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Washington, DC and
Huntsville, Alabama:
Small Business
Innovation Research is partially responsible for the success of the
International Space Station (ISS). Today, we visit with one small business, AZ
Technology; they are responsible for much of the signage on the ISS.
Signs in Space: The
International Space Station,a metaphor for empowering the very edges of human
creativity where small businesses are key participants. "A new space odyssey is
in progress" says Don Wilkes, the company's founder.
One of his most
innovative projects is the development of interfaces to machines onboard that
can now be operated remotely from the Earth by school children with Internet
access. It is just incredible. Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Star Trek, you're
history! We are getting beamed up!
We go to the
Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) to document the path by which small
business is playing an ever greater role in commercializing what was once top
secret research.
Meet Astronaut
Dr. Larry DeLucas, right out of Star Trek. Dr. DeLucas flew on a space
shuttle mission and now is the leader of a team to develop microgravity-based
experiments for the space station right through to 2010. He uses a technology
called the Space Experiment Education Kit (SEEK) developed by AZ
Technology and he will be involved with the development of the education
curriculum for use in secondary schools. This software, in conjunction with the
NASA Telescience REsource Kit (TREK), will also be used by universities
and the commercial sector to conduct and monitor their on-board experiments.
Meet Don
Wilkes. He is a scientist who started a business to build machines that no
one else would. The year - 1989. The company is AZ Technology. Don was quick to
capitalize on a program that leverages our government's basic research to
develop commercial products. It is called
Small Business Innovation
Research (SBIR) and the program is administered by ten federal agencies.
Many departments
throughout these federal agencies award SBIR contracts.
Don was quickly
successful in finding SBIRs that he could propose and successfully complete.
But take note, Don is an inventor. He is a perfectionist. He embraces the art
of the impossible to make the strange familiar. And as a result, his products
have been used on the US Space Shuttle missions and even on the Russian MIR
Space Station.
NASA awarded 13 of
the 20 SBIR contracts that AZ Technology received between 1989 and 2001. As a
result of these contracts, extraordinary business opportunities
followed.
This trek begins in
1996 when Don and his company, grown to 20 people, won a Phase I SBIR contract
from the Johnson Space Center in Houston to develop software systems for the
"remote payloads teleoperations system." Phase I contracts are usually just to
develop and prove a concept. They did it. They showed how people could control
and monitor experiments in space no matter where they were on earth.
 In 1997 Don's team was awarded a Phase II SBIR
for $500K for the implementation of what became known as TOPS, TeleOPerations
Systems. Enter Bob Bradford, a project engineer located at Marshall Space
Flight Center. MSFC was responsible for developing the systems for the
distribution of data for the remote operations of the space station's
scientific experiments. Bob was well aware of AZ Technology's work on TOPS. He
developed an SBIR Phase III Statement Of Work to expand TOPS to become a
voice-based and network testing system.
Move over Star
Trek! The real thing is happening now! Don's team was readily awarded a
$100K Phase III SBIR contract for testing that involved 26 secondary schools.
In this experiment the students used the Internet to quiz astronauts and
scientists about their experiences and experiments in space. A second Phase III
contract for $888K was awarded to develop this Internet-based,
voice-distribution system for remote payload operations on the ISS.
Enter
Dr. Bob Norwood. NASA and other federal
agencies are anxious to work with the small business community of the country.
If you need any more encouragement, listen carefully to what Dr. Bob Norwood
says. Speaking as Director of the Commercial Technology Division of NASA, he
comments: "Technology is simply knowledge and like other forms of knowledge, it
is often broadly applied and transferable. For that reason, the vast storehouse
of technology NASA has built is a national resource, a bank of knowledge
available for commercial applications and enhancements to the quality of life
and to new products and processes of benefit to the national economy,
industrial efficiency and human welfare." - Full text in NASA publication,
Spinoff.
Enter Sally
Little (Director of Marshall Space Flight Center’s Technology Transfer
Department). She is an enthusiastic advocate for technology transfer. Sally
wants everyone to tune in and to understand what an extraordinary opportunity
we all have to participate in these space programs. She is quoted in
Huntsville's Technology Today magazine: "We are now the catalysts that take
inventions from Marshall’s laboratories and unite them with commercial
applications.”
As she catches your
imagination, be sure to follow-up at
NASASolutions.com and read "Working with
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center."
Enter
Stanley McCall. Stanley is the Small
Business Specialist in NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Procurement Office.
He wants to open this process to the best businesses anywhere in the USA. These
are our tax dollars at work. There are many opportunities for a diversity of
small businesses to participate to keep the USA at the forefront of
technological development. |
