Energy, NASA, the Academy, the Entrepreneur and the Future

Energy, NASA, the Academy, the Entrepreneur and the Future; what do these have in common? In talking with an old friend of mine whose early career was at NRL and then NASA, and who in many ways is the quintessential engineer, I remember the days on the late 50s and early 60s with the space race when NASA and DoD funded many graduate students and the management of these agencies were in many cases the folks who came out of WW II. They were dedicated devoted and driven. The early NASA teams, before Johnson turned it into a political hack factory, were very bright folks and could always find ways to solve engineering problems.

Now the energy problem is hard but doable. It is somewhat akin to separating uranium in 1942, many options, not knowing the best, but the science of separation was understood, it became a big chemical engineering issue. It got solved.

Now the energy problem has been driven by DoE, not one of the swiftest parts of the Federal Government, if I remember Carter had appointed a dentist at its head at one time. You see DoE rally makes bombs, the old Atomic Energy Commission, and it spends billions on other stuff, including electric cars which goes back to the early 70s at least. Nothing has ever come out of this mess. Unlike the early days of NASA, or the Manhattan Project, it became a Government institution with no well defined and targed goal.

But energy alternatives is well defined. NASA did work early on, the Academy is a place to start, and the Academy produced may of the entrepreneurs. You see I had a 64K memory computer on the Apollo capsule to integrate my star tracker into, yes 64K, not 64G, a million times less. That meant you really had to think.

From this amalgam of really smart people and a really good Government agency, we solved some really hard problems. Instead, today we send our entrepreneurs to Facebook, another web based sale approach, which may have the ability to provoke social change but the "value" of that change is problematic. After all people spend tons of time tweeting, facebooking, and the like. I got rid of my Facebook stuff, it was just too dumb. My MIT students had me sign up early on but after a few years I made a value judgement, it was negative. I relly dd not care what my nephew ate last night for dinner! Now I really like my nephew, but it just went too far.

So back to energy, leadership in Washington, focus, the right motivation, and I think we can make great progress. But first, move DoE to, well, West Virginia, south of Morgantown. Far enough away but close to CMU, WVU and a few others. In the coal belt, motivate folks. It has been done before, it can be done again.