Sputnik, STEM and a Broken Educational Runway

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Sixty-one years ago today, on Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik.  A little less than 12 years later, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed the Eagle on the moon.

Today we are faced with an educational shortfall that exceeds that of 1957. Our educational infrastructure has failed us at a level that surpasses that of our roads, dams, levees and bridges. The cornerstone necessary to build the skill sets needed to fix our physical infrastructure is education. As a country, we find ourselves in the precarious position of having many lofty goals but lacking the human capital and infrastructure to achieve them.

NASA

In March of 2016, at a NASA awards ceremony, Dr. Jaiwon Shin spoke at length about NASA’s 10 year multi-billion dollar budget. He also outlined a series of inspiring research and development initiatives that included a new supersonic passenger aircraft and hypersonic capabilities. But, what seems to be missing in the proposed 2019 NASA budget is a clear path for educating the workforce to build NASA’s dreams.

Demand for Pilots

As a very clear and focused point, Boeing recently projected that by 2030 there will be a world wide need for 240,000 pilots. The US alone will need 125,000 pilots. This does not address the need for maintenance personnel or ground crews. It certainly doesn’t account for the multi thousands of computer scientists, engineers and other related jobs that will be needed to build the aircraft that pilots will fly.

Air Shows

Two weeks ago I was in Reno, Nevada, to watch the practice runs for the Reno Air Races and to visit with Reza Karamooz, the founder  of GRADD (Global Robot and Drone Deployment). Based in Las Vegas, Reza has created a hand-on STEM based educational exhibit. He has simplified technology while making it fun and accessible.  Over the course of the race days, more than 7,000 students went through his exhibit tents.  At least one school was able to bring all of their students and faculty for a day in the STEM tents.

In June of this year, the California Capital Airshow director asked for assistance in standing up a Drone Hangar as a way to test the interest in drone technology at the Airshow. The test proved to be quite successful as we were able to bring  a spectrum of participants to the hangar. Startup manufacturers Fruity Chutes , Sweep Wing, and England's very successful   small drone manufacturer Extreme Fliers. Greg Crutsinger of ScholarFarms exhibited state of the art 360 degree imaging and mapping of the recent Carr fire. Some of the images can be found in this Washington Post article.  Additionally, the California Dept of Corrections was on hand to showcase their use of drones in the prison system.  San Francisco Drone School's Werner Von Stein brought his netted area that allowed young people the hands-on experience of flying a drone. On the all important educational front the University of California’s Center of Excellence on Unmanned Aircraft Systems Safety was present to speak with students with an interest in the schools and the technology.

The take away from the tech friendly elements of the Reno and Sacramento air shows is that there is a very deep thirst from America's general population to engage with and become a part of the emerging technologies that are upon us. Whether we look at drones, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cloud computing, 3D manufacturing, autonomous vehicles or cyber security our need to understand these technologies is as exponential as the technologies themselves. As a country, we need to fund and vastly improve and incentivise our STEM education runway.

Airshows can serve as a catalyst that introduces people to emerging technologies and act as a launchpad for needed educational reform.

Our educational system needs a hard reboot.

Where is my $15 an hour McDonald's Job? Gone.

It is very interesting that people are up in arms about the minimum wage and/or fair living wage that is being demanded from fast food operations. Those making the demands must think that we all live in an economic vacuum, ignoring fundamental economics, believing that wages can be increased without affecting the profitability of the enterprise for which they work.  Those who harbor such beliefs are blindingly wrong


  Here are two of the inevitable responses to increased cost:

The New McDonald's Automated Cashier

Then there is this Burger Bot manufactured by Momentum Machines in San Francisco.  The machine will produce 360 hamburgers an hour.

Automated Vehicle Symposium - San Francisco 

I attended the AUVSI (Assoc. of Unmanned Vehicle Systems, International) auto symposium in San Francisco yesterday and came away with the very clear, and rather startling realization that driverless vehicles will be with us in the very near future, and that the auto industry is paying very close attention and working diligently to be certain that Google doesn't become General Motors.

Presentations were made by Volvo, which is committed to attaining zero fatalities by 2020, by General Motors explaining their incremental ramp up to autonomous vehicles, and a presentation by Chris Urmson, the director of self driving cars at Google.  The Google presentation was truly staggering in the scope of its research and implementation.  It seems that one of their biggest problems is that they are allowing their employees to use and test the cars.  Once the test period is over they want to arm wrestle to see who gets to keep the car.  They love them.  The video below has had over 7 million views in a month and a half !

What was very interesting in a different way, was that Ginger Goodin, from Texas A&M transportation Institute spoke about how Texas was looking at the rules and regulations that are going to be necessary to integrate this technology in their state, and while my state of California is not exactly sitting on it's hands with this technology, I was very surprised that no one attended who was representing the State of  California   (at least as far as I know) .

It's equally interesting that this game changing technology, to which every American will soon be exposed, is moving forward so rapidly while the commercial  use of drones in our airspace, an equally game changing  technology, is being hamstrung by the FAA.

Trouble at the Border

It's not right. Billions from the White House

Yesterday in Houston Bernadette Lancelin began to question what was going on in her neighborhood.  The Dept. of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol were looking at a closed local school as a possible site for housing some of the tens of thousands of immigrant children who are flooding our southern border.  Lancelin raises a very valid question.  Why it is that we are spending millions of tax payer dollars to feed cloth, house and provide health care for these young people while our own citizens are going  without jobs, without health care that works and a public debt in the trillions?

While Lancelin is asking for answers, Obama is asking for money.  He wants Congress to authorize $3.7 billion dollars to be used to build infrastructure to care for these young people. He wants it  immediately with little discussion or thought as to whether it should be spent or how.  Meanwhile, millions of Americans want to know why the border has not been secured, why the fence has not been built and why the Border Patrol is stationed 45 miles from the border?  

We need action Mr. President. You need to close the border,  Period.

One of the Greatest Ideas in Human history

England is a great country, Ireland is a great country, there are many great countries,  America is a great idea,  to paraphrase U2’s  Bono, and yet that greatness is simply lost on too many Americans.

 Dinesh D’Souza’s new film, “America, imagine the world without her” , is for me, a great insight into to the “why” of this lost understanding,   Too many Americans have lost sight of the American Idea, a lodestar that has guided not just our own countrymen, but has guided and inspired millions of people throughout the world for over 200 years.

Perhaps one of the most insightful lessons to come from D’Souza’s film is the contrast between the older methods of acquiring wealth through conquest and the American way of creating it.  America, for the first time in human history, has manifested a new idea of wealth creation based on human freedom and liberty that has led to a level of creativity unmatched in human annals. 

We have strayed from that path.

We have forgotten our own story.  Too many believe that we are the villain of the world, we have forgotten our own kindness and generosity.  While we tolerated slavery at our country’s inception, we forget that over 2 million men fought in and that over 200,000 young Yankee soldiers died in that war which ended American slavery.

We forget that in the last century over 500,000 Americans, of all colors and beliefs, died not just in the defense of our country, but in the defense of America as an idea, as a hope and belief that liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness were intrinsic values that all human being shared and that if we, as Americans could bring that to the world, we would all be better off.

I have not scratched the surface of the depth of this film.  Leave your ideologies aside, go see the film and then think about it.  It’s important.

 Here is a trailer