Interfaces of Knowledge and the Alien in the Room Next Door: A Space Project Manager's Daily Battle Towards Finding Common Ground

Kurzfassung

The body of human knowledge has expanded in a breathtaking manner over the last centuries, a development which has enabled incredible improvements in the understanding of the world we live in as well as in the quality of our lives. But the vastness of our shared knowledge comes at the price of increasing specialization, and the increasing complexity of endeavors to push the boundaries of knowledge are more and more limited by the ability to communicating across different areas of expertise. Space exploration provides good examples of projects that, in terms of technical as well as human complexity, are on the borderline of impossibility. Achieving progress on a question as seemingly simple as "Why did Venus evolve so differently from Earth?" necessitates a community of thousands of people that devise new concepts for space missions, develop technologies, build systems of incredible reliability and performance and finally operate spacecraft on their journey of unbelievable distances though the solar system. The scope of knowledge required for this kind of endeavor ranges from planetary science, atmospheric modelling, engineering expertise in mechanical, electrical, thermal engineering, software development as well as systems engineering and managerial skill to coordinate huge numbers of people working in various types of organizations, from universities to for-profit companies, towards a remote but common goal. This talk is a case study of the challenges in research and development in the domain of planetary exploration: to ensure convergence of all the necessary areas of expertise that are required to make such projects successful, one must on a daily basis find a way to establish shared understanding of scientific and technical concepts, encourage the willingness to accept that different roles are bound to follow a different and sometimes contradictory logic and foster sufficient humility to acknowledge that every contribution is indispensable in a different way. Sharing knowledge is a non-trivial task but the essential foundation to enable any project that aims at progress on a grand scale.