Explore

In 1980 I was 13 years old and had dreams of working in space at some point in my life.  Solid fuel rocket motors, telemetry modules, and star charts littered my bedroom.  With STS-1, Space Shuttle Columbia took it's first voyage to the void and Carl Sagan was my hero.  That was also the year the Planetary Society was started by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman. I was one of the first card-carrying members.  I remember the excitement of receiving my card all the way from Pasadena California, which seemed like a billion miles away for a teenager from British Columbia, Canada.  The card itself was just a piece of paper, but what it represented was important to us as a species, and I was determined to be part of it.

Thirty-six years in, The Planetary Society has been responsible for S.E.T.I. (The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), Rovers on Mars, Lightsails, and a myriad of space science advances. We have driven the mission to discover Pluto and to chart near-Earth objects.  Its 40,000 members have funded research and pooled resources to search the sky for threats and opportunities.  The Society has lobbied governments, penned papers, and built backyard telescopes in the name of discovery and understanding our universe.  There is also an excellent chance you have never heard of it.

This week, astronomers revealed details around the discovery of three Earth-like potentially habitable planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 in the constellation Aquarius.  The data shows seven planets in total with three in the habitable zone.  This may be one of the most important discoveries in space exploration history.  For SETI researchers, this is a gold mine of vast proportions.  While there have been other planets that could potentially support some description of life including Mars and Europa in our solar system, at least one of these new TRAPPST-1 planets could support life very similar to our own.

The discovery is remarkable in many ways and should provide decades of work for space science researchers.  Exobiologists will be examining data and hypothesizing on the possibility of life forms.  Astronomers will be trying to gather as much data as possible to accurately chart the planetary system.  Aerospace engineers will be redirecting their efforts to find ways to improve how we observe that portion of space for some time.  I would not doubt that at least some attention will be directed toward transport technologies to develop better rocket motors.

The TRAPPIST-1 system is more than 39 light-years from Earth.  With current technology, it could take 700,000 years to reach, but engine designs already in the conceptual stage could shorten that to 300 years.  A Heinlein style generation ship powered by a Hawking Starshot engine could be within reach in the next decade.  If a Star Trek style warp drive were a reality, at warp factor 7 (TNG) the trip would take less than 22 days.

I watched the official announcement and press conference with great excitement this week, followed by disappointment reading through the comments sections of posts and articles.  Aside from the obvious trolls who just hate everything and exist only to start a fight, there were genuine comments from people suggesting this was a waste of funds, a hopeless exercise, or useless information.  The number of individuals either commenting that this was junk science or irrelevant to us here on Earth now were overwhelming.   That thinking is just so wrong.

When space science researchers explore, they learn important things about Earth while they are gathering data about space.  We would not have a real understanding of oceanic tides had we not studied the moon.  Kepler's work observing our neighboring planet's interactions created a set of calculations that enable us to see a larger universe.  Recording the creation of new stars in stellar nurseries helps us understand the mechanics of our own sun.  Sending probes and rovers to other planets gives us insight into natural geologic patterns unhampered by humans.  They also allow us to look for colonization opportunities that we may need someday.  Most logical people agree that if the human race is going to survive for the long term, we cannot bank on Earth being our only home.

I am looking forward to following the spin-off research from this discovery over the next few years.  I can only hope that scientists will have the backing and resources they need to do the important work that is ahead of them.

Lifeboat

I first tried the "lifeboat exercise" as part of a business management planning session several years ago, and I found it so useful in helping me stay focused and run a small team that just do it continuously now.  I was surprised to see that this is not standard business practice for many managers so I thought I would write about it here.  It seems that many of the things I do as a business manager are non-standard, but seem valid.  Maybe I really do need to sit down and write that book I have been joking about for a while.

The lifeboat exercise comes from a psychology discussion examining morality under pressure.  Consider this - "You suddenly find yourself in a lifeboat with 15 people. However, it can only support 9. If you were in command, who would you choose to survive?"  The traditional exercise continues on to give a profile of the 15 people, and you have to determine who survives.  This discussion, however, leverages that concept toward business survival and focusing on what your minimum viable team is and how this can bleed over into your personal life.

Small startups go through some well-known growth stages.  At each stage, the founders have some tough decisions to make, but those usually boil down to a choice between getting much bigger and risking everything or downsizing and sacrificing people, projects and dreams.  Even the largest, most successful businesses need to consider the concept of waste and bloat.  I have seen a company with nine CTOs and they indeed had to go through the process of who to keep and who to reassign.

If you manage a team, imagine the CEO coming to you one day in confidence saying that there was a critical need to downsize to keep the doors open.  You may have 10 or 15 direct reports or more, but in order to keep the company afloat, you need to reduce your team to 5.  Who do you retain?  Who needs to be let go?  Who stays on your team and who is valuable but should be reassigned to a different group?  These are tough decisions that no one ever wants to make, but sometimes it happens.  The idea of doing the exercise on a routine basis is to avoid having to make that decision under pressure.  You can tailor that to your own reality so if you have 5 direct reports, maybe you need to reduce that to 3.  

While on the surface that seems like a simple numbers game, the mental process can be gut-wrenching.  If you have fantastically creative and highly motivated people, then losing any one of them could have a critical impact, and that is where it gets really hard.  It forces you to think of the greater good, not only individual contribution, and it forces you to look inward.  You have to at some point consider that YOU may be one of the people left behind.  Do you sacrifice yourself for the good of the organisation?  Would you?

Luckily for me, I have not ever had to follow through on that mental exercise, and I think that is actually a result of doing it in the first place.  When offered the opportunity to expand and hire, I've been able to do a mental check on the results of my last lifeboat exercise and determine that our team could cover temporary workload increases or learn more without expanding unnecessarily.  This has helped to remove the spectre of having to reduce staff in leaner times and the whole team prospers.  I believe when an entire company operates this way, a smaller dedicated team can do amazing things because you are always assessing value and avoiding bloat.

This whole concept can be translated to other things as well.  I consider the same process when developing software.  Can I build a functional deployment with 3 features instead of 5?  Do all the extraneous frills actually add any value, or can you deliver a smaller, but better product?

You can do the same in your personal life too.  Ask yourself if you really need all the "things" in your world or if you could live without.  Ask yourself "If you needed to leave your home tomorrow and you could only take with you what you could put in the back of a pick-up truck, what would those things be?"  Clothes, pictures, furniture, heirlooms and keepsakes?  What is critical, and what is just taking up space in your house?

Running through this mental exercise monthly can save the stress of having to make critical decisions under pressure and helps me streamline my life and my work.  Hopefully sharing this will help you too.