Dave's random mumblings…

Just six years ago Bush talked about a new wave of space exploration that was designed in part to make NASA relevant in the eyes of the public. It was time to leave Low Earth Orbit, head back to the moon and perhaps onto Mars.

Aerospace companies started setting up for a huge payday, engineers (including me) were excited by doing proper engineering research and the public (who were ultimately footing the bill) got a little excited about it for a while. Then along came huge federal deficits, and public support went onto the next shiny thing (and I don’t blame the public, engineers are not exciting to watch).

The Moon does not make a lot of sense to me, we’ve been there and there is not that much more to prove. The idea of using it as a launch pad for Mars was spurious at best, why launch from Earth (gravity well A), to the Moon (gravity well B) and then onto Mars. Seems easier and more efficient to go from Earth to Mars (actually low earth orbit to Mars), but I’m just a taxpayer.

NASA has had huge success with its unmanned programs. Hubble telescope has been sending back incredible pictures and a lot of very important data for close to 20 years. The two Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are still sending back data after four years on the red planet.

Manned spaceflight is a while different animal. The budget is X dollars and the cost for all that the agency has committed too seems to be way more than X.

NASA is committed to the International Space Station for only another five years. Even though the building phase is complete it’s still a huge budget eater. Politically NASA is committed to walking away from something that’s taken 20 years to build after five years of full operation.

After disposing of the ISS (to partners or bringing it down into the ocean) NASA is supposed to go back to the moon by 2020. The task of going to the moon was given to NASA by the previous administration and not adequately funded. With federal budgets so tight something clearly has to give, it’s too early to call for the end to manned space exploration, even if many scientists question the value.

I think the space program should be about goals, and not places. If the goal is exploration and “going where no man has gone before” then be clear about it, enlist international partners and go do it.

If it’s doing science then lets do it, fund the really exciting unmanned stuff and make ISS useful and doing fundamental research beyond 2015.

Reading industry press it’s claimed by many that the budget as it is today is not enough to do both in a meaningful way. I think doing one or the other properly, and either forgetting the other or doing enough to keep it ticking along. Doing both half-arsed seems a waste of money, time and engineering talent.

The ISS shows international cooperation works. White papers have suggested NASA needs to join with the Russians, Europeans and potentially the Chinese to explore the solar system, including flybys of Mars and the asteroids. I don’t think the US taxpayers would accept plans to include China, a country that is currently subject to a U.S. embargo on space technology. .

Obama will ultimately set the goals and budget. He’s called himself a “space buff”, and needs to lay out the vision for the future of spaceflight, both manned and unmanned. In his State of the Union speech next week he has the chance to clarify the picture, give the goal, produce the funds and then get out the way and let the engineers get on with what they’re good at (blowing budget and running late?).

The new legislation put into place by the Tory govenment that was designed to take certain power away from the unions was not really tested untill the miners strike of 1984. In 1981 the Conservative government threatened to close 23 pits, the unions threatened to strike and the government withdrew the planned closures. Many feel that that the confrontation with the free market government and the heavily subsidized coal miners has just been pushed out rather than truly averted.

That year the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in Yorkshire passed a resolution all but guaranteeing a strike should pits be closed for any reason other than exhaustion of the coal or geological problems that can’t be overcome. Because of the regional manner that the NUM was set up, this resolution was only binding in Yorkshire.

A couple of years later Ian McGregor was appointed to run the National Coal Board (NCB). The NCB controlled all nationalized coal mining in the UK and was the employer of the almost 200,000 miners. McGregor had previously turned around the nationalized British Steel company, taking from possibly the least efficient steel maker in Europe to breaking even. This was done by laying off about half the workforce over a two year period, and the NUM were rightfully concerned that his mandate as head of the NCB was similar.

In early 1984 McGregor announced the closure of 20 mines and the loss of 20,000 jobs. The reason given was to rationalize the public subsidy given to the industry by closing the most unprofitable pits. The government realized a strike was possible, perhaps even probable, and had taken steps.  Coal was being stockpiled by the power stations, a number of power plants were converted from coal to to oil fired and  signing contracts with road haulage companies incase the railways union, ASLEF, struck in sympathy or refused to cross picket lines.

The reaction from the NUM was predictable. Immediately 6000 Yorkshire miners walked off the job over the lack of consultation and called a strike vote for the 5th of March. The NCB announced that five pits (two in Yorkshire, one each in County Durham, Kent and Scotland) were to be closed with in 5 weeks.

On March 12th the NUM president Arthur Scargill announced the miners strike was to be nationwide.

The strength of feeling and observation of the strike was regional, and the government used this in an early attempt to break the union. The call to strike was almost universally observed in the coalfields of Yorkshire, Scotland, the North-East, South Wales and Kent, coincidently the places under most threat

In the huge fields of Lancashire miners were split, however the Lancashire union leaders stated the strike was official and would be respected. No ballot of the workers was ever called by the NUM and Nottinghamshire, an area where pits had been modernized, the mines were efficient and had significant reserves used this as the premise to ignore the strike call.

The NUM leadership and Arthur Scargill in particular allowed each region to call for the strike and never called a national ballot. There were a number of reasons for this. Most importantly it’s not clear that a majority would have voted to strike. Nottingham called a ballot and about 70% in the district rejected the call to strike.  Traditionally strikes have been used to protest wages or working conditions, there is no history of using then to protest closure in the UK.

As the strike wore on there were increasingly violent clashes, the largest and most infamous was the so called “Battle of Orgrave”. It took place near Rotherham in June ’84, about 5,000 miners confronted about the same number of police, some mounted on horseback. This was just the most widely reported of a series of violent riots that took place over the summer resulting in the death of a taxi driver transporting a working miner to work.

The government mobilized police from all over the country to ensure the rights of those that chose to cross the picket lines. There was a policy of not using local police in the districts, the government preferred to bring in police to ensure there was little sympathy between the two sides.

The strike itself did not result in any day-to-day disruption or any significant impact to industry. Unlike previous strikes there were no power cuts and the electric generators were able to keep supplies flowing throughout the strike.

The strike officially ended in March 1985, almost exactly a year after it started. There was no new agreement between the union and the NCB. During a conference called to vote on returning to work Kent was the only NUM district that voted to stay out.

In 1983 the UK had 170 working mines and employed close to 200,000. In 2009, this number had decreased to four and less than 6,000. There was a significant round of closures in the early 90′s and there was very little protest from with in in the industry, despite there arguably being significantly more sympathy for the miners than there was in 1984.

Nottinghamshire miners had been led to believe that their jobs were relatively safe, but more mines in the district were closed by 1994. This was seen as a betrayal of promises the government had made to non-striking miners. They believed that their jobs would be safe and their industry had a future.

I must tell you … that what we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law, and it must NOT succeed. It must not succeed. There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it…. The rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob”

Margaret Thatcher, 1984

We’ve had riot shields, we’ve had riot gear, we’ve had police on horseback charging into our people, we’ve had people hit with truncheons and people kicked to the ground…. The intimidation and the brutality that has been displayed are something reminiscent of a Latin American state

Arthur Scargill, 1984

Untill the mid 80′s the unions in the UK held considerable power, they elected political leaders, could force changes of government and to this day hold substantial power in the British Labour party.

John Smith was only Labour leader for a brief time, under his leadership the party accelerated the reforms started by Neil Kinnock that were designed to make the party electable on a national level once again. Had this reinvention of the party not happened I think it would have been almost impossible for Labour to come to power in 1997 under Tony Blair.

Arguably John Smiths biggest single contribution to making the Labour party relevant was getting rid of the trade union block votes and despite considerable trade union opposition establishing a policy of “one-member, one-vote”. Previously the unions had dominated the party by owning huge blocks of votes, the number depended on the number of members of that particular union and together far outweighed the ordinary members of the party. This policy of bloc-votes dated back to an attempt by other political parties to delay the formation of the party in the late 1800′s.

A series of strikes action by multiple unions during the winter of 1978-79, known as the “Winter of discontent” clearly contributed to the downfall of the James Callaghan’s Labour government. Ironically Callaghan was a staunch a trade-unionist (and could not have become Labour leader had he not) but also a realist. Inflation was high, the economy was shaky and the government had appealed for unions to exercise pay restraint, as part of the government’s policy to control inflation.

The government attempted to limit unions to a 5% pay rise led, this call was ignored when Ford negotiated a 18% pay rise with it’s manufacturing unions and the rest of the motor sector was required to followed suit.  This led to government requests for pay restraint to being widely ignored across the private sector.

This led to widespread official and unofficial strikes across the country in both the private and public sectors starting in late ’78. Lorry drivers, power station workers, rubbish collectors, rail workers, nurses, ambulance drivers and perhaps most infamously grave diggers all walked out. This led to a feeling of crisis in the country. I recall nightly scenes of picketed hospitals, heaps of rubbish, piles of coffins and sitting in the living room with lit candles as we lost power once again.

The effect on public opinion was considerable, in a little over three months Labour went from a 5% lead over the Tories in the polls to 20% behind. This led to Callahan’s government loosing a vote of no-confidence in the house and directly led to the Conservative victory in the 1979 general election.

A major part of the Conservative election platform was to control the growing power and boldness of the unions. The Conservatives under Thatcher made calling a legal strike far more difficult. Wild cat strikes (no-notice walk outs), closed shops (mandatory union membership) and flying pickets (pickets brought in from other trade unions) were all outlawed. The legislation was seen by many as a direct response to the winter of 78/79 that led to the vote of no-confidence in the Callahan government.

I have just finished reading “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Black swan theory is used to explain rare, high impact events that were difficult to predict and leave some notable or significant legacy.

The term “black swan” comes from the European conviction that all swans were white, and all historical data available backed this theory and therefore black swans did not exist. During the 18^th century black feathered swans were discovered in Western Australia, since then the term “black swan” was widely used to denote something that is thought or perceived to be impossible, but none the less happens.

Taleb gives World War 1, the internet, personal computers and the 9/11 attacks as all examples of Black Swan events that have three things in common. Later articles by Taleb (HBR 10/09) include the mortgage meltdown of 08/09 in this list.

First, they were outliers. Each of these events were so far beyond expectations that their very occurrence came as a surprise as there was nothing that pointed to what was coming.

Secondly, the event has an extensive and far had reaching impact.

Third, even though we did not see it coming, we can go back after the event and create a plausible trail of evidence that points to what was going to happen.

This third part is for me particularly interesting. Upon reflection we could see a trail that could lead one to understand that the Black Swan event was coming and do something about it before the full seriousness was realized.

These very low probability, but very high impact events are by definition almost impossible to predict and very difficult to see coming. Traditional risk management largely depends on past experience to predict the future, but this model breaks down totally when there is nothing to compare with.

When a project team starts working on a product introduction into the factory we are tasked with identifying risks and mitigating those risks to reduce both likelihood and impact. We use the experience of each team member to identify, quantify and understand the risk and create a plan to reduce its effects.

Occasionally we get something out of nowhere (a Black Swan event) that no one has seen before that causes the extensive and far reaching impact Taleb talks of.

During and aircraft interior fit at a customer it was discovered that the conversion of some Computer Aided Design (CAD) models from one software system to another had led to the “envelope” of the models to shrink by 10%. This caused the physical and digital mock ups to be incorrect and when the vendor supplied parts that were built to the incorrectly converted models were installed in production nothing fitted and there were substantial gaps between the side and the furnishings.

There was nothing in the teams’ experience that had even suggested this could happen. This was a Black Swan event that caused a six month delay of the aircraft back into service and a knock on that caused the entire retrofit program to be delayed, which in turn had a knock on effect on as the new build became concurrent with the retrofit program instead of following.

Taleb states that with the ever increasing tangles webs of relationships and interdependent actions (in this case vendors, customers, regulatory authorities and three or four internal organizations) that Black Swan events are becoming more and more likely, as an outlier event in just one of these places means a huge impact to the rest.

For me, probably the most important lesson from the book is that it’s better to reduce vulnerability to low-probability/high impact events, rather than trying to anticipate then events themselves. While experience and past lessons learned can help many risks, the true Black Swan events mean that it’s not about controlling what may happen, but to prepare for what can.

I was talking with a friend last night about beautiful machines, mechanical things that are more than the collection of their parts. Today we got in the car and visited what is for me “exhibit A” in this argument – Concorde.

We drove to the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field; one of their star exhibits is Concorde G-BOAG. It sits there next to The City of Everett, the first ever 747, an aircraft that really did fulfil it’s promise and change the world in ways that even it’s designers could not fully imagine.

I used to work in London, a few miles from Heathrow and every morning just before 10 we would clearly hear the morning flight to JFK taxi and then take off. We were a little too far away to have the true window-rattling roar that 4 Rolls Royce Olympus are known for. Every morning meetings were disturbed as Speedbird 01 rolled down the runway and headed over the factory on take-off.

Concorde cost billions in public money to develop, the French and British governments sold the 14 production airplanes and all the spares to British Airways and Air France for 1 pound each.

The UK developed the engines and did a majority of the wings, France did most of the work on the airframe and the politicians argued over who was going to pay for what.  As engineering tasks go many engineers as consider Concorde an achievement that is up there with putting men on the moon, in some aspects tougher.

At one point there were orders for 77 from 22 airlines, these included Iran Air, TWA, Air Canada, United, JAL and Pan-Am in addition to the nationally owned airlines of Britain and France. Oil prices and environmental concerns (mostly around the sonic boom) in the early 70′s meant most of these orders were canceled and in production stopped at 14 aircraft.

The story behind the genesis of Concorde is important and worth looking up if you are bored. The short version is that history shows trying to get the French and British to work together on something costing billions is near impossible. Concorde and the Channel Tunnel are probably the only successful examples, and the Channel Tunnel was dug with private money.

Concorde was only built because both sides were tied into it with a no-get-out clause that would have cost billions. It’s not often I say thank you to politician Tony Benn, but here I, and everyone else who appreciates aesthetics and form owe him as he ensured that it was going to happen.

British Airways found a niche market that allowed the to make a tidy profit. Rumour is they started the London-JFK service and had no idea what to charge. They asked some of the wealthy what they thought it was worth, and charged just that. It was possible to London mid morning and be in downtown Manhattan to join your banker friends for a second breakfast. Then be back in your own bed in London after a full days work

On the other side of the channel Air France never really worked out how to make money with the airplane, and reacted with a typical Gallic shrug when it was retired.

After the accident at Le Bourget it’s time was over, Aerospatiale said they were not going to supply parts anymore and it was over just like that. Concorde may be the only machine retired that did not have a better replacement, there is nothing comparable on the drawing boards of aero engineers anywhere.

Walking around the aircraft I’m reminded once again how beautiful it is. Men with slide rules and pencils designed this in the early 60’s. While some military aircraft could routinely break the sound barrier, they could do so for a few minutes before running out of fuel and needing their Avon engines changed. The idea of building an aircraft that would travel at Mach-2 from London to New York, then turn around and be back in London before the nine O’clock news started must have seemed optimistic at best.

Kubica has confirmed he will stay with Renault for 2010, hardly a surprising decision considering the lack of even remotely competitive options available. Decent drivers looking for rides in January have a certain air of desperation about it. Assuming he wanted to stay in F1 Kubica choices was limited to either staying with Renault or start over with one of the new teams.

Assuming Jamie Alguersuari is confirmed for the second Toro Rosso car, and McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa gets the final seat at Sauber alongside Kobayashi pickings start to get a little thin for drivers.

a quick glance down the entry list shows there are only one even remotely competitive seat available, the second seat at Renault. With the sale by Renault of their F1 operation to an investment fund there is an element of the unknown attached to the team.

I think Peter Sauber taking over the team from BMW and removing the corporate influence will be good for the team. Sauber has proved in the past he knows how to run and develop a team, and now he is free to run it his way it will hopefully make a difference.

Looking further down the grid at the new teams and there are some significant questions, top of which is US-F1. They have not announced either driver and Bernie Ecclestone has been vocal in his concerns about the team being on the grid in March. Jose-Maria Lopez is supposed to have raised the money required, but nothing formal has been announced.

The other new boys look to be in better shape. Lotus and Virgin have each announced very solid lineups with some accomplished drivers in Trulli, Kovalainen and Glock. If they are given a decent car they should comfortably make the grid. Campos has not announced its second driver and it seems every F2 driver with a decent chunk of sponsorship has been linked to it.

Mclaren

1 – Button

2 – Hamilton

Mercedes

3 – Rosberg

4 – Schumacher

Red Bull

5 – Vettel

6 – Webber

Ferrari

7 – Massa

8 – Alonso

Williams

9 – Barrichello

10 – Hulkenberg

Renault

11 – Kubica

12 – TBD

Force India

14 – Sutil

15 – Liuzzi

Toro Rosso

16 – Buemi

17 – TBD (Alguersuari?)

Lotus F1

18 – Trulli

19 – Kovalainen

Campos Meta

20 – TBD

21 – Senna

US F1

22 – TBD (Lopez?)

23 – TBD

Virgin

24 – Glock

25 – Di Grassi

BMW (Sauber)

26 – Kobayashi

27 – TBD (de la Rosa)