaller, more efficient, and less obtrusive. These devices will be ubiquitous and reliable as people expect them to work, all the time, every time. Homes and cars will be extremely networked for energy efficiency reasons, safety, security, and convenience. And to think that other people around the world, in poorer countries, won’t want those things is to ignore history.

The silliness of bandwidth and speed caps will need to be left behind for this kind of future. Broadband will need to be more affordable. And broadband infrastructure needs to be ready to take this on, whether from space or on the Earth. In the U.S., at least, the terrestrial broadband companies don’t appear remotely ready, and even seem to be attempting to turn back the clock. Which may be why constellations like SpaceX’s are appealing to entrepreneurs and represent some ray of hope to potential consumers.

The kind of orbits these new satellites are in will allow access to broadband ANYWHERE on the globe. The orbits are so close to the Earth that these companies believe their versions of space broadband will be faster. This appeals to gaming nerds and might be perfect for Internet of Things devices. And SpaceX has noted this constellation might also be helpful in aiming communications out, towards, say, Mars. Which means the company does not necessarily need to rely on the rotation of the planet to bring ground stations into view of Mars. But 12,000 seems overkill for that purpose.

However, these satellites are capable of serving broadband customers who could potentially come from many different markets, not just somewhere on 1/3 of the Earth’s face. And, if these satellites are cheap, it may not cost much to deorbit an outdated one and send up an upgraded, more capable satellite–just like Planet and Spire have been doing with their cubesats. Upgrade-ability is desirable in the minds of these newer potential space operators, and longevity equates to irrelevance. And the price for the constellation is cheap (https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/19/spacex-wants-to-give-you-satellite-internet.aspx)!

Yes, I said cheap! Conjecture continues in the next post.

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Posted in Communications satellites, Interesting articles, Opinion, Space Operations