Month: September 2008

Pushing the envelope can be a very dangerous business. This is even more true in the aerospace industry.

There is a company in California that I have always admired: Scaled Composites. Burt Rutan and his team have built some of the most interesting aircraft ever. (My favorite being the Boomerang.)

Their most high profile project to date was SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize. Scaled made two flights in excess of 100km above the earth (past the edge of space) within two weeks using the same vehicle. It was an amazing feat, and Virgin partnered with them soon after to license the technology and build a space tourism business with Virgin Galactic.

Unfortunately, last summer during rocket motor testing in the development of SpaceShipTwo, an explosion occurred. Three Scaled employees died, and more were seriously hurt in the explosion, including a good friend of mine from University.

Scaled recently posted an update on the accident investigation [PDF] which was quite revealing:

After doing our best to take care of the families and each other, the first order of business was to work with Cal OSHA in its investigation of the accident. Cal OSHA took through the end of January this year to complete its investigation. The agency did not determine a cause for the accident. We are continuing to work with Cal OSHA. In doing so, we hope to support Scaled’s needs as well as the ongoing efforts of others in this developing industry.

You are truly working on the edge of the envelope when such an event occurs and months later no one knows the reason why it happened. Scaled was working with Nitrous Oxide, which is probably one of the safest substances you could use and still turn it into a rocket motor. I’m amazed that the cause wasn’t determined, and hope that the many actions Scaled has taken to prevent future accidents will prove effective.

As I wrote above, pushing the edges of the envelope can be a very hazardous business; unfortunately it’s the only way to truly grow.

Richard Wright, the keyboardist for Pink Floyd, died today of cancer.

While I wasn’t part of the generation that grew up with Pink Floyd, I certainly grew up listening to them. (The only album I bought when it first came out was The Division Bell.)

My first honest-to-goodness rock concert was seeing them in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metrodome in 1994. Amazingly, three friends and I managed to get ticket that were in the twelfth row, center stage! And get this… tickets were $30 each. The $60 “VIP” seats were actually behind outs. Since the stage was ten stories tall, the VIP section was moved back, and my buddies and I managed to get some of the best seats in the house. We had to enter from the back of the audience in the dome, and as we walked closer and closer to the stage, we just couldn’t believe our luck.

Oh, and the concert was incredible… it had to be one of the best staged tours I’ve seen, with inflatable pigs, four-story disco balls, a huge movie screen in the middle of the stage, and more. Interesting that the band is from Cambridge, where in a week I’ll be starting school.

Richard Wright was a heck of a musician; I’m sorry to hear he’s gone.

[One of my favorite Floyd songs… though it’s probably one of everyone’s favorites]:

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve been reading and re-reading Meditations, the diary/book written by Marcus Aurelius.

Lately I’ve gone back to keeping it in my bag more often and reading bits of it on the Tube/train each day. Every time I read it I’m reminded of things that I want to do in my life. Today’s thought?

Tossing aside everything else, hold fast to these few truths. We live only in the present, in this fleet-footed moment. The rest is lost and behind us, or ahead of us and may never be found. […]

-Meditations, Book Three, #10.

I’m very happy to announce that I’m off to Cambridge to get my MBA, starting in just a few short weeks. And not Cambridge, Massachusetts; I’m off to the original Cambridge, in the UK.

As a bit of background, the University of Cambridge is the second-oldest English speaking university in the world, having been founded shortly after Oxford in 1209. (Which means that next year is it’s 800th anniversary… wow!)

In October I will start the one-year Cambridge MBA programme. Clearly, fitting an MBA curriculum into just one year, with two consulting projects and an individual project means that I’m going to be really busy in the coming year. But from everything I’ve seen and everyone I’ve met there it’s going to be an invigorating experience.

I’m going back to school for a number of reasons, which I will explain in further posts. But when I chose a school, I wanted to stay in the UK, and I wanted to go to a school that would provide me the tools and connections to get me where I want to go in my career. Though it was only founded in the last 20 years or so, the Judge Business School already has a skyrocketing reputation. It’s ranked 10th in the world according to the Financial Times, though MBA rankings are of course highly subjective. Not only that, but it’s reputation in science and technology is unparalleled anywhere. (81 Nobel Prize winners, concentrated in Physics, Medicine and Chemistry) And who can forget Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Keynes, Alan Turing, and Hugh Laurie? (Well, maybe Hugh doesn’t quite fit in with the others…) I plan on getting back in touch with my engineering/tech roots as I prepare for my post-MBA career.

Each Cambridge student is also a member of one of Cambridge’s 31 colleges; I’ll be associated with Jesus College which was founded in 1496. The majority of sports happen on the college level, and I plan to continue my rowing with the Jesus College Boat Club, which has historical links back to Thames Rowing Club.

For anyone that’s interested, I plan on blogging about my MBA experience as much as I can in the coming year. If you’re interested in these posts specifically, I’ll be setting up a separate “feed”, which you can also subscribe to via e-mail.

It’s going to be an exciting twelve months!