Category: 99 Percent Invisible

Adjustable Space Shuttle Components - Packing for Mars - Mary Roach - 99 Percent Invisible

Adjustable Space Shuttle Components

Posted on by jabittan
Imagine driving your car without an adjustable seat. Imagine if every component of your vehicle was designed for an “average” sized person. Your seat probably wouldn’t fit you right, your legs may not reach the pedals well, or your head might be bumping up against the roof of the car. Standardized sizes that can’t be adjusted and that are based on an average for each person end up failing to actually fit anyone.
But super adjustable seats are not always a great thing either. In her book Packing for Mars, Mary Roach writes about the costs and engineering challenges that adjustable components on space stations present. “As things stand,” she writes, “NASA has to spend millions of dollars and man-hours making seats lavishly adjustable. And the more adjustable the seat, generally speaking, the weaker and heavier it is.”
When quoting NASA Crew Survivability Expert Dustin Gohmert, Roach includes, “The Russians have a much narrower range of crew sizes,” which means that they don’t have to adjust their seats, space suits, and various technology to the same extent as NASA which recruits astronauts with more varied bodies. Roach continues, “This wasn’t always the case. Apollo astronauts had to be between 5’5″ and 5’10”.” Today, however, we don’t want to limit someone’s opportunity to contribute their talents to space exploration and missions, even if they are a tad short or a bit taller than typical. We want the best people on our missions, and that means engineering expensive adjustable components with multiple potential fail points.
Adjustability is important in almost anything we design. Human bodies all come in different shapes and sizes and One-Size-Fits-All garments, seats, and utensils can normally do a good job for most, but not all of our bodies. Making the world more adjustable is definitely a slower and more expensive process, but it generally leads to better inclusion and better results for everyone. This isn’t necessarily the case for the space program, where designing ever more flexibility into the components of the system can mean more failure points and risk for everyone involved. Space travel is full of trade offs, and the trade offs can be expensive, time consuming, and even pose safety risks. Roach explores these tradeoffs in her book and looks at the ways we have calculated these tradeoffs throughout our history to show how much society has changed in terms of inclusion, thinking about designing for the average versus individual flexibility, and what it means to be human in spaces our bodies didn’t evolve to fit.
Imagine driving your car without an adjustable seat. Imagine if every component of your vehicle was designed for an “average” sized person. Your seat probably wouldn’t fit you right, your legs may not reach the pedals well, or your head might be bumping up against the roof of the car. Standardized sizes that can’t be adjusted and that are based on an average for each person end up failing to actually fit anyone.
But super adjustable seats are not always a great thing either. In her book Packing for Mars, Mary Roach writes about the costs and engineering challenges that adjustable components on space stations present. “As things stand,” she writes, “NASA has to spend millions of dollars and man-hours making seats lavishly adjustable. And the more adjustable the seat, generally speaking, the weaker and heavier it is.”
When quoting NASA Crew Survivability Expert Dustin Gohmert, Roach includes, “The Russians have a much narrower range of crew sizes,” which means that they don’t have to adjust their seats, space suits, and various technology to the same extent as NASA which recruits astronauts with more varied bodies. Roach continues, “This wasn’t always the case. Apollo astronauts had to be between 5’5″ and 5’10”.” Today, however, we don’t want to limit someone’s opportunity to contribute their talents to space exploration and missions, even if they are a tad short or a bit taller than typical. We want the best people on our missions, and that means engineering expensive adjustable components with multiple potential fail points.
Adjustability is important in almost anything we design. Human bodies all come in different shapes and sizes and One-Size-Fits-All garments, seats, and utensils can normally do a good job for most, but not all of our bodies. Making the world more adjustable is definitely a slower and more expensive process, but it generally leads to better inclusion and better results for everyone. This isn’t necessarily the case for the space program, where designing ever more flexibility into the components of the system can mean more failure points and risk for everyone involved. Space travel is full of trade offs, and the trade offs can be expensive, time consuming, and even pose safety risks. Roach explores these tradeoffs in her book and looks at the ways we have calculated these tradeoffs throughout our history to show how much society has changed in terms of inclusion, thinking about designing for the average versus individual flexibility, and what it means to be human in spaces our bodies didn’t evolve to fit.
Skill Versus Effort

Skill Versus Effort

Posted on by jabittan
In the world of sports, I have always enjoyed the saying that someone is so good at something they make it look easy. While I usually hear the saying in relation to physical activity, it also extends to other generally challenging activities – Kobe made the fadeaway jumper look easy, Tyler Cowen makes blogging look easy, and Roman Mars has made podcasting look (sound?) easy. But what is really happening when an expert makes something look easy? Daniel Kahneman argues that increased skill makes things look easy because skill decreases the effort needed to do the thing.

 

In Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman writes, “As you become skilled in a task, its demand for energy diminishes. Studies of the brain have shown that the pattern of activity associated with an action changes as skill increases, with fewer brain regions involved. Talent has similar effects. Highly intelligent individuals need less effort to solve the same problems, as indicated by both pupil size and brain activity. A general law of least effort applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion.”

 

while I was at a UCLA summer basketball camp years ago, Sean Farnham told me a story about Kobe – he used to work out at the UC Irvine Gym every morning. He drew such a big crowd to the gym that UC Irvine asked him to either stop coming to the gym, or to arrive at a different time. Kobe didn’t stop, he just changed his hours, working out at 4 or 5 a.m., before the gym would be packed. Farnham told me that Kobe had a training entourage with him, so that when he would pass out on the court from physical exhaustion of working so hard, his staff could pull him to the side, get him some fluids, and help him get back out on the court until he would pass out again.

 

Tyler Cowen writes every day. On his podcast and in other interviews, he has explained how writing every single day, even on Christmas and your birthday, is one of the most important things you can do if you want to be a good writer and clear thinker. Much of his writing never gets out into the public, but every day he puts in the effort and practice to build his skill.

 

Roman Mars loves radio, and his hit podcast 99% Invisible is onto episode 410.  In a 2012 interview with Debbie Millman Mars talked about learning to love radio early on and how he developed a passion for audio programming, even if no one was listening.

 

Kobe, Cowen, and Mars all practice a lot, and have developed a lot of skill from their practice. As Kahneman explains, their daily practice doesn’t just allow them to make things look easy. For those who practice as much as these three, things really are easier for them. Kobe’s muscle memory meant that he was more efficient in shooting a fadeaway jump shot, literally needing less energy and less mental focus to pull off a perfect swish. Cowen writes every day and the act of starting a piece of writing for him probably requires less brain power to begin putting thoughts together. Similarly, Mars probably slips into his radio voice effortlessly, without consciously having to think about everything he is about to say, making the words, the voice, and the intonation flow more simply and naturally.

 

Kahneman and the three examples I shared show how important practice is for the things we want to do well. Consistent practice builds skill, and literally alters the brain, the chemical nerve pathways (via myelination), and the physical strength needed to perform a task. With practice, tasks really do become easier and automatic.