The Importance of Failure
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Posted
by Jeffrey Manber at
11/13/2009 1:22 PM CST
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Last night I spoke at a really good workshop hosted by the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
The subject was small satellites, and Kirk Woellert, under the able guidance of Dr. Scott Pace, pulled together a high-energy group of speakers to go off on a very high energy topic: small satellites, CubeSats and how they are changing us and we are changing NASA and the space program.
The other speakers were former NASA innovator Liam Sarsfield, NASA senior official Frank Bauer (who warned he was there to talk of his "hobby" meaning ham radios in space and the ASAT organization) and Therese Jorgensen, head of the Cubesat program at the National Science Foundation, as well as myself.
We all spoke with passion of the beauty of small and inexpensive hardware. But funny enough, if there was one common theme I didn't expect to hear, it was just how valuable is the unexpected. In other words, finding something out that was not even part of the planned program.
The speakers highlighted how important is failure to any reseach program. NASA spends years designing every tiny aspect of research hardware to assure no failure in equipment or result. But taking risk in a research program means allowing failure. And failure is good if there is the chance for repeating the experiment, trying something new, trying again, until you get it right.
We are coming now to an era of greater launch capabilities, both sub-orbital and orbital. Soon there may be two platforms for space research. Lots of chances means lots of opportunities.
The key for NASA officials is to lower the costs of their own ISS programs, assure multiple flight opportunities are allowed to flourish and then get out of the way! If the hardware fails, we will fly it again. And maybe learn something unexpected in the process.
CubeSats are the first through the door of this revolution in thinking. Though Liam carefully explained just why we have no dedicated U.S. launches for CubeSats (cost too high for development at too low a cost for flying) I'm sure we are about to enter a new era of "tinkering" in outer space, and that is good for everyone.
After the event I spoke with a officer from a large aerospace company. He spoke of the difficulty of surviving in a space program where more and more lean, commercial ventures are popping up. And, both he and agreed, it is only going to get "worse."
Let's hope so.
