Page 148 - MY STORY

development within a plan, fixed timeframe, and cost

envelope – well, they were clueless. and did not want to
learn!!! This was simply too far afield from their training
and research environment to handle.

In one case, I had at my fingertips one of the world
experts in the field of crystallography. I’ve forgotten all

their names, but this guy could see, and quantify, crystal
geometry in multiple dimensions, no matter how complex
the crystal structure. He knew where every atom would

go and what it did to the properties of the crystal. We had
received a Request for Proposal from the AFRL (Air

Force Research Labs) that was aimed at the synthesis of
new super-strength metal alloy systems, and deeply
involved understanding and developing these alloys
based on their crystallographic characteristics.

I turned the writing of our competitive proposal to our

assigned scientist. When I asked to review his written
text a couple of weeks later, and one week before we had
to finalize the writing of the proposal, my scientist

announced that this simply could not be done. He
proclaimed that research, of any sort, could not be done
against a schedule and a defined budget. I pointed out (or

tried) that this was R&D, and even though we might not