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#11
November 21st 04, 07:25 PM
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Mike Coslo wrote in message ...
N2EY wrote: In article , (Brian Kelly) writes: snippage Lemmee explain it for you: There's a collection of grouchy old farts including myself with long histories in the real-life engineering world who also hang out around here and learned a long time ago how to approach and execute projects like you're now committed to pulling off. Because that's what we get paid to do. Perhaps wrongly, more likely not, we don't have a helluva lotta time for approaching projects like ballooning to 100,000 feet with science fair project mentalities. Interpret as you will. The trick is that the volunteer folks don't have the paycheck incentive. Just the reverse - such a project costs them money! So the motivation has to be elsewhere. Then again, I'm not looking for grouchy old farts. If a person is "too (something)" for the project, then they certainly don't have to help. Yup. There are enough people out there apparently like myself that are too dumb to know that what we are trying to do can't be done. Certainly it can be done. It's HOW you do the planning to get from here to 100K feet which is the source of the grousing from us technoids. It is also a big mistake to take my sales pitch and extrapolate that I have a science fair mentality. A fair number of engineers have the "grouchy old fart" problem. That's why they don't do a good job outside of their respective fields. Ever have a crack engineer explain his project at a sales pitch? You jest! Wannna hear about how this grouchy old fart pitched his radical design concept for a big piece of machiney to Boeing about ten years ago? Thought so. Net result was that 8 months later and against eight much bigger gun bidders we had it running in the Boeing facility and they shipped the check for $1.5 million bucks. About a year later they didn't bother with the bidding process when they bought the second one based on the success of it's predecessor. One of my brothers was a hot-shot engineer with DuPont early in his career and went on to retire as CEO and President of an industry-leading mechanical technology firm which he built from 550 employees and $55m in sales to 1,600 employees and $250m in sales in nine years. The engine behind the growth was the engineering department. Former CEOs didn't think engineers mattered much. When he took over the company he had *four* engineers. So he went out and hired several hundred more. Bingo. Jim has met that brudder, he knows .. . . Then comes my father's cranky old buddy John Glass who had both ME and EE degrees from MIT. John started his company on one end of my one of my father's shop benches. He was marketing and sales manager's worst nightmare but his company is now a division of Northrop-Grumman. John left a $55m estate. But you're right about locking some engineers in the back shop under some conditiona and I've had to do that. The worst of the worst though are the unplugged engineers who stay in school all their lives and become "academics". I'll spare ya that rant, enough is enough. I don't recall Mike ever saying the first ballon would reach 100,000, nor that he'd use latex weather ballons, or even helium, or whatever. The first balloons won't even be free flying. My analysis of other groups and the problems they have had at times indicates that payload integration was and is a real problem. The device needs tested properly, and not just on a bench. Screw your web-based "analyses" nonsense, that's not a solution, that's a big piece of your problem. Get out from behind your nice comfy keyboard, pack the toolbox, gas up the car and link up with one of the experienced groups which is working on a high-altitude shot. Get yer hands dirty for a couple weekends and learn what's really up before you go at it yourself. That's close to the *first* move I'd make if I was into an effort like this. rest snipped - Mike KB3EIA - w3rv |
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