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.