Good article on "Risk Management" about Dr Ken Atkins (UIUC PhD Aerospace Eng, my Dad was Prof & Dept Head).
http://askmagazine.nasa.gov/pdf/pdf14/61608main_14_stardust_atkins.pdf
UIUC produced 3 Space Shuttle astronauts
[ all with military backgrounds like Dr Atkins, he was with SAC Vietnam 1958 - 1966, I assume flying B52 bombing runs. Steve Nagel, Joe Archambault, Scott Altman (commander for both Hubble repair missions) ]
& had a rich collaboration/partnership with Caltech/JPL via my Dad. The Mars Rover missions (incl the recent MSL Mars Science Laboratory) had some key contributions fro UIUC alumni, students & faculty.
He hired 3 Caltech Aerospace Eng PhDs for his Dept, since his mentor was Dr Bruce Hicks (Caltech PhD..advisor was Nobelist Linus Pauling) who co-founded CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) at UIUC, which my Dad took over.
[ CFD (aka "wind tunnel on a computer" is a key Technology for Indycar, Formula 1, NASCAR...Motorsports. Something EVERY car company (Audi, Ferrari, Toyota, Porsche, Nissan, et al) are involved as a Durability/Reliability test-bed. Also designing aerodynamically slippery (drag coefficient) production cars. My Dad hired a wind-tunnel aerodynamicist Dr Michael Selig, who later consulted for Newman-Haas Racing (Indycar): 3 wins in 6 races for Michael Andretti. I currently have an Indycar project I'm working on
Martin forgot to lookup his old UIUC friends for Tesla Motors, since NCSA (National Ctr for Supercomputing Applications..UIUC/Cornell/UCSD/Minnesota) could have been brought in to help with the Roadster "drag coefficient". NCSA was founded by UIUC astronomer Dr Larry Smarr (in adjoining building ACP, Advanced Computation Building), who even visited our Coordinated Science Lab, where Martin & myself were at. The most famous NCSA spinoff is NCSA Mosaic (Marc Andreesen of Netscape fame) & Spyglass Technology (Internet Explorer which was bought by Microsoft) ]
You will recall that Caltech engineers Alan Cocconi & Wally Rippel did their pioneering work in development of General Motors EV1 prototype at Aerovironment (founded by legendary Caltech Aeronautics PhD Dr Paul Macready). Martin Eberhard later SAVED Alan's company (AC Propulsion) during his quest for an "electric sports car", whose PEM (Power Electronics Module) was licensed for the Tesla Roadster. He got a referral to Elon Musk/SpaceX from ACP (after they wouldn't take their TZero prototype into a production car)
"there's this guy Elon Musk who is talking about the same thing like you..production of EV"
which setup that pivotal meeting at SpaceX between Elon & Martin, that resulted in the initial funding for Tesla Motors (40 million)
[ Incidentally, my dad was at Coordinated Science Lab (3rd floor), while mysef/Martin/Steve Cross (former Vice President Georgia-Tech & President GTRI..GaTech Research Inst) were on 2nd floor..AARG (Advanced Automation Research Group) = Robotics/Computer Vision/Artificial Intelligence, the CORE Technology for Autonomous Vehicle Navigation ("robot cars"), e.g. Google Car ]
The above is an example of "Innovation Ecosystem" (term used by Judy Estrin, who worked with Martin E on his previous startups & was recruited to Tesla Motors BoD, who left during the early 2008 "Tesla bloodbath" along with Wally Rippel)
Closing the Innovation Gap by Judy Estrin
how leading Univs produce KEY people in Tech. It's NO ACCIDENT that you see the "convergence" of UIUC & Caltech engineers (Electrical Engineering & Aeronautics), there is a long history of cooperation/partnership between these 2 Univs:
1) Thomas Everhart (UIUC Chancellor) became Caltech President (1987 - 1997)
his name appeared in "Who Killed the Electric Car", in a negative sense. More info at Caltech Oral Histories.
2) JPL Director (Lew Allen 1982 - 1990) was a UIUC PhD Physics & 4-star General
The glaring thing about Tesla Motors, is that the UIUC & Caltech component is GONE (Martin & Wally Rippel casualties in "bloodbath") The standout at Tesla is the CTO JB Straubel (Stanford Engineering alumni)
"It's all about [ quality ] PEOPLE"
-- XX, DoD (Dept of Defense) consultant, "How to win Wars"
Needs effective leaders & engineers. Which is the evaluation meter for Tesla Motors & Fisker.
With above as perspective (Fisker impending doom, Tesla Motors "adaptation"), here is the bottomline:
LESSONS
• Effective budget planning considers not only how
much money a project requires, but also when the
money is needed.
• Many times, project success isn’t the result of not
making mistakes; it’s the result of having the courage to
face mistakes head on and take action.
It's the same lessons as in Motorsports:
"ability to deal with ADVERSITY"
I.e., it won't be a perfect ride..there will be bumps in the road (crashes, lap-traffic, equipment problems, etc).
"Life is 20% what happens to you, 80% HOW YOU RESPOND TO IT"
Here is another good sequence:
That’s when I learned that it’s one thing to put the
money together. It’s another thing to put it into all the
right buckets, and it’s an even more crucial thing to get
it out in a timely fashion. As we worked through the
problem with LMA, our contractor, it was clear we had
been overly optimistic in how much time their subcon*
tractor, Motorola, would need to prepare a new contract
for the transponders. We also discovered that another
LMA project already had a contract in place for the same
transponders we needed to buy. If we could act quickly
we could simply “add” our units to that contract, but we
needed about $11 to $13 million immediately
...
Stardust was successfully launched on February 7,
1999. It has been flying extremely well, and has spent
quite a bit of time with its collector exposed to the
stardust mentioned early on in this story. It’s on its way,
hopefully, to a successful fly-through with the comet in
January 2004—and a return to earth in 2006 with both
comet particles and stardust. I was even able to give
money back at the end of the development and launch
phase of the project, almost a million dollars.
This thing about cash flow is something that I’m
now preaching to all the proposal teams in my current
role as a review board member. At the beginning of a
project, cash flow is king. The reason I had this screwup was because I had looked at my overall budget and
said, “We can do this.” I was inexperienced, and I didn’t
see cash flow as an issue.
I started this story by talking about my days of
excitement in the Air Force. I’ll finish by talking about
times of leisure now in my semi-retirement. I’ve played a
lot of golf during my life, but I never took any lessons. So,
frustration with my game and results has a long history.
Just recently, I faced the fact that I had no clue as to
what I was doing wrong. I went out and hired a pro to
help me. At the first lesson, he said, “Here’s how your
grip needs to be.” And he went through a lot of other
things, but the bottom line was, “If you don’t set up
correctly, you can’t hit the shot.” You can imagine how
that line struck home!
And this is what’s key to the story I just told about
Stardust. If you don’t have that cash flow set up correctly
along with the budget and the schedule, you can’t “hit
the shot” and you’re going to be in trouble.
