Discussion With New Engineering Group

This thread is dedicated to dialog with the new engineering group. 

The full thread is here.  http://smallblimps.lefora.com/2009/11/15/group-position-statement

Yep, their participation would be good for progress. Teams are great activity boosters, we should have more of them. It'll be neat to see how the Pros downscale their pork pie-in-the-sky specifications to suit the unskilled homebuilder with less than 10K to spend  ;-]

    We need to spam some techy college sites to get their engineering departments involved in the SDC design competition. I know U Va. has done a lift body airship project, seems like other schools would dig it too. I'll look at Embry Riddle college in FL.  Maybe the Lockmarters will spread the word in that sector since they're close to it???

   RE: goals.  Venture Capital, VC was brought up and I think VC is a little grand. It looks for new companies, incorporated companies with dudes that want to work within stinking business structures. So far all we've intended was to get a prototype built and flying!  Yay!
      I think all we need is a prototype with a paper trail that we can sell to an aero manufacturer and split the profits.  Let them suck up to the capitalistas. Aero mfrs are coming out of the woodwork now that Sport Category aircraft are selling. They don't need competition, even if the product is a practical and unique airship. And the paper trail won't be worth a bag of helium since it's mostly available on this forum. But who cares? The world needs this prototype very much. And all I need is to float and fly.  On the cheep!

Prototype Pronto!

Also I am posting my current excel design file. It may be hard to decipher, but if anyone has any questions let me know. 

Attachment: ProjectExcel_3.4.10.xls (140.0KB)

Thanks, all, for the info above. I have family in town this week so haven't had time to think much about what you've posted yet, but what's here definitely gives a high-level feel for where the project is at. It will be next week before I have much time to think a lot more about this.

Are you all interested in doing a webcon/telecon any time soon? If so, should I ask our lady to set up the mikogo group (for free webconning) and skype group (for teleconning)?

Cheers,

Jim

I downloaded the free Mikago and will play with it soon. Let's webmeet on Wednesday eve?  About 6 or 7?

UP! Together.

I'll set up a poll to see how people want to do this and when is a good time. 

Great! Wednesday evening works for me; Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings are already committed. So Wednesday would work well for me. 6 or 7 in what time zone?

Since we are worldwide, maybe we should learn Zulu time. I'm in Atlantic, non daylight savings. Anytime except when "Lost" is on, I'm hooked on that show.
PS  Like the new format. I usually go to 'see more' and see the posts in order of arrival, then can comment on what I want. The PM thing is good.

I hadn't considered the time zone thing.

Lets assume 7 PM central USA, GMT-6. That will be 8 PM eastern, 6 PM mountain, 5 PM pacific, noon in Sydney, 1 AM in London. 

Does that work for most people? Jim says he can't do it M,T,Tr. So that leaves open W,F,S,Sun. I am free any of those days. 

We will need to keep minutes and post them for people who can't attend. 

Hey, guys. I'm John Artus, an associate of Jim Sutton at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. I will plan to be available at 7 pm CST for the Mikogo trial run. I've been going through your forum here and pulling off relevant information for the beginnings of a document that describes the basic goals of this project, the fundamental challenges, etc, and begin to formulate a set of top-level requirements. I will try to have the beginnings of such a description available for the Wednesday meeting. I look forward to meeting you guys. Cheers!

That sounds like 9 pm here, Atlantic standard time. I better look up this Mikogo thing.

Hi, all. Jim again.

Regarding our upcoming webcon, we'll need to find a way to talk as well. Want to do it via Skype? I haven't set up a Skype group before, but shouldn't be too hard. And we have a volunteer (Yvonne Bijan) on our team to do it. Will need everybody's contact info to do it is all. Just let me know, and I'll ask Yvonne.

I thought I'd share for your consideration a handful of systems engineering principles that might be helpful to the project:

- Incrementalism. The cost to develop a system goes up exponentially as the amount of capability in the system increases. Navigaiter (U of F alum by any chance? :-) ) has said that an earlier effort failed because they only built a scale model. I see the point that the first airship needs to be "real"...i.e., somebody can ride in it. At the same time, you have also put a $10k target on the cost. Per the exponential curve above, a 2-person airship (like in the "wish list" posted on the forum) will cost a lot more than a 1-person. Other flying projects have traditionally started with a minimalist vehicle and then grew to larger ones: e.g., hang-gliders (1 person then 2), ultralights (1 person then 2), and the Zenith STOL aircraft (the 2-person 701 first, then the 4-person 801).

A 1-person airship project will give the needed challenges to stimulate the design solutions for a 2-person as well...at a fraction of the cost and time. And you'll still have a "real" airship that people can try out. If you really want to minimize budget and shoot for $10k (or whatever this is going to cost; has anyone done a fairly thorough cost analysis?), going with the smaller craft is the biggest opportunity for savings we have. That's because, regardless of whatever technologies or designs we choose, the cost/capability exponential curve will still be working in our favor.

And the phased approach enables tighter change cycles, which means more changes and therefore more improvement for a given amount of time and budget. This is related to Navigaiter's mantra of "make it, test it and improve it," which nicely describes an incremental approach. (I disagree, however, that using computers or models is inappropriate even on a project of this scale...in our experience, that work nicely complements the incremental approach and makes the result even better: while some of the tools are expensive, our group has several of them already so that cost is not the hindrance it would normally be for a group like this.)

To sum up, I'm not suggesting to abandon the 2-person goal; just to consider taking advantage of incrementalism by making a 1-person design a step along the way.

- Breakthrough design. Getting "out of the box" is difficult for us human beings. The problem is, every human being (which therefore presumably includes all of us LOL) are already "in a box" of some sort and mostly not aware of where its walls are. Brain research has conclusively shown that the mind automatically and subconsciously rejects any idea it comes across that falls outside its existing box. It's as if those "outside ideas" don't even exist; even if they are staring us in the face.

The trick is to find ways to get outside when we can't even imagine something outside it. That's where techniques like TRIZ come in...they provide a roadmap to follow that takes us outside our box...dragging our protesting brains along behind kicking and screaming if need be. That's the only way to solve really big problems that have resisted solution for a long time...like, oh, a small, practical, cheap airship. ;-)

- Implementation-free requirements. The "wish list" posted elsewhere on the forum combined capability requirements (e.g., "2-person"), with design decisions (e.g., "helium"). As soon as one imposes design solutions as part of the requirements, one "paints oneself into a box" and ensures that whole categories of breakthrough solutions will never be considered.

This same difficulty comes from jumping into prototyping too quickly...the prototype itself becomes a set of "implementation requirements" that a project will never get past. Don't get me wrong: prototypes are great, and very useful a little later in the development process. Just not early on.

It's also very tempting to construct "mental prototypes" at the very beginning, based on prior research, experience, personal preferences, and so forth. Has the same effect as physical prototypes: it mentally rules out whole classes of design solutions that could have taken a project much closer to a cheaper/safer/more-practical/higher-capability system. But I'll be the first to admit it is very challenging and often somewhat frustrating to defer the satisfaction that comes from "just building something!" (Even if the thing being built is only a mental model of the desired end product.) Balancing this out, this discipline takes nothing away from the value of doing experiments with various materials, technologies, etc. The trick is just to avoid latching onto favorite solutions before all the upstream work is done that tells us how or even whether or not to use those favorite solutions.

- Mission/capability-based requirements development. This is a technique that our systems engineering group (especially John Artus) specializes in. Essentially, you start with what you want a "really good day flying" to look like, and work your way into ever-more detailed requirements for the desired system. If you then apply breakthrough design techniques to those requirements, you can come up with some counter-intuitive and even unprecedented design solutions...and a much more satisfactory system to the user/customer (which is, as I understand it, the typical person on this team who really wants to fly their own airship!).

I know that's a ton of stuff...but I wanted to "prime the pump" for our upcoming conversation on Wednesday. Again, speaking for our team as a group and as a set of individuals, we simply want to help you reach your goals. We don't "have a dog in the hunt" in this project; none of us are airship types, and we have no favored solutions. Our interest in sharing these principles is simply that they are some of the ways we've learned to get to desired results cheaper/faster/better (to borrow the NASA phrase, which they have unfortunately never implemented! ;-) ).

Best,

Jim

<<cheaper/faster/better (to borrow the NASA phrase, which they have unfortunately never implemented! ;-) ).>>

<chuckle> I'm a nasa critic. If you wanna see how fast they can cancel a project, just start doing it cheaper better and faster than they expected. Witness the X-38 which woulda been a nice little general purpose space runabout that was being accomplished CB&F. It had to go so they could use the money to build a tinkertoy space station that hardly anyone can access or utilize.

Yep, smaller and simpler will help find better ways to build bigger stuff -- simpler and better than if you'd started out building the big one first.  Witness, sailing dingies setting the design for racing yachts.  Witness Sport Type aviation proving fiberglass techniques for the Boeing Dreamliner and the Joint Fighter jet.
   I'll remain the "Luddite" here, by claiming that CPU's don't think, they process. So they can't intuit or invent. They save time in calculating minor design details over manual trial and error methods. 

my contact info is--   Mikago username--  navigaiter(at)gmail.com
phone3052928577  residence807AsheSt, Key WestFLorida33040
YahooMessenger ID,  allen_meece  
[which I suggest we all have standing by as a bakup to Mikogo],

I have tried to do some cost estimation. It is embedded in the excel file. While I can nail down what the surface area of a design is, I have no idea how much it would cost to build or buy it. So I have scaled the cost (based on surface area) to a hypothetical envelope at a hypothetical cost that "sounded right". I presume a better approach would be to look at statistical data, but i don't know where to find such data on ships that are small enough to be applicable.

There are two different "great days off flying". One starts in my backyard and the other starts at an airfield. We would all prefer the backyard takeoff and landing, but I fear we may have to settle for the airfield.

Blimps follow a square-cube law. They become more efficient with size. This is not true for airplanes. That is why, over time, all the old airships got bigger and bigger while airplanes max out at about the same size. This is evidence that a 2 seat airship may not be much more expensive than a 1 seat craft. I can't speak to the developmental costs, but the surface area will not double, the engine power will not double, ect. But once again, I am willing to have this confirmed by study, or not. 

BTW, I have been mental prototyping for about 4 years. 

It's not Luddite to say CPU's can't think. That's a simple fact. I'll be getting very concerned if they ever get to where they can...LOL

However, software tools can be very helpful in support of the human thought process. For instance, we have a built-in complexity limit of around 5+-2 related items we can keep in our heads at a time (more like 3 for unrelated items). But computers can keep track of many more items at a time than that....use that strength well, and you have effectively augmented the human mental capacity. But they will never replace or even parallel the human reasoning capability. That would be a misuse of the tools. Actually, universities for the most part do not teach students to make this crucial distinction. So you have graduates using calculators to produce 6 significant digit results off of 2 and 4 significant digit operands, and other nonsense like that.

Nevertheless, the advantage goes to those who can use tools to amplify their natural capabilities. Or use tools to keep problems within the human cognition "sweet spot" that would otherwise push our limits (as in the SR-71 on slide-rules; doable, but only through long hours by an elite team of some of the best minds on the planet). Projects will always still need good talent, but you can do so much more for so much less these days. And I imagine that most people working on this project have less than unlimited amounts of time to devote to it...so using tools that make us more productive means we get more results in return for a smaller portion of our lives invested.

I once met a family who were were home builders and quite a bit more prosperous than others in the field simply because they had been the first in the area to adopt the nailgun. That's all that distinguished them. But they could underbid all their competitors, and still make bigger profits than they could. Smart use of tools to multiply abilities they already had. Gave them a headstart that nobody could ever overcome. That's the kind of leverage I'm talking about.

Cheers,

Jim

Also if some of the engineers haven't worked with airships before, may I suggest looking at our recommended reading thread. 

http://smallblimps.lefora.com/2009/06/02/recommended-reading/

Edit: No offence taken. It is a double edged sword. Anytime you rule something out, it may be in error.

Thanks, dude6935. We'll check out the reading resources.

Also, please don't think I'm discounting the value of thinking about the system for the last several years. It's a double-edged sword...anybody who's excited about a topic and studies it/dreams about it is going to build an invaluable knowledge base and expertise. It's just that the other edge of the sword is that this very kind of preparation tends to "build a box" for further thinking on the subject...which becomes self-limiting if not surmounted using some creative approach. I've experienced this myself many times, which is one reason I've been such an interested student of breakthrough creative thinking research and techniques. No slight intended about good research or dreaming however. :-)

Jim

Just set up Skype, I'm Michael Kirschbaum, tell Yvonne to contact me to see if it works right. I have video and audio. A preliminary call will let us check time zone coordination.