Is Microsoft the NASA of Software Companies?

Microsoft and NASA Frankenlogo

Both Microsoft and NASA unquestionably have done great things and have arguably contributed to the United States and the world in significant ways. Both are often criticized for undelivered projects or for having too much inertia that reflects the "good old days" rather than being set up for the future. As someone who has had two feet in the software industry for almost two decades, at Microsoft for over two years and a space enthusiast for years, I've been wondering about this: Is Microsoft the NASA of software companies?

A lifetime ago. His.

Oded's name on his tombstone

Twenty three years passed this month since my older brother, Oded, died of a gunshot of his own Beretta gun. A second accident (the first made a hole in a wall and nothing more) or not - the answers disappeared with his last breath which spawned only questions, should-have-beens and might-have-beens. A period of time that was a blur between graduating high-school, having a first girlfriend, starting college and numbness. It was a time of forming barriers and taking other barriers down, of missing a beat, catching a breath and being stumped by the simple question whether I have any brothers or sisters. The great wall of China was being built with not many people who had the key to the gates, and who suffered for it the most. And on that wall, unspoken truths and spray-painted "I am OK". Fairly, at the end of the day, I was. After all, I did finish high-school, got my Electrical Engineering degree, built a family of my own and carried on a normal life altered from how it would be if that day in May 1991 didn't end like it did. A lifetime ago. His lifetime ago.

SpaceX Glitches - Countering Over-Engineering

Over-engineering? (Portland, OR)

SpaceX is arguably the most successful private/commercial/new space company to date. After being the third country entity to develop the technology and hardware that can bring cargo to the International Space Station and back, it's taking strides towards bringing people to the coveted destination in the sky, working on a version 1.12.0 of the Falcon 9 rocket and also on a reusable rocket, the Grasshopper.

With all the success SpaceX is having, we should not forget the problems and misses of recent launches, for example an shut-down in-flight and problems with thrusters required to get the Dragon to the ISS when in orbit.
From the SpaceX Updates page:

After Dragon achieved orbit, the spacecraft experienced an issue with a propellant valve. One thruster pod is running. We are trying to bring up the remaining three. 

One may look at these issues and be concerned about SpaceX design, manufacturing quality, engineering, redundancy and what not. I am actually encouraged by these glitches.

Past and Future of Spaceflight at the Museum of Flight

Last weekend was a celebration of space at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. A Yuri's Night party and SpaceUp Seattle provided for both a celebration of the beginning of manned spaceflight 52 years ago and some contemplation about the future through part what's being done today, part what could be done.

I've Seen Moon-Walkers, and They're Old

I've seen moon-walkers face to face. I shook hands and exchanged words with Buzz Aldrin, Gene Kranz and watched many others as they got a standing ovation at the Museum of Flight gala in September. The youngest moon walker, Charles Duke, is 77 years old. All of their space-expansion glory dates back to 1969 - 1972. When I saw these amazing people a realization that accompanied my inspiration was that they were old. Not only that, they are also the only ones that did this. Unlike other positive beginnings, this one seems more like a blip on our terrestrial bound existence rather than a the sign of things to come. Am I simply impatient?

Aircraft Water Egress Course, an Anti-Complacency Pill

Getting ready to go underwater. Credit: Guillaume Fortin

Complacency... When one thinks about aircraft crash landing, be it an airplane, a helicopter or maybe a suborbital spacecraft, that's not the word that usually comes to mind. On November 19 I drove up from my home in Issaquah WA to Langley BC in order to learn why it is enemy number one when the craft or pilot fail and how to escape a drowning airplane the right way (i.e. alive).

Wings of Heroes Gala - Space Reunion at the Museum of Flight

When I moved to Seattle now almost two years ago with my family to try my luck at Jeff Bezos's bigger of his two companies (not Blue Origin), little did I know that one of the opportunities that to open up would be to share a tent (one fit for tuxedos and evening dresses) and dinner with five decades of space icons flown-in from across the United States and beyond to a museum less than twenty miles from my home. All that and more took place at the the Wings of Heroes Gala on September 22 2012 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Cheering Human Curiosity on Mars

Human curiosity is now on Mars. While no human is in the flesh on the red planet, a car-sized 6-wheeled rover of human creation landed on Mars on August 5th. The humans who sent it there knew it landed at 10:31pm Pacific time, which was about 14 minutes after it actually did. I was one of the about 600 people who came that evening to the Museum of Flight in Boeing Field, Seattle WA, to congregate with fellow space enthusiasts, hear about the landing challenges from people who made it possible and share the excitement and anticipation of the unfolding crazy-complex landing full of firsts.

Launching West - Israeli Space

Prof. Ehud Behar (left) and me after his talk, 26 July 2012

The Washington Israel Business Council (WIBC) and American Technion Society (ATS) organized an evening on July 26 consisting of a light dinner and presentation by Prof. Ehud Behar, Director of the Asher Space Research Institute (ASRI) at the Technion university in Haifa, Israel. The event took place at the closest place to space in Seattle, the Columbia tower, on the seventy-fourth floor. Prof. Behar talked about space research in Israel in the past and present.

This was Prof. Behar's last appearance in a two-week tour of the US. He is an eloquent speaker posessing the landmark Israeli accent that I share as well. Fluent in English, he kept his audience of about seventy engaged, weaving trade humor into his talk.

Space Shuttle, Mercury and Paper Airplanes

Today is Father's Day, at least in the United States. It's a day of appreciating one's father, and in our family it is one of two days every year when I get to have breakfast in bed. It is a day of reflection about my relationship with my kids and as pertaining to this blog, pondering whether my interest in space rubs off on them.

In 2010 we bought our kids a special calendar, where every day can be folded and/or cut into a different paper airplane. They were nine years old and it seemed like something they would take on and enjoy. They did (for a short time, at least) and then the calendar got "stuck" in some date fairly close to the beginning of the year.

My NASTAR Experience - Ground Training for Space Launch

One week in March I got to live a bit of my space aspiration. No, I didn't go to space (I continued to ride spaceship Earth). What I did was to go through two segments of commercial astronaut training. After AGSOL near Boston it was time for NASTAR near Philadelphia. Over three days I went up to a simulated 25,000ft altitude in a hypobaric chamber and went on simulated flights that exposed me to real 3.5Gz, 6Gx and most exciting of all, a virtual ride on SpaceShipTwo.

NASTAR is a place that trains many types of people, from fighter jet pilots to aspiring astronauts and space tourists. Over the past five years, after being spun-off of a manufacturing facility for centrifuges, altitude chambers and simulators, it formed several training programs around suborbital flight. The one I went through with seven other men and women was Suborbital Scientist Training, meant for people who will not only go to space as tourists, but will actually need to function in the few minutes of weightlessness rather than just admire the view. My plan B is to win the lottery...

Nauseating Education - or - Educational Nausea

The place - AGSOL - Ashton Graybiel Situational Orientation Lab, at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. A group of adults in a basement have been creating rides for decades. What kind of rides? Think amusement park rides without color or sugar coating. Without sun-light or food stands. In this twilight zone several experts research ways to measure, adapt-to and maybe some day avoid this set of phenomena named motion sickness and spatial disorientation.

The time - Monday, March 12th 2012 at 9:30am. Paul McCall, a fellow Astronauts4Hire member and I were the second and third people to go through a new 1.5-day protocol designed to give a person wishing to become a commercial astronaut awareness through exposure to motion sickness, spatial illusions and disorientation. The experience can be described as nauseating education, or more aptly, educational nausea.

Playing with the Solar System

One of the more engaging games for the iPhone is Scribblenauts Remix. What makes it interesting compared to the plethora of games for the platform (Angry Birds, anyone?) is that in order to solve each level one must ask for objects to be put in the game, which will help solve the presented problem. The variety of options is huge. You can ask for nearly anything - materials, buildings, animals, other people, clothes and even wings. Items can be held by your scribblenaut, vehicles can be used to move around and animals can be mounted or engaged in combat.

A cool part that's actually outside of the actual game play is the start screen, where you can add anything you want to try things out. I decided to try and add a space shuttle. It magically appeared on the screen, hurray! I had my scribblenaut character climb on board. It operates more like a Star-Trek shuttle and doesn't need rockets to move around even at ground level - how convenient is that... I then added our sun (easily hanging it in the sky) and the nine planets (we still love you, Pluto!).

The result is below, I hope you get a chuckle and try the game as well. The possibilities are very close to endless...

Space Shuttle and Solar System - the Scribblenaut Remix version

John Glenn 50th Anniversary Angry Mob

Don't tell me you're not pissed. I mean, WT*? 50 years ago John Glenn went to space and I can't do it yet? Oh, wait. No one can do it from US soil at the moment, there's progress for you, damn right!

Really? What happened to all the dreams of being able to exercise my right to throwing my shoe at the TV at 0 gravity? What happened to all the O'Neil Colonies and sh*t? Yes, I watch PBS, I'm not stupid!

But tell me one, thing, really. Where did all the money go? They are hiding gold bars on the International Space Stashion. And that's not a typo. Why else would they build this pile of cans that look like a cheap knock-off Lego set that can't go anywhere or create gravity or purify everyone's pee? You know what, even if they PAID me I wouldn't go. They don't ever BBQ there. To light a rocket under you is fine, but have some good steak, that's too much. 100 billion dollars and no patio. I want some answers, darn-it!

I mean, geez, where's Spock? WHERE'S SPOCK?!?

Anyway, did you all see Apollo 18 and that Transformers movie? One of them is lying, they can't both be telling the truth. And they both cover up what really happened. But I can't tell you because I'd have to kill you. That's right. Newsflash - the aliens are here. Just look at my mother in law.

And what about all those internet billionaires making rockets? Don't they have better stuff to do with their money, like hire lawyers or buy some bling or solve some real space problem other than whose (rocket) is bigger? I mean, do something useful like develop cars that run on compost or something...

At any rate, if you see Buzz tell him both me and my kid are pissed at him too. For $39.99 it should have been real laser.

Amazon Leadership Principles for Space - Customer Obsession

In the first post about the Amazon Leadership Principles for space I listed the principles and stated their importance in the life of an Amazonian. In this post we'll look at Customer Obsession.

1. Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Amazon Leadership Principles... for Space

For the past year I have been working for Amazon, a company that needs little introduction (at least in the United States), whose charismatic founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, also has a less known space company, Blue Origin. Embedded in the company DNA, Amazon Leadership Principles are more than company values. They are a language, the terminology used to describe and understand accomplishments and failures in the company, the filter through which the performance of employees is reviewed by their managers and peers every year and throughout the year. These are the ten commandments (Amazon had to do better, so there are fourteen...), embodying the rise and fall of operating at Amazon.

USA Today Special Issue Ads - a Glimpse of the Future

Holding an "end of an era".
Photo: Yanir Govrin

In July, USA Today published a special edition called "End of an Era" commemorating and summarizing the space shuttle era. On the cover, Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-129, seconds after lift-off. Inside, a plethora of articles about everything shuttle - the missions, the tragedies and the people. What really caught my eye were the ads in-between. Unlike your regular USA Today which contains ads for anything, from anti-acne lotions to once-in-a-lifetime-opportunities to get previously forgotten gold coins, this issue is chock-full of space related ads.

Browsing through the magazine I found myself leaving behind our economical woes and the pause in U.S. human spaceflight and drifting into a future where there are too many spacecraft to count, where spaceflight is a frequent activity and where being a space tourist or researcher is as normal as being an engineer at a technology company.

Honey, Don't Forget the Replicator!

A little over a year ago I went camping with my family near Grand Lake, Colorado. We had everything we needed - tent, stove, air inflatable mattresses and rechargeable pump (we left the flat-screen TV at home, what more can you ask for?). On the second day we had a problem we didn't anticipate - the beautiful Colorado summer weather turned its face - a swift but fierce hail storm broke one of the fiberglass poles of our tent, more precisely the metal joint that puts them together. We found a repair kit in the nearest town, but needed pliers to get the broken piece off and put the new one from the repair kit on. Being on a paid-for campground (OK, I admit, we even had power and running water, not exactly the wilderness...) we conveniently borrowed one from a friendly neighbor. A short time later the tent was as good as new apart from Duct-tape (look at the bottom of the page for another example of my Duct-tape mastery) replacing what was once a clear triangular skylight, heavily perforated by the hail storm.

What if instead of a campground I were somewhere in deep space and instead of Amnon Govrin my name was Jean-Luc Piccard? Then I'd be on the Starship Enterprise, of course, where a replicator could in seconds create nearly anything, from a cup of tea (cup included) or, in my case, pliers.

Last Shuttle Launch, Second Last for Atlantis

It's epic, it's heart wrenching, it's an end of an era, enter other cliché here: __________________________.

It is, after all, the last flight of space shuttle Atlantis and the last flight of any space shuttle. Ever. If you're reading this over the weekend chances are you missed it, but that's OK because thanks to modern technology accelerated by the space program (CCD cameras and computers) you will be able to watch it easily on YouTube or NASA TV. Missing it means you don't really care that much about the U.S. government space program, possibly because you don't care for space in general. It is, after all, the final frontier and you (or the United States or the world) have a lot to get through before that becomes a priority. Alternatively you may be very busy helping usher the Commercial-Space era once the Space-Shuttle era comes to an end on July 8 (a much better proposition than the Soyuz era or the Russian-Space-Capitalism era or Who's-Laughing-Now-And-Who's-Paying-56-Million-Dollars-Per-Seat era).

Reflections on my Birthday, TIME for Kids and Space

My birthday cake (taken by my son Yotam)

It's my birthday today. Nothing round or big, just a solid 38. Waking up on ones' birthday means growing up one day like any other, but becoming one year older has significance far more than that one extra day. The kid in me has a hard time relating to the chum in the mirror with white hairs popping everywhere on his head and face, almost expecting to still see a younger self.

Space is serious business. Many challenges, many triumphs, also tragedies. For me and kids of all ages it's a source of inspiration, even a way to keep the child in me alive. Watching the shuttle launch last year left me, if only for a short time with the uninhibited worry-free joy of a young child getting a balloon. Yes, it takes a lot more to induce this feeling when you've matured beyond balloons and lollipops, but that feeling is still there, waiting to be cultivated and nurtured. TIME for Kids, a TIME magazine for the younger crowd, helps inspiring the next generation.