Abstract for “The Noumenia Process”
The following is the abstract for one of five papers I am submitting for the www.SpaceElevatorConference.org. I’d love to have some comments on it – grammar, typos, content – anything at all. I value your opinion. I have to turn it in tomorrow, so whatever suggestions you’ve got will have to be incorporated quickly. Thanks for your help.
Take care. mjl
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The “Noumenia Process” is a tool that was specifically designed for use in the Space Elevator community, yet it can also be used in any ‘large project’ environment. It is a “To-Do” list, a calendar, and a project management tool rolled into one. It picks up where Gantt charts and dependencies leave off. The Noumenia Process is a tool to help the manager put a sub-project into context of the greater, much larger, program. To be blunt – I don’t know how we are going to build an Elevator to Space without this tool. The project is simply too big to succeed without an organizational structure behind it.
That said, there are no blueprints for building our Elevator. So, I have drawn on knowledge gained from: Naval warship construction, US Marine Corp operational planning doctrine, specialized education and communications training, portfolio management, skyscraper construction, “failed” projects in the space community, and public works infrastructure. Also, there are a lot of lessons to be drawn from projects where ‘capital’ is plentiful – energy projects (pipelines, opening oil fields, and wind farms).
Let’s face it – building the Elevator to Space is not merely the task of sending a strong-string into space, and climbing back and forth. It requires a complete global infrastructure – and it needs to be built from scratch. Its construction is on a scale that surpasses the Great Wall, and particularly on a scale that dwarfs any “modern” construction like the Brooklyn Bridge or Three Gorges Dam. Which means, before we start to build the “biggest thing, ever”, we need an operational management tool that is up to the task.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
- Suggest changing the one instance of single quotes (‘large project’) to double quotes (“large project”) for consistency with the rest of the abstract.
- Starting a sentence with “So,” is Pacific-Northwestian, not proper English. So, (I speak it, too!) I’d suggest removing it. You could use a different introduction, like “Instead” but I think that sentence will also work fine if you just remove the word “So.” Or maybe replace it with “To build it,” or “To design it,”
- This (Naval warship…) is a paragraph, not a bulleted list. Remove the “:”.
- Not sure “Naval” should be capitalized in this context. Are you referring to a specific, named Navy (in which case it should), or the general construction of sea-going, or naval, vessels (in which case it should not be capitalized)?
- “energy projects” is all alone at the end of that sentence, as if you were going to add a couple other things after it (energy projects and and ). Maybe change “- energy projects (pipelines…” to “such as energy projects (pipelines…”
- Feels like there is an overuse of dashes in sentences (e.g. “Let’s face it -”) , but that is more my personal preference.
- “strong-string” should maybe be “strong string”, unless “strong-string” is a thing (especially one that is referred to in the actual document).
- punctuation needs to be inside quotes, not after: change
– ever”,
to
– ever,”
- The abstract seems to sort of fade away at the end without any sense of direction. Maybe append a new closing sentence (or short paragraph) like, “The Noumenia Process is that tool.”
August 11th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Drew, thanks. will update accordingly. very helpful. am going to bed now – long overdue, and tomorrow starts at 5am. take care. mjl