Welcome to Komerath.space

“Dancing Black Holes”. Animation from the Spitzer Space Telescope. A “small” (150 million Suns) Black Hole orbits a massive (18 Billion Suns) BH, cutting across its galactic disc plane. Each crossing generates a stupendous flash seen 3.2 billion light years away at the Spitzer telescope. Nice illustration of orbital mechanics. Source: RT.com for the full video.
https://www.rt.com/news/487249-dancing-black-holes-explosion-trillion-suns-video/

Welcome to Komerath.space

Advanced concept development is the idea that we can systematically go about devising grand solutions to seemingly ‘impossible’ problems.

There are several examples of such grand solutions. Think of our airline network, that allows people to go between any two cities on the planet inside about 15 hours. Or go to the Moon and return. Or eliminate killer diseases such as smallpox and polio. Most such grand solutions were not done in a completely systematic manner. Perhaps they were each a gleam in the eye of some visionary, but the solutions happened over many decades of determined, persistent efforts.

But we can look at these, and ask: “What if we could reason out the whole solution, and optimize it, up front?” At least, the implementation will avoid several initial mistakes before the direction changes from what we imagined at the outset. This is Advanced Concept Development.

Why not just wait? Some solutions cannot wait, and cannot be done in small steps. Examples are Space missions. So, unfortunately is modern warfare. Or pandemics. We must stretch our minds at the very outset, and have a systematic approach. We must have the confidence that such efforts will succeed.

Examples that I use:

  1. Tailored Force Fields (the inspiration for the name of this site). The idea that large, comfortable shelters can be assembled in orbit, using materials from beyond Earth. With walls massive enough to stop cosmic radiation. And spinning to generate 1G artificial gravity.
  2. A Space Power Grid approach to bring about Space Solar Power: the unlimited, clean electric power that can flow from solar energy converted in Space.
  3. The Glitter Belt: Our Patent-Pending idea that Climate Change can be  R.E.V.E.R.S.E.D.   Carefully.  Cleanly. And at surprisingly low cost.

LEARNING TO LEARN: The key to grand ideas

Grand ideas can be exciting. But to get beyond rah-rah enthusiasm, or ignorant sneering, one has to get educated. REALLY educated. And this is the hard part. Information is available. Knowledge is available. Wisdom from hard experience is available. Outside our brains. To get them inside is hard work.

I provide results of experiments conducted over the decades on how to learn. Today and into the future. The EXTROVERT project that I led under NASA sponsorship was our response to the question:

How will you educate (aerospace) engineers to innovate within systems of immense complexity?

We showed how, and I would love to tell you about that.