da Vinci and the 40 Answers

Get your own free money

The next time you have an idea, a concept, or a business plan that you think just might work, look and see what type of funding you are eligible for. Any small business can do exactly what I did with the SBIR program, and that small business can be a company of one; you. In fact the largest percentage (40%) of SBIR awards go to companies with less than 9 employees. The United States Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Technology runs the SBIR and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs. These programs are designed to ensure that small, innovative businesses are able to contribute to the federal government’s research and development efforts.

The goal of the program is to translate scientific discoveries into products and services that touch people’s lives. Vaccinations, nano-engineering techniques, laser technologies, night vision goggle simulators, robotic surgery assistants, software for spacecraft operation and control, and a new long-life battery are all innovations that began in the SBIR/STTR programs.

Your chances are pretty good; one out of seven get funded from every agency. Many federal agencies with large budgets have to fund the SBIR program, so if you have an innovative new plan for getting things done, check out the SBA programs and see what type of funding you might be eligible for.

Agencies that participate in the SBIR/STTR programs include:

• Department of Commerce
• Department of Defense
• Department of Education
• Department of Energy
• Department of Homeland and Security
• Department of Transportation
• Environmental Protection Agency
• National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)
• National Science Foundation
• U.S. Small Business Administration
• Department of Health and Human Services

Visit www.sbir.gov for more information the SBIR/STTR programs, or visit www.grants.gov to find and apply for other federal government grants.

Below is my initial one page proposal that got things rolling.

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External Tank Shrink Wrap

Provide a shrink wrap type material for the Space Shuttle External Tank to eliminate all foam debris

TARGET: To utilize the extensive experience of the packaging and polymer industries to provide a material and process to shrink wrap the ET foam and eliminate debris

• Improve the safety of all future Space Shuttle missions
• Minimum impact to current operations
• Provides a fresh independent assessment and solution to the problem
• Supports NASA’s Small Business Strategic Initiatives

In 1982 the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office found several cases where Tylenol had been intentionally contaminated with cyanide. This was the spark that infused billions of dollars into the packaging industry and its technology. Aspirin bottles, Music CD’s, soft drinks, and millions of products now have state of the art tamper-proof designs.  These same materials and processes have been used to wrap and protect almost every product imaginable. The technology advancements in this field have increased many orders of magnitude in the last 20 years.

This phase 1 study will investigate this industry to determine if a readily available material and process exists that would allow the Space Shuttle External Tank (ET) to be shrink wrapped in a strong, durable, and lightweight protective “cocoon” to eliminate the possibility of any foam sheading during launch, thus eliminating the potential of future orbiter damage. The Ideal Final Result (IFR) would be to provide an off the shelf, light weight, sprayable polymer that would room temperature cure and shrink, yet would not require any changes to the current foam insulation material specifications, processes, or inspections.  This material would be applied as a final step in the ET manufacturing process just prior to shipment the KSC. “Visualize an automobile painting process.” This would have minimal impact to the current STS operations and would greatly increase mission safety.

Mark L. Fox is the CEO of SAAF, LLC., is a Chemical Engineer, and MBA, and will be the principal investigator of this study. Mr. Fox was part of the Space Shuttle Program for over 15 years and was a Chief Program Manager as well as a Chief Engineer at Thiokol and is intimately familiar with the program and NASA policies and procedures. Mr. Fox is currently a successful entrepreneur in several industries.

FINANCIAL: This phase one study is estimated at $70,000 for a 6 month time period.

STATUS: SAAF, LLC. stands ready to conduct this study immediately. A more detailed proposal and test plan will be submitted upon NASA’s request.

ACTION: NASA to review this proposal and contact Mark L. Fox, SAAF, LLC regarding their level of interest via a phone call.  (801) 779-0603. Mark will travel to NASA to meet and discuss this further at the agency’s request.

Mark L. Fox,  July 5th , 2006
CEO, SAAF, LLC.

Paid to Play

“I’m going to fix the space shuttle myself.”

That is the most arrogant statement you’ll ever hear me make, especially when you consider that I am no longer on the space shuttle program and I haven’t been for the last ten years.

The foam issue on the Columbia mission has always been on my mind. Despite the doubts of the NASA officials I talked about in the View Point chapter, I still believe that a sprayable polymer shrink wrap would keep the foam intact and prevent debris from causing another tragic disaster.

I wrote a one-page proposal outlining my idea and sent the document to several senior NASA managers. One of them said, “Well, I was on both the Challenger and the Columbia investigating committees. I’m sure we thought about this, but I don’t remember the details or what happened to that plan.”

Having worked on the program, I suspected that an idea like this might have got lost in the lower levels of the review process and got killed before it could be thoroughly evaluated.

Not one to give up easily, I sent my proposal to another top NASA official. She suggested that I turn in a proposal for SBIR Funding – Small Business Innovation Research. SBIR funding is designed to encourage collaboration between the public and private sectors and stimulate technological innovation opportunities for small business owners. So I submitted my proposal  and had a couple months to wait before they awarded contracts. So during this time I wanted to find a cheap way to start testing my idea. I wanted to “Try It” and get ahead of the game.

In order to test the feasibility of my shrink-wrap plan, I needed samples of the foam used on the Columbia shuttle. I called a friend of mine at Kennedy Space Center and asked for the specification for the foam. He gave me the NASA spec number, which wasn’t very much help. I needed to know who actually manufactured the foam; NASA wasn’t just going to send some to me if I didn’t have a contract. My friend went back did some more research, and then he called and said the foam was manufactured by Pratt &Whitney.

I knew that was unlikely, since Pratt & Whitney doesn’t make chemicals like that, at least that I know of. After several days of research, I discovered that Dow Chemical made the foam. I visited their Web site, started doing some research, and discovered that the foam used on the space shuttle Columbia is the same stuff sold in a can at Ace Hardware by the name of Great Stuff. I called Dow and spoke to an engineer who confirmed this. Great Stuff is a sealant for doors, windows, and cracks, and can be bought for less than $10 a can.

Who would have guessed? I could now start testing several shrink wrap materials with the foam before the contract even started, just to get a jump on things.

Unleashing Your Inner Wizard

At Wizard Academy, we celebrate outsider thinking and the wisdom of absurdity and audacity. We celebrate the weirdos, renegades, and mavericks – those that understand the importance of “thinking outside the box.” In fact, these very traits are a defining characteristic of the people who are attracted to Wizard Academy.

Unfortunately, our wisdom is not universally celebrated. This type of thinking tends to be marginalized by society. We are in danger of remaining irrelevant to the rest of society if we don’t come up with an analytical, logical, sequential, left-brain way of explaining these ideas and making them accessible to others. We don’t want people to say, “Well, I’m not like you. I’m not fun loving and free and uninhibited and I don’t get it. And you’re just weird.”

Their criticism isn’t what worries us because we’ve lived with that kind of stereotyping our whole life. What worries us is that society will continue to ignore our ideas simply because they can’t understand. The aim of this book is to take these right-brain concepts and explain them in a way that everyone can comprehend.

Free the Beagle

Imagine that your left brain is a lawyer and your right brain is the lawyer’s pet beagle. The beagle runs over and drops something at the feet of the lawyer. The lawyer says, “I don’t have time to play right now. Leave me alone. I’m trying to concentrate.” But the beagle was bringing the lawyer a clue to help him with his work. The beagle brought the lawyer a valuable treasure, but the beagle cannot speak and explain his gift. Unfortunately, the lawyer doesn’t realize the significance of the beagle’s gift. He thinks that his intellect is enough to solve the problem and disregards the beagle’s assistance. 

The left brain thinks like the lawyer. The left brain has an ego. Don’t ever let anyone convince you that the left brain is enough alone, though, because if that is true, half of your brain exists for no reason at all – half of your brain is wasted.

In our society, how much time do you think adults spend predominantly in the right half of their brains during their conscious waking hours? We are never only in one side of the brain as opposed to the other; we’re always in both. I believe that most of the time we’re predominantly in our left brain with our right brain supporting. What few things do we do in our society as adults that would qualify as mostly right brain activities?

Watching a movie or reading a fiction book is a right-brain activity. Most movies are absolute fantasy fiction. A willing suspension of disbelief is required to enjoy these pursuits. We delve into the right hemisphere of our brain in order to escape the judgmental, analytical taskmaster of the left brain.

Bohr, a widely respected, hardcore scientist, understood that you have to have an outlet of ridiculousness to stimulate your right brain so that you are no longer limited by what is known to be possible. He understood that there was sometimes truth in the opposite of a “correct” statement. In order to be able to escape the left brain’s absolute reverence of right and wrong, you have to be able to truly play. Unfortunately, true play is not as easily achieved as one might think.

For an activity to be play, the activity must be intrinsically motivating. If you play because you want to win a trophy, you’re not really playing for pleasure and therefore not really playing.  Play must also be freely chosen. If you’re playing because someone told you to, you are not truly playing. Play must be actively engaging. You have to develop the willingness to say yes to the absurd, to the impulse, and you must have fun. You must derive pleasure from your play.

Ninety percent of the books written each year are nonfiction, but 90% of the books purchased each year are nonfiction. We think that people want facts, but the reality is that people want to escape from facts. People want to play and have the child inside of them unleashed.

Kurt Vonnegut once said, “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control, but freedom is about what you can unleash. Which entity do you think is bigger – that which you can control or that which is beyond our control and recognition?

Embrace Reckless Abandon

If we’re not going to be bound by yesterday’s knowledge, if we are to move beyond previously established knowledge and step out of the figurative box, we have to escape. We have to escape from the fear of shame and go to a place that doesn’t know right from wrong, doesn’t know fact from fiction, and truly doesn’t care. We have to go to the place in our brain that has no concept of the fact that something could be immoral, unethical, wrong, illegal, shameful, or in any way impossible. This rejection of impossibility is feasible because there is no place for impossibility in the right hemisphere of our brain.

There has to be a place in our brain to say, “Yes, I see that this is incorrect. However, I need to move beyond the fact that this is incorrect in order to see that perhaps at another level, this idea is perfectly correct.” This place in our brain must be able to identify and then move beyond the duality of a problem. The left brain can’t do that. The left brain cannot ignore fact; nor can it ignore experience and authority. All of these things are vitally important to the left brain and cannot be ignored.

If you believe that the only way to learn is through advice and example from an authority figure, that’s classical classroom learning – a classical left brain download of pre-digested, pre-formatted information. But if we’re only able to use what we already know, we’ll never be able to move beyond our current level of knowledge.

You have to have a vehicle of absurdity, a vehicle of play, a vehicle that says, “I don’t care and it doesn’t matter. If this is ridiculous, that’s good,” if you are ever going to see what has not been seen before. You have to be able to escape the concrete rules of reality. When you need to think of new things, you have to be able to escape the fear of judgment by your peers, coworkers, boss, neighbors, friends, and society. You must be able to push those influences out of your head. Luckily, the right brain has no shame and no concept of ethics, judgment, or accuracy. The right brain is not married to right and wrong and it doesn’t care.