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>>Ed Hoffman: Hello, and welcome to Masters with Masters.
I am Ed Hoffman, the NASA Chief Knowledge Officer,
and for this week we are on a special location at the NASA Kennedy Space Center,
featuring a lot of discussions around issues of leaderships and change, reinvention,
and innovation. This series is really focused on practitioners to share their lessons,
their thoughts, and their stories
and to help us become more reflective practitioners.
This particular session is focused on Swamp Works activity
and innovative ideas at Kennedy Space Center.
We have Rob Mueller, who is the Senior Technologist for Advanced Project Development
in the Engineering Directorate.
He is also the Co-Founder of the NASA Kennedy Granular Mechanics
and Regolith Operations Lab.
And he has been leading in the development of technologies
and innovations for lunar systems and lunar surfaces.
We also have Jack Fox, who is the Chief of Surface Systems Office
in the Engineering and Technology Directorate.
And his office has been involved in science research
and technology development for Surface Systems, for planetary bodies, their moons,
and near-earth objects. It is a pleasure to have both of you with us.
A matter of fact, what I told you before we got started is this whole week kind of got started,
when I was here recently at Kennedy,
and I had tour of the Swamp Works facility,
I didn’t know about it, and I was amazed by the energy, the innovation,
and the passion that is going on, in terms of trying to do a difficult thing,
which is trying to take a successful culture, but tweaking it and changing it in different ways.
And that has somewhat been the theme for this whole week, in terms of Commercial Crew,
in terms of leadership through the generations, and in terms of young professionals.
So I would like to get started with both of you,
just to ask how did you get to this point in your career and how did you start working together?
>>Jack Fox: Well, kind of the chronology,
I started in 1983 in shuttle engineering
and I was on auxiliary power units and hydraulics and then I moved into the Orbiter Project Office.
I spent many years in Shuttle and I got, what I feel is a great appreciation for,
the rigor required for flight hardware processing; question everything, analyze everything,
test everything because the space environment is very unforgiving
and you can’t pull off on the side of the road if you have a problem.
Then in the late '90s, KSC had an initiative to do more technology work.
We, Rob will probably explain a lot of that,
but there were certain areas that Kennedy expertise thought they could find a wedge
and personally I was assigned to work advanced sensors
and integrated vehicle health management technologies.
And I led teams that flew flight demonstration experiments on Shuttle and ultimately,
we incorporated a few of those things on Shuttle.
And then that program was cancelled
and a series of other similar X vehicles
that I worked on, X-33, X-34, X-37,
some RLB technology programs one-by-one fell by the way side, but learned a lot of things.
Then I actually worked in external relations for a little while
and then the Constellation Program started
and I wanted to be part of that and I did a detail at NASA Headquarters in ESMD.
Then after that, I came back to Kennedy in engineering and I was Chief of the Business Office.
Then I am very fortunate to be Chief of the Surface Systems Office now.
So that is the whole thing. I met Rob during that technology formulation kind of time period.
Hoffman: Tell us a little bit about your story and how you got to this point.
>>Rob Mueller: Sure. I have had an interesting career,
but I am just getting started. I got the big call in 1989 to come work for NASA,
and that was right after Challenger. That was a very interesting time.
A lot of people were uncertain about the future of NASA.
I saw it as a challenge and I jumped on it
and I was really excited to come up to NASA.
I joined the Solid Rocket Booster Processing Team.
The boosters were made in Utah and they were shipped here, by rail, and we assembled them.
This was a time when the field joints on the solid rocket booster had failed on Challenger,
it had caused the accident. I was right in the middle of the action fixing that field joint problem.
We were developing new methods of stacking and assembling these solid rocket boosters.
So it was a good time to be at NASA and I was with a crew of,
just by the nature of wanting to work on solid rocket boosters after Challenger,
that was a certain type of person. It was a good team to be on.
After a few years of that, I realized people were sending me instructions
and this was how you assemble it.
And I didn’t want to be the guy assembling it per someone else's instructions.
I wa nted to be the guy writing the instructions.
So I looked into that and realized a design engineer makes the drawings
and the design engineer determines what the rocket will look like
and how these things are configured.
At that point I went into design and transferred to a design group.
Then I started designing ground support equipment because that is what Kennedy Space Center did at that time.
I worked on Space Shuttle umbilicals.
I was the lead for the gaseous oxygen vent hood,
which is the beanie cap, sometimes they call it, on top of the external tank.
I was the lead for tail service masts.
I worked on the upgrades for the super lightweight tank.
I worked on the composite nose cone, so a lot of experience on the Space Shuttle over the years.
I also help design a lot of the GSE in the Space Station processing facility.
I did design for about five years and I was fortunate enough to be asked to go to Johnson Space Center
to work on an exploration team, under Doug Cook.
I worked for Doug Cook for two years, doing exploration studies for the Moon, Mars, and deep space exploration.
That changed my whole career and at that point,
I became more interested in deep space
and not ground support equipment.
I was kind of finished with that and I moved on, but I had to come back to Kennedy Space Center,
my rotation was over, and we had a group led by General Roy Bridges,
called the exploration think tank.
I plugged into that and we had a group of bright, young people
that were just focused on going beyond low-earth orbit.
That is how I met Jack and since then, I have been on working on exploration,
trying to bring Kennedy into that part of NASA.
Hoffman: Alright, so both focused on human exploration for a long time in the different programs,
but also a common factor of how do we reinvent ourselves
and how do we get more involved in the technology development.
So I saw a few months ago Swamp Works
and the first thing that hit me, walking in, was the energy, was the passion,
and the people were engaged. It was kind of like a different world, the focus there and the energies.
What inspired you to go in the direction of Swamp Works or even calling it that?
Mueller: The agency has been going through a phase of transition,
not just at Kennedy Space Center, but overall.
Swamp Works is a direct answer to the call from our leadership,
the Space Technology Mission Directorate, and the HEOMD, the Human Exploration Mission Directorate.
They both have skunk works type of projects,
which is advanced exploration systems and the game changing division in the Space Technology Mission Directorate.
They are asking us to be more agile, more nimble, we're allowed to fail.
So we are going back to the future, doing things how we used to do them in the Apollo days,
just a lot of rapid prototyping, a lot of experimentation, creativity,
more to the lower end of the technology readiness level spectrum.
So we are just really doing what they are asking us to do,
which is the Space Technology Mission Directorate,
pushing more on technology development.
To respond to that, we thought we needed a new environment,
a new way of doing things and that is what we call the Swamp Works.
Hoffman: Yeah, and I know it is in the old Apollo testing facility and all and we'll talk about that.
One of the things, when I was talking to Jack,
you talked about, this not just around the technology,
but is also around issues of culture and how do you reinvigorate the culture
and how do you transform it.
What are some of the things that you are trying to do,
in terms of changing the way we work and the way we do things and transforming culture?
Fox: Okay, sure, Ed.
Well, the starting point is KSC has a long history of innovation and engineering
and technology in solving shuttle flight hardware problems, payload problems,
and a can-do attitude where the rubber meets the road, as I think Bob Sieck said yesterday.
So the easy part was we had a pretty good starting point right off the bat.
So then I came into the group just before Shuttle was done
and they had already been talking about what they wanted to do in this post-Shuttle environment
and I was listening to them and we want a skunk works, and lean development.
It is the new NASA iterative, back to the future,
and I started thinking let’s bring in more people, this is bigger than our little group.
Let's make it a KSC thing and we brought in, there is an innovators group at Kennedy
that we brought in and it is primarily on young employees.
And they are saying the same things,
we want hands on, we want to develop our skills,
and we want to produce things, and contribute to exploration missions.
So I am factoring all these things in there and sure, cultural change is difficult.
Human space flight, hardware, rigor, this is lower TRL technology at this center.
So we certainly had our challenges in process.
We just have to be patient and work through it.
And you guys want no process, well no, we want right size process.
We want to be safe, it is okay to fail, mentality like that.
And we are working through that and I am seeing change from the grassroots coming up,
different organizations moving up the chain, and a lot of positive change.
There is also kind of budgetary and partnership kind of change.
NASA has got to be quicker to do a cost estimate to a customer
and to get a partnership agreement like a Space App.
Mueller: Let me just jump in because I often hear failure is not an option.
Hoffman: I've heard that before.
Mueller: That is Apollo 13, right.
That is a great attitude, but sometimes failure is an option.
Failure is not an option in a mission, when you are dedicated to success,
but when you are developing technologies that maybe don’t even exist yet,
then you have to fail, fail often, “Fail, fast, forward”, that is our motto.
It is okay, we are creating an environment where it is okay to fail, as long as you learn from it,
as long as you do it quickly, and as long as you do it cheaply.
So yes failure is not an option when you are going to the moon,
but when you are in the lab creating a little experiment,
then it is certainly okay to fail and that is what Swamp Works is all about.
Hoffman: So it sounds like it is similar to agile type projects
where it is the kind of mission where you want reduced cycles
because you can learn from what is no going right, what is failing,
and just accelerate more effective technologies by tracking that quicker.
It sounds like it is about prototyping and maybe simulations, gaming.
What are the characteristics, as you see it, of Swamp Works?
What makes it distinctively different than a traditional space flight mission?
Mueller: Well, it is a creative environment.
When you go upstairs, we have an area called the innovation space, pun intended, and it is a large area.
There are no walls, there are no cubicle walls.
It is just an open space and this based on the Silicon Valley model of put everybody
in a big room, let them collaborate, and just be creative.
We have lots of white boards everywhere and we encourage people to interact informally.
So instead of having lots of big, very structured, very difficult meetings where people are tense,
we try to create an environment that is very informal and relaxed
and where people can really interact and come up with new ideas.
So in the Swamp Works, we have a disciplined environment,
but we try to structure it so that there are certain locations
where you can actually be creative
and that is what it is really all about, coming up with innovations, new technologies,
and they might be game changing technologies, quantum leaps.
We’re not looking for incremental advances,
were looking for quantum leaps where we actually might have a breakthrough,
but that means more risk.
So we have to take the risks to have these big break throughs and that is part of the game.
Hoffman: Right. Part of the issue with physical space,
obviously there is a lot of research and a lot of companies devote a lot of money to how do you
organize a work space and how do you have people,
when they go on breaks, they come together, they circle, they talk,
and that is a large part of the knowledge sharing interactivity.
So you are trying to capture that and I know you have a lot of emphasis on young professionals
and mentoring and I'll ask a question about that.
One of the things that I think everyone is wondering about
is how do you change the culture at NASA?
It has been around for over fifty years and has a lot of processes and a lot of stuff in place.
Bob Sieck, yesterday was saying I think that the most difficult thing was culture,
particularly as you go from one program to the next.
As you go from Apollo to Shuttle, Apollo folks say, this is the way to do it.
So how have you gone around changing how you work and even getting the facility to do this?
Fox: Well, to kind of get back to the basics, what do people want?
They want challenging work, they want to make a contribution, and they want to be appreciated.
And we try to have a culture of that where it is okay to have an idea
and share an idea and build something and break something.
Just that in itself, once some people have tried it,
we've had some people come in that were pretty skeptical about it, but within a couple weeks,
they have come to me and said you guys are right, you are really right.
I really enjoy the faster pace, seeing an idea take form very quickly, rather than years to take form.
So you are getting more gratification of your efforts as part of the culture shift.
So again, grassroots coming up.
The facility part of it, it is kind of interesting that I got the whole vision thing and everything,
but I have to get facilities and equipment as well and you have to think about the group you are talking to.
I might start talking vision and I get a lot of blank expressions
and then it is okay, let’s talk requirements;
I need lab benches, fume hoods, and sinks, and A/C power.
Then they brighten up because they are comfortable with that kind of dialogue of a facility.
So we were able to get the facility, it is all in the timing, and we have benefited from that.
There was a lot of momentum toward moving labs out of building that was off property.
We leveraged that and we moved back on property
and the only place to put us was a building much bigger than what we had.
Mueller: Actually, we were evicted from our lab
and we turned lemons into lemonade and we actually ended up with a better solution.
Hoffman: So you got kicked out of where you were, so to speak,
and you turned that around.
Because one of the things that I hear a lot, again from people in any organization, is I have an idea,
I want to change things, but I am being told, no. So they stop.
You guys, and obviously your team, don't take no,
you keep moving ahead. So how did the eviction lead to the new facility?
Fox: First off, we only accept no the first five times.
That is kind of our internal thing, what did they say, they said, no.
Well okay, that is only two, we'll keep trying.
So we got the building and then we learned of its history
that it was the former Apollo flight crew training building.
And I knew that and when I was new employee, the Lunar Module in there was a tourist stop.
So I went to the archives and there is quite a store house of information on what took place
inside and outside that building.
All the Apollo astronauts, full EVA suits, Lunar Module, Rover, there was a rock yard out back.
They had a simulator that did full dress rehearsals of their entire missions out there.
So we made posters and put them in the lobby
and that is another leveraging point for inspiration for people that we tell them,
look at the history of this building
and look what we’re doing now in this building
for exploration and just a lot of good timing in all of that.
Hoffman: More than timing because you don’t take no, unless it is more than five,
and you are obviously seeking out different kind of approaches.
Obviously technology and missions do go across the centers,
how does Swamp Works collaborate with other centers?
Is there a role there and how did you get that role if there is?
Mueller: Absolutely. Kennedy is not known for technology development, historically,
but over the last ten years and this overnight success has been a ten year effort.
So over the last ten years, we have been slowly convincing the other centers
that we do have a significant role to play in technology development
and most if it is because of our attitude
and our experience of having hands-on experience with flight hardware.
When flight hardware arrives at Kennedy, many times it needs to be finished or fixed.
So we actually have a lot more experience in that than people give us credit for.
So over the years, we have managed to build this group of technology developers.
And as you know, NASA has ten centers,
and the field centers are strong and they have their own roles.
So in order to determine our role,
we try not to go into an area that is already being done well by another center.
We try to go to an area that is new, that has not been tackled yet. In that way, we avoid conflict.
In areas where we do overlap, we try to partner instead of compete.
We just pick up the phone, we call them, and we say we are your biggest fans,
we admire your work, we have read all of your papers, we have seen you at the conferences,
it would be an honor to work with you.
Usually that approach is very successful
and we've managed to build strong partnerships where we bring something to the table,
they bring something to the table. At the end of the day, NASA is stronger for it.
Hoffman: Right. So it is a collaborative entity.
You have clear boundaries, obviously.
I am guessing you probably are working with like-minded people who want to, again,
to be innovative, re-invent, create new ways of doing technologies.
Mueller: Well, I think everybody at NASA is like that.
At the heart of it, everybody joined NASA
because they wanted to achieve great things and that is why we’re here.
The rest is details, but were all here for the same reason
and then we just have to work out the details and we do that every day.
Hoffman: One of the questions is on details.
So what are the problems, what are the challenges? Or is it easy and smooth?
What are the ones you can tell me about?
Fox: Well, in the technology world, you had to have a pipeline of projects.
It is competitive, you have to write a lot of proposals, short-term projects,
and you got to think about when they are going to run out, and you got to keep the pipeline going.
That is very much different from the shuttle culture at Kennedy of a very comfortable situation
of a program that funds a lot of the institutions and the people.
But to win things, we need support,
we need proposal writers, graphic support, partnership support, like we said,
and were seeing a lot of progress.
It really kind of comes down to funding and our approach every time we see a competitor,
we make them a partner and were doing very well and seeing a lot of progress.
Mueller: We’re also very entrepreneurial,
that is the spirit. You have to be a self-starter.
If you sit at your desk waiting for to work to come, it is probably going to be a long wait.
What we try to do is be pro-active, go out and meet people, make partners,
and just really work it every day.
We're entrepreneurial about it and we try to build our own future.
And most of that boils down to writing good proposals and being good team members.
Hoffman: Interesting you talk about entrepreneurship because one of the things
I was seeing was social entrepreneurship,
which is how do you get a new idea started,
how do you in essence affect an organization and create an energy and all that kind of stuff.
What do you see as the skills that you and the team have in terms of that entrepreneurship
and how is it different than perhaps not having that,
but being responsible for a project or a system?
What are the characteristics that you see amongst your team? Either of you?
Fox: Okay, like Rob said, entrepreneurship,
just that get up and go and being outgoing and putting partnerships together.
You need all kinds of people on a team. If everybody was like that, nothing would get done.
Then you also need people that are project management, the schedule,
and the budget and the very diligent kind of work.
So we need a whole gamut and one of our secrets is it is applied science and technology.
So we need scientists and engineers together in these collaboration sessions.
Mueller: I am glad you brought that up because skills and people,
that’s the essential part of the secret sauce, is you have to have the skills
if you are going to be a world class organization and compete.
It does end up being a competitive situation when you’re writing a proposal.
You have to have a world class team and you have to have a principal investigator
that is recognized in the community.
That is part of winning a proposal,
but we need the skills and for that, we have a new project at Kennedy, called Rocket University.
And Rocket University is designed, Steve Sullivan started it with a group of Shuttle alumni,
and the idea is to sharpen the axe, to get the skills to the 21st century level.
Our young people love that because that is what they were trained for
and they are sometimes surprised when they come here that the older engineers don’t have those skills.
So we are getting to that point
where all the engineers will have the skills
they need to compete in a world class environment and that is what Rocket University is all about.
We support Rocket University and we actually encourage that mentality
and the Rocket University graduates come to the Swamp Works
and they can start growing projects at the Swamp Works if they have a bright idea.
We give them space, we have an incubator area,
well give them some lab space,
and well give them maybe six months to a year, and then you graduate.
Hoffman: Okay, so you are very active I know in very mentoring
and a lot of focus on young professionals
getting the engagement going and providing the critical access to the people and to work.
Why did you do that?
Is that the only way you feel you can be successful in changing the culture
or is giving back, in terms of new generation? Why the focus on mentoring?
Mueller: It is very simple.
In 1969, in mission control, the average age of an engineer was 28.
Today, 20% of the NASA workforce is under 40. 80% is over 40.
Now, that is kind of a demographics issue
and if we don’t inspire the next generation,
if we don’t get everybody as excited as I was, when I got the phone call from NASA.
There are a lot of things to do today, there is a lot of competition, you can do many things in your life.
So if we want to be the NASA that we are today and we started out as in the Apollo era,
we need to retain the talent, the people.
We need to get the best and the brightest into NASA. So what does that mean?
It means you have to a good experience because you can do anything with your life
if your smart and educated and motivated.
So when young people join NASA,
I want them to have a good experience and be productive and be world class.
If they can come out feeling like they had a really good experience
and they contributed and they gained the knowledge, what more could you ask for.
We’ll have a world class team and well go and conquer the universe.
Hoffman: I want to apply for Swamp Works.
What is the definition of age? Is it like 55 and under?
Mueller: Age is a mindset.
Hoffman: So we have folks here and were open to questions
and are there any questions here for the guys here, any thoughts or any comments?
Yeah, so we'll get a microphone.
>>Audience Member: Yeah, I am curious about the pipeline question
and how often you get projects in
and how rapid the turnover is, what throughput you’re getting through that pipeline?
Fox: Well, were still pretty new at the Swamp Works things.
It is just pretty much we never say no at this point.
If we get too much work, we've been able to staff it anyway.
So it is pretty much furious pace right now.
We have a goal of measuring it out and knowing when the annual calls are
and were getting much more regimented in that regard.
Mueller: So it is an interesting question
because we have lots of small projects
and not a few big ones.
I think we have, just in my lab alone, we have 25 projects on the books right now.
Okay, so that is a different mindset, you have to work quicker, you have to be more nimble, and some of them die.
Some projects die and some survive,
its more Darwinian. We operate in this very fast way and we have white boarding sessions.
The projects are usually typically year in length.
Then after the year period, it’s an evaluation by a management board,
which Karen Thompson, our Chief Technologist leads, -it’s a research and technology management board.
We go to the board and it is like the shark tank,
they evaluate our work, it either passes or it fails.
If it is viewed as a success and is aligned with NASA's strategic goals
and KSC's roadmap to strategic goals,
then it gets approved to go forward,
and we compete for more funding, but it is never guaranteed.
Every year is a new year and we compete for our funding,
but it is what we call an engineering and science meritocracy.
Hoffman: That is a good reality show. People pitch their technologies.
Fox: I said that as well.
Mueller: Never a dull moment.
Hoffman: Absolutely. Any other questions?
Audience Member: I have one.
For those of us, who are not scientists or engineers,
give us some examples of some of the projects
and problems that you are trying to mitigate if you will.
Mueller: Okay, our whole lab is based off the whole concept of living off the land.
When you go into outer space, you won’t be able to take everything with you.
If the pioneers had gone west from the east coast,
they would have reach the Appalachian Mountains and stopped, if they had to bring everything with them.
But they brought a bucket, a gun, a horse.
The horse ate the grass, they went to the river,
got the water from the river, they shot a few buffalo and they made it all the way to California.
So that is the spirit, it is the pioneering spirit
and we have to learn how to live off the land in space.
So everything in our lab is dedicated to resource utilization and in space,
it looks like this magnificent desolation, as one of our Astronauts said: Buzz Aldrin,
but you have to look deeper.
There is energy, there are vast amounts of energy in space, and there are vast amounts of resources.
If we can learn how to harness the energy, then essentially the energy is free.
And if we can learn how to harvest the resources from the regolith,
the regolith contains every element we need.
If we can learn how to harvest these resources,
then our future in space will be guaranteed and that is the goal of every technology that we work in our lab.
A specific examples, were mining regolith.
We have robots that mine regoliths.
We have the RESOLVE payload on the Resource Propsector Mission,
which actually is prospecting for regolith on the moon and then trying to find water.
If we find water ice on the moon, that is going to be a game changer. So that is another project.
We’re doing a project where we are 3-D printing large structures, 3-D print a habit with regolith, concrete made of regolith.
That is another example.
We have molten regolith electrolysis,
where we melt the regolith and we pull the metals out by electrolysis.
We have a lighting system, which will adjust your circadian rhythm
so that in mornings when you feel drowsy,
you turn the *** and the light gets more blue and suddenly you feel awake.
Then at night when you are ready to sleep,
you turn the *** and it becomes more orange and yellow like the sunset.
Something deep inside your genetic code in your circadian rhythm puts you to sleep.
So this would be a great advantage on the International Space Station.
We've sent a module up to the International Space Station,
it is up there right now, and it is altering their behavior patterns just by regulating the light.
We have another technology, which mitigates dust.
It is called an electrodynamics dust shield.
That actually repels dust just by flipping a switch.
Imagine having that on every window in your house or on your car.
You would never have to wash the windows again, you just flip the switch.
Then one of the very new technologies we just started two months ago was a graphene battery
technology.
Imagine recharging an electric car in five minutes.
That is what the graphene super capacitor battery technology offers.
So that is just a few examples,
but we have a long list of other things that are just not funded yet.
Hoffman: That is amazing. Yeah, we have another question.
Audience Member: Yeah, I was actually going to ask if there are any specific examples or projects,
but I guess changing the course from that,
what sort of projects, you mentioned you want to keep the young workforce, sort of like you said,
talented people who are smart, they are young, they can do whatever they want.
So why would they want to come here and work for NASA or what could they do?
So what sort of projects do you do outreach wise?
For example, I know there is the Lunabotics or
Astrobotics mining competition going on currently.
Mueller: Right, we have a competition dedicated to robotics for mining regolith.
We just finished last week.
We attracted 50 universities from eight countries, and it was just a phenomenal event.
It is based on this concept of, if you have a good experience and you compete hard, you can do great things in life.
And not only did all these students have a good time,
but they spent a semester designing and learning NASA systems and engineering.
Then they spent a semester building it.
By the time they graduate, when they go for a job interview, what are they going to talk about at that job interview?
I built a NASA robot and I know NASA systems engineering. I know what a PDR is.
I know what a CDR is. One guy came up to me and said,
I got a job because I knew what a PDR and what a CDR was.
That is what you get out of it.
We have lots of outreach and we try to encourage the young professionals
to be passionate about what they do and join our team.
Hoffman: The hands on. Yeah, we have another question.
Audience Member: I am just curious about the makeup of your team,
like how many people are there,
what kind of mix between civil servants and contractors, that sort of thing.
Fox: Well, we have about 20 full-time NASA people
and about twenty part-time people right now, from various organizations.
Contractors, about ten at this point is where we are at.
Hoffman: Can people from other centers hear about this and apply to be a part of this?
Fox: Yeah, actually there are activities like this popping up at other centers
and I have had conversations with JSC Spaceshop.
Fox: There is a team at Ames and a team at JSC, very similar objectives
and we've talked about we need to have a federation of these.
And I understand Goddard and Langley have similar things.
So if is anybody out there, Goddard and Langley, let me know who I can talk to.
I would like to have multi-center type of projects going on
and we might even extend it to after hours
and do like an engineers without borders kind of activity.
Hoffman: Rob?
Mueller: This is a push-pull effort.
The STMD is pulling from headquarters,
trying to extract good ideas from the workforce and make game changing technologies,
and there is a push from the grassroots where people are demanding satisfying work.
They are demanding that they be given access to a machine shop to go make a prototype.
They are demanding 3-D printers.
We have 3-D printers in our lab.
Anybody can go there at any time of the day and print out a part that they need for their project.
So we are empowering the workforce,
we are empowering them to use their intellectual capacity and create new ideas.
So that is the push part. We have to create an environment where people can do that.
The rest happens by itself.
Hoffman: Obviously this is a component of a larger center and a larger agency,
what is your vision for how this impacts NASA as a whole or Kennedy as a hole?
I am sure you have thoughts on that,
in terms of how do you want to impact the culture and the organization.
Fox: Well, similar to what Rob just said,
I think we established the capabilities and the process and it will happen,
just the natural course of events, people will make contributions.
Now, we are very roadmap focused and exploration architecture aware.
We’re trying to plug things into the architectures, were trying to make leap frog jumps
that make them re-write architectures.
Our kind of purpose, as a government lab, is this iterative design where you build, test, learn, and update the design.
Then you get to a point where you hand it off to industry, perhaps.
They do the very detailed systems engineering and make a flight article.
So we very much have an eye on wanting our things implemented in NASA architectures
and commercial space architectures.
Also, always thinking about dual use technology.
There are definitely things that we are doing that we would like plugged into applications on earth
Hoffman: Yeah, it sounds like the examples you gave, like the sleep,
it would be not just be important for the Space Station,
but for a lot of us here. I think there would be businesses
that would be interested in some of the technologies.
How do you make that connection? Or do you?
Or is that a different part of the organization that works the technology exchange?
Mueller: We have an active organization that does technology transfers, led by Dave Makufka,
here at KSC, and it plugs into the agency-wide technology transfer of one of my favorite
documents that NASA published every year, I wait for it every year, it is the Spinoffs catalog, NASA Spinoff.
I love looking through that, it is a catalog of innovation.
So we try to plug into the NASA system.
So what a typical process is you have a good idea, what should you do?
Well, first thing you should do is write a new technology report, an NTR,
document it so that if it is patentable, you get credit for it.
So we encourage everybody to write an NTR right away.
Then we develop the idea further
and there is a defined NASA process for turning an NTR into an intellectual property claim,
which can end up in a Tech Briefs article or if it goes further, it could end up being patentable.
It just depends on what it is,
but we work closely with our tech transfer office and our legal counsel to do the right thing,
in terms of intellectual property.
Then the end result is for NASA; we can license these technologies
and get royalties back to the government,
which benefits the lab that develops them
because the royalties are actually re-distributed and re-invested.
Hoffman: I would imagine with anything new and innovative in doing things,
you probably have had to deal with some criticism.
How do you deal with criticism or obstacles?
Is there anything that has come up that you have had to deal with that you would recommend
to beware of to young entrepreneurs doing the same thing?
Fox: Well, you have to be resilient and just kind of go with it. A guy in our group said, Mike Galluzzi,
“When you are getting near the target that is when you get the most flack.”
So I think we are pretty near the target
and I always tell people that just keep producing, that is the ultimate feedback.
When customers are liking the product,
they are giving you more work, they are writing emails to your center directors about you.
That is what is important, the products we deliver and that definitely softens the criticism that you have to deal with.
Mueller: I think how I deal with resilience is that you have to have a vision.
So there is a vision for humanity, there is a vision for NASA, and there is a
personal vision.
If you can clearly visualize those three things and how they interact, those are your guiding rules.
Everything else is your environment that you are operating in, but the vision doesn’t change,
the environment changes.
So you have to be smart enough to negotiate the environment that is placed in front of you,
while still maintaining the vision and reaching your end goal.
Hoffman: Would you be willing to share either your personal vision or the vision you feel for NASA?
Mueller: Dr. Phil Metzger and I and Jack, and others in our lab, have been working on a vision.
It is a resource based vision of expanding humanity and human civilization into outer space.
So really at the end of the day, what most people want is a better quality of life.
That is really, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
It says first, you want a roof over your head, some food and water and some shelter.
That is the first thing you want, but as humanity evolves, you want more and you are not satisfied with the basics.
That is where as a civilization, we want a higher quality of life.
I always joked that twenty years ago they said, computers would become more efficient,
why I am I still working five days a week?
Why am I not working four days a week and I have Fridays off?
Because I am so much more efficient than I was twenty years ago, right.
So why can’t we do that with humanity?
What is our biggest constraint today? Energy.
If we solve the energy problem,
we can become greater architects,
we can become greater artists,
we can do better science,
we can have better leisure.
It is just quality of life.
So how do you achieve a better quality of life?
Well, if you look at the history of mankind, it is usually related to resources.
There are actually billions and billions times the amount of resources in space as there are on Earth.
So with the abundant of resources and energy, our lives will get better, but we will not be able to harness those resources
unless we harness the space technologies,
which will let us go use the resources in space.
That is the catch, we have to use the resources, they are there,
but we have to figure out how to use them.
But at the end of the day, we want to improve our quality of life as a human race.
Hoffman: So you have a very clear-cut vision, personally, organizationally, and for society.
It sounds like you link it to the strategy obviously of the organization, or you don’t have any support,
and that strategy then plays out in terms of different projects and approaches and goals.
Mueller: Of course we are lucky because NASA is largely aligned with this vision of improving the human condition.
That is in the NASA strategic goals.
So all we have to do is now align ourselves with NASA strategy.
One thing I do want to say is,
which we didn’t mention earlier, one of the reasons we created Swamp Works is we have to do more with less.
The budgets are going down.
So if you keep the status quo and you keep using the processes
and systems and programs that you have today with reduced budgets, you are setting yourself up for failure.
So by definition, with reduced budgets, you have to change something.
What we are trying to do is invent new methods to be more productive
with less and that is another good reason for starting Swamp Works.
Hoffman: One of the principles is obviously to be lean
and it sounds like being lean would be not having too much paperwork or digital technology capturing things.
You are also doing something very new.
You obviously have lessons and you have things that you are learning. How do you capture that?
Or do you capture that so that whoever is doing this in five years
or someplace else can learn from that and try and impact their organization?
Or do you not worry about that?
Fox: We, like Rob said, we have dozens of projects
and we have a project manager that helps the PIs and part of his job, Luke Setzer,
is he establishes our SharePoint library,
the proposals, the project plan, and the lessons learned.
And also, publishing is a big thing for us. It is requirement to publish your work
and keep a library of that so we don’t have to reinvent. Did we ever do that?
So we have a place to go for the next people to come through to refer to.
Hoffman: So you have an approach to keep that and also I guess one of the benefits
you have young professionals, you have different folks,
in theory, who would stick around to help transmit that.
Mueller: Well, this is a very interesting question,
this knowledge capture question and what we’re trying to get to, traditionally you do a project,
then you stop and write a report.
What we’re trying to do is take advantage of this new information technology
where you never stop and write a report, it self-documents itself as you go.
And that is possible now because of how cheap memory is.
You can now film your whole life every day and store it on a hard drive.
Now, the problem then is information overload.
So we have to find a balance between capturing too much and not capturing enough,
but also we are working towards a system where our processes allow us to self-document as we go.
Right now, we use SharePoint,
but there are probably better tools out there,
we do try to do knowledge capture as we go so that in any given point of time,
all of the information is available.
Hoffman: That is excellent.
And the technology is so readily available that it blends itself into what you are doing.
Audience Member: I just had a quick question.
How can everyone here get involved in this sort of concept you are speaking of
and the organizations that are popping up?
And do you hope to serve as sort of a role model to have other organizations,
maybe not NASA affiliated,
but I guess in society in general, to crop up and do this same sort of thing?
Mueller: I think there is a movement out there.
It is called the maker movement
and they are doing exactly what you are saying.
It is not unique to NASA, everybody is doing it, it is part of the whole social networking phenomenon.
It is empowering the normal citizen to build things. So how you can get involved as a NASA employee?
There are a couple of ways.
We have this program called Kickstart.
So a couple times of year, we advertise the Kickstart
and you can come understand any idea you have, that benefits NASA, and if the board,
there is a board of directors, some of our senior management that listens to it.
If they decide if it is worthy of some funding,
they will give you five thousand dollars and if your supervisor agrees to allow you to use your time,
then you can spend the next six months
with a five thousand dollar budget and some of your time to go develop your idea.
Then you present it to management again and then it has the potential to become a real project.
That is one way of doing it.
Another way is to join the Spaceport Innovators group.
It is a group of young professionals, actually not just young professionals,
I will call it motivated professionals,
who meet once a week and they invite speakers and they discuss ideas. It is a think tank.
So that is another really good way of getting involved, through he Spaceport Innovators.
Jack, do you have anything else?
Fox: Well, and as far as working in the Swamp Works, we haven’t formalized anything,
but if you have an idea and we think it was of merit,
we would make sure you were trained to come in there and give you a little incubator space
and help you produce your idea.
Hoffman: One of the things we can also do, in terms of the Chief Knowledge Office,
is we can place some of these sites
that you referenced, to make it available to folks with whatever you are available with.
We can also put it on the APPEL website so it is out there. Very good discussions.
One of the things that you started with I think was failure and organizations
that are around a long time, they sometimes get resistance to going in a new direction.
Do you have an example you like to talk about in terms of where something didn’t go as planned
or where you can classify it as a failure,
but that led to just a break through or improvement?
Fox: Well it is only failure if you don’t learn anything.
So we never actually say that was a failure.
We've got a few. You got one you want to fess up?
Mueller: What you are looking for is a post it note, right, the post it note was a failure.
It was a glue that didn’t stick very well.
So a whole new business was developed out of the glue that didn’t stick very well.
And they made post it notes. I will say that the regolith is a strange substance.
Hoffman: What is regolith? I am sorry, I don’t know.
Mueller: Regolith is crushed rock.
It is the loose surface material on a planetary body.
It has no organic material in it. It is like soil,
but it has no organic material. It is basically crushed rock.
It is formed by meteorites that impact events on planetary events.
In over four and half billion years,
it has created a lot of small particles and about 80 percent are between 20 microns in size.
So it is like beach sand, but much finer. It is like crushed glass, talcum powder.
So this is very interesting substance because it behaves like a fluid,
but when you compact it, it behaves like a solid.
It has this binary state.
So we are thinking if you can somehow harness that property,
where it behaves like a fluid in one condition
and then you simply turn on a little vibrator and it compacts it, now you have a solid state.
So that is kind of like a thixotropic fluid,
when it is under stress it behaves like a fluid, when it is not under shear stress,
it is like a paint, it doesn’t yield as much.
So we are looking at those serendipitous properties
where we can make something out of it and maybe that is an example of something that you are trying to say.
Hoffman: Very much so.
We are coming down to the final few minutes.
And one of things I wanted to check with both of you is at the core,
you are about an innovative place
that has passion and energy and people are doing cool things
and that motivates and that goes in the direction.
How do you create that kind of innovative office, environment, work place?
What is it that you do as managers, as leaders, engineers, technologists to make that happen?
Fox: Well, in my career, I have always seen the group take on the personality of the leadership.
If the leadership is kind of negative, they all kind of become negative.
So I very much think its lead by example and try to keep a positive attitude
and quite frankly, work ethic, and roll up your sleeves and no job too small kind of a thing.
People catch on to that and it is infectious very much so, I believe.
Mueller: Innovation is nothing new and it has been extensively studied.
There are courses that are taught about innovation.
There is actually a process for innovation and the process for innovation first
starts with creating an environment, which is conducive to innovation.
And it is both a physical environment and a psychological environment.
FFirst you have you create the right environment for innovation and that is what we are trying to do with the Swamp Works facility.
Once you have created that environment,
you need the skills, then you put in the people with the right skills or you grow the skills.
Then you let them go nuts and you brainstorm and that happens for a while.
We call it controlled chaos.
Then the management steps in and the adults take over.
At a certain point, you have to say stop, enough brainstorming, now produce.
Then we have to pick a concept and go with it.
So there is a process for innovation.
The trick is to create an environment where that process is allowed to work.
Hoffman: It has been fascinating.
I know we are coming up to close of our time and then were a lot of key things.
Again, when I first toured, I didn’t know.
I got calls when I came here from different folks, saying have you seen Swamp Works?
It may have been Steve even, and I said no, what is the Swamp Works?
I assumed it is something with alligators, you know.
It wasn’t communicated and then of course,
I've know you for many years and we went over there, and you do see the energy and the passion.
And then the different technologies being worked are amazing so you have been able to capture something.
I think that is very important and when I came out of that, I called Louis Peach and said,
we’ve got to do a Masters with Masters
because so many places you will see people who can get down,
in terms of looking backward or how are we innovative, how do we change the culture.
And I think you have clearly demonstrated there are ways of doing that.
So I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us and look forward to a continuation of that.
I also want to thank, in terms of the NASA Kennedy Space Center leadership,
obviously Bob Cabana and Lisa Malone and the Public Affairs Office,
who have been phenomenal in terms of supporting us.
And NASA TV and our Chief Knowledge Officer here at Kennedy, who is Michael Bell.
And also the producer for this series, who is Louis Peach.
Everything has really floated beautifully, which often doesn’t happen.
It has been a wonderful story and it has been fascinating. It is so important to keep this going.
So thank you all.
[Applause]