John McKean, an AIAA senior member in Iowa, agreed with the central point of Moriba Jah’s February/March column [“Homo sapiens: making us suited for the stars”] but believes that Jah “missed a few important considerations”:
“First, evolution is not done with us. If we can develop sustainable environments on the Moon and Mars, then the Law of Natural Selection will determine if a Homo luna or Homo martian will evolve. Second, he did not even mention Venus that has near Earth gravity. Terraforming Mars or Venus may take 10,000 years or more, but that’s not long in terms of geological time. We could start that process with current technology, and help speed it on its way as it develops. Until we develop a sustainable way to get out of our gravity well (possibly a space elevator), most exploration of space will continue with unmanned probes. And it’s possible that it would be easier to develop a space elevator on the Moon or Mars, and use those lessons back on Earth.
“Since the beginning of the Space Age, it has always been imagined that some form of artificial gravity would be developed for Earth orbit or deep space human missions. So developing that technology may also be a part of resolving this problem.”
After reading the April-June Big Question [“What advice would you give Boeing?”], James Carter, an AIAA associate fellow in South Carolina, sent us his own answer:
“There is merit to these suggestions [given by the four experts]; however, a more fundamental, impactful approach would be for Boeing’s leaders to engage the employees to use the process improvement tools of lean manufacturing. These tools were largely invented by Toyota and resulted in the manufacture of cars with zero defects. Examples of these tools include: workplace organization (5S), standard work, total productive maintenance, mistake-proofing, and setup time reduction. All Toyota employees have knowledge and use these tools to eliminate waste in the manufacturing process. The Toyota Production System, now generally referred to as ‘lean manufacturing,’ has become a ‘way of life’ in many companies worldwide and has had a major impact on product quality, productivity, and on-time delivery. I helped lead this process at Pratt & Whitney in the late 1990s. This operating system is called ACE, Achieving Competitive Excellence.”