|
Maui engaged in effort
to keep track of space
By HARRY EAGAR, Staff Writer
reprinted courtesy Maui News 2/9/07
KAHULUI – North Korea has
tested a ballistic missile that could be capable of reaching Hawaii, and China has shown it
can shoot down satellites high in space. A small but fast-growing Maui division of
Oceanit is on the front lines of watching these threats.
“I can’t
tell you that HANDS defense is going to save Hawaii,” said Leslie Bailey,
program manager of Oceanit’s HANDS project.
But in a talk Wednesday, she said it will be
important in keeping track of what’s going on in deep space.
HANDS stands for High Accuracy Network
Determination. So far, only prototypes have been built and tested, but
eventually about 12 stations will help keep an eye on deep space.
Bailey described the outlines of HANDS at a
meeting of the Maui TechOhana at The Dunes at Maui Lani restaurant. It was
only an outline; parts of the program are secret.
She also described how Oceanit, a 20-year-old Hawaii company,
manages to expand rapidly despite the difficulty of Hawaii’s employment
situation.
Maui is
already a center of deep space surveillance with the Air Force Maui Optical
& Computing Site (AMOS) firmly in place. HANDS works for the Air Force,
but with the intention of creating a much cheaper distributed network of
small, automated telescopes.
Cheaper is relative. Oceanit is now in Phase 3
of a Small Business Innovative Research series of grants.
The first, for $800,000, was to prove the concept.
That was an unusually large SBIR Phase 1 grant. Typically, Bailey said,
startups top out around $50,000.
Phase 2, in 2002, was for $2 million to build
a prototype telescope – called Raven – and test it.
Raven was built (with some outside components)
at MOSAIC, the Maui Optical Systems and Imaging Center.
Phase 3 is potentially a $50 million contract.
So far Oceanit has received about $20 million, and it expects another $8
million this year.
Within a couple of months, the Maui staff should
reach 40, double what it was a year ago.
Oceanit has been selected two years running by
Hawaii Business Magazine in the Top 10 among its “25 Best Places to Work in Hawaii.” Bailey, a
mechanical engineer, joked that “they must not have asked anybody on Maui. We struggled
all year, we were busting our butts.”
Part of that was a culture change.
Oceanit, which is involved in lots of
projects, in the ocean, in space and in biology, has about 100 employees
and has had a “flat” structure. In other words, the philosophy was to hire
committed people and let them get on with their work, without a lot of
superstructure.
HANDS is now at the point where a thicker
layer of management was deemed necessary. About half the managers were
promoted from within, half imported; but the catch was, the management team
was chosen after the working teams had largely been recruited.
The new managers were charged with building
productive teams from members “they had not necessarily chosen.”
Nevertheless, Bailey said, Oceanit is finding
the staff it needs. About 20 percent have doctorates.
The challenges for Oceanit in Hawaii are those
affecting other businesses: a very tight labor market and expensive
housing. In addition, many of the jobs demand “a very special skill set”
and another limit that Oceanit imposed on itself: It pays Hawaii-average
pay, which is well under national averages and also less than Boeing pays
here. (Boeing is a part of the HANDS development.)
Oceanit sells itself by selling Maui, by being
innovative, by offering a diverse array of projects to tackle, by being an
established local company (not a startup), by infusing Hawaiian values into
the workplace, by emphasizing community involvement (especially with
schools) and by emphasizing quality of life.
“We want to bring hearts and minds to the
table,” said Bailey. “We hired a very idealistic set of people.”
To other managers faced with a similar
situation, she advised: “Hire mercenaries. It’s much easier.”
That was a joke.
She explained how to get the fish to nibble
and how to set the hook. The most prolific source of leads was the High
Technology Development Corp. Web site, followed by advertising in Hawaii newspapers.
Oceanit is always eager to recruit local
people, because they are “island-ready.”
Bringing in Mainlanders is chancy.
“If their only experience with Hawaii was their
last vacation, they get disappointed pretty quickly working 50-60 hours a
week.”
Bailey turns that on its head. Sure the days
are long, but when they are finally over, “You can still make it to the
beach.”
About half the recent hires have been from
people already living here, 19. All were from Oahu or Maui. Oceanit
recruited on the Big Island and Kauai but did not get anyone.
Oceanit’s business plan is open-ended. The Air
Force is the customer, but there has been some commercial interest in the
small, remote-controlled telescopes.
The part of space that is of interest is where
satellites loiter in geosynchronous orbit – like the old weather satellite
587 miles out that the Chinese destroyed on Jan. 11.
That is farther out than radar usually works
but a good distance to use optical sensors, said Bailey.
By having a widespread network with fast
integration of reports, HANDS seeks to provide good identification of
objects and high reliability, even if one or another of the nodes is not
contributing at a particular moment (because, say, it is cloudy).
Where the HANDS telescopes would be sited is
still being worked out. Haleakala is one site and a couple of others could
be on U.S.
territory.
For the rest, HANDS requires spots that have
good weather, good astronomical “seeing” and stable, cooperative
governments.
“You can get a lot of value by distributing” a
lot of cheap sensors, said Bailey.
 Harry Eagar
can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.
|