Chapter 13: Making Progress

It took me less than two hours to provide Kevin with a list of the sequence of components for the prototype. The next three hours were spent trying to come up with some dimensions for items that didn't yet exist. Kevin and I would be

doing something he called a "SWAG."

"Scientific Wild-Assed Guess," he grinned. "Used it all the time at L-M. They have a design place called the "Skunk Works" in Burbank. Been around since the thirties. That's how the SR-71 got built. It was the fastest winged aircraft in the world. Still is. Nowadays, they're designing stealth aircraft."

"I've heard of that place," I said. "One of my engineering professors was lecturing us on how fast they could get things done. 'Just get the damn thing built' seemed to be their motto."

"Well, that was pretty much their attitude all right," Kevin confirmed. "Mind you, they had a couple of guys who were flat out geniuses, so that didn't hurt."

"You'll have to be my genius," I kidded.

"John, with this project, one plus one can equal three if we do it right."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, if we work as a team and we both know where we're going, we'll have our own 'Skunk Works, ' although in this case it might be a 'De-Skunk Works.'"

I chuckled at the reference, but hoped like hell he was right about us as a team.

We ran into a problem not long after we got started on the prototype. The chemical treatment component had grown too big for our frame. It had to perform a number of functions, not the least of which was inhibiting the formation of scale and the collection of suspended solids. To allow the capacity that we were looking for from the unit, the size had grown bigger than we had anticipated.

We were kicking various ideas around one evening when Georgette wandered into the room.

"You still trying to get a quart into a pint jar?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, not looking up. "No luck so far."

"How much does the height of the unit matter?" she asked.

"Not as much as length and width," I answered, "but it can't be too tall. I'd say sixty inches, maximum."

"Can you make the unit wider and stand it on edge?" she asked.

I saw Kevin turn and look at her, a funny look on his face before I saw a smile. He began to nod.

"I thought of that, but I've been trying to get this to work the way John intended," he said.

I leaned back in my chair and tried to mentally calculate how wide and how tall would be enough.

"I had another thought, too," Georgette said. "You know those big pillow-shaped bags they use for shipping chemicals. Could you fold a smaller version one of those into the shape to make it fit?"

Again, Kevin turned and looked at her, then at me. "I think we've got another skunk in the Skunk Works."

"Hey ... what's that mean? My ideas don't stink," Georgette protested.

"Not only don't they stink," Kevin said, "but they've got us thinking again."

"Go look up 'Skunk Works' on Google and you'll see what we mean," I said to Georgette.

She stepped over to my laptop, typed in the two words, clicked on one of the many choices and began to read. Two minutes later, she walked up to Kevin and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"I should have known," she said. "Thank you for the compliment."

"You're welcome," Kevin said with a grin. "Any time you've got something to say, don't hesitate to say it. I like the way you think."

"Two linked bags, maybe?" I said aloud.

"Now we're cooking," Kevin said with some enthusiasm.

We were too. Next on the agenda was the reverse osmosis process, once again requiring a membrane that Dow Chemical produced. One phone call got a number of samples and specifications that we could evaluate. We were still stuck with filters to protect filters to protect filters. Three stages of filtration were necessary to make the system work. When you had a space 40' X 8' X 8' this wasn't a problem. In a space of 8' X 4' X 5' it was a big problem. We still had a long way to go.

"This is starting to look like a tub of spaghetti," Kevin complained one evening. "It goes against my grain. I'd hate to think of trying to repair or replace something inside."

I had to agree with him. Our solutions were making the design more crowded and complex. This wasn't at all what I envisioned. Worse than that, it looked like bad engineering. It might have been sound mechanically, but it was far too complex and complicated for something that was designed to be durable, portable, and effective.

"Who's your customer?" Georgette asked.

"Uhhm ... what do you mean?" I asked.

"I remember you saying that not all of the components were needed for all of the tasks. What if you had more than one model that did one or two jobs really well? Another model might do something else. Right now, you're trying to make one size fit all."

I looked over at Kevin, then started to laugh.

"What's so funny," she asked, an annoyed look about her.

I was shaking my head. "How come you're the one with the common sense engineering and I'm the dope?"

I heard a guffaw from Kevin and saw a shy smile from Georgette.

"You're way too smart for me, Georgie," I said.

There wasn't any question about renewing Kevin's contract at the end of the first two months. It wasn't just the spirit of the approaching Christmas, either. Kevin was everything I was hoping for when it came to fitting the components into the tight confines of my imaginary box. He was relentlessly tidy in his thinking, not frustrated easily by our trial-and-error attempts, and even-tempered when things went wrong. And they did go wrong.

"You know that saying, 'This isn't brain surgery?'" has asked one evening.

"Sure," I admitted.

"Well," Kevin said with a wry grin, "I'm beginning to think maybe this is."

I nodded. I knew what he meant. "Is there another way we should look at this?"

He shook his head. "If there is, I can't come up with it. We're close, but trying to meet all the criteria is like pushing into a balloon full of water. You push in one side and it pops out the other. I'm wondering if we can combine functions into a single internal structure."

I leaned back in my chair and thought about the question. What could we combine, even in the more dedicated systems we were designing? The answer kept coming back "nothing."

"Kevin, how much more height would we need to get what we want into the box."

He looked at me and smiled. "Thirteen and a half inches. Call it fourteen."

I gave him a hard look. "You've already calculated what it would take then?"

"Yeah. Couldn't see how we could make it fit the original box, no matter what we did."

"We gave it a hell of a try, Kevin. So let's go with reality. Maybe some day in the future we can figure out a way to bring it back into the original box, but for now, let's go with what we can do."

"Smart plan, John. Products evolve over time. If there's a way to make it more compact, we'll find it."

"I guess you've got some frame modifications to do," I suggested.

"Already done," he grinned. "I was pretty sure that was the only way to make this work in the short term. Our exterior height dimension will be a skosh short of six-foot-four. I don't see that being a major drawback to a portable system. Tell me I'm wrong."

I let out my breath and slumped back in my chair.

"You're right," I admitted. "It isn't that big of a deal. I got so hung up on my fixed dimensions that I forgot the main objective. It won't weigh so much that it will unbalance a conventional full-sized pickup. I'm sure we can put the heavier equipment in the bottom of the frame."

"Now we're talking. Let me show you what I've been thinking."

He went to his desk and pulled out a legal size pad and showed me a rough pencil drawing with a potential layout. I looked at it without comment for some time before I asked a question.

"What do you think the weight distribution is?"

"My guess is about two thirds in the bottom thirty-six inches. We should be fine with that."

"Yeah, that would be okay. Well," I sighed, "I guess we can start working on the revised layout then."

"I guess we can," Kevin grinned.

Christmas and New Years were, as planned, held at Lake Tahoe with both families. We invited Kevin to join us but he declined in favor of flying to Colorado to spend it with his former colleague and friend, Charlie Prendergast. Kevin was sure he'd be more comfortable in that environment. He would return to San Francisco a day or so after we had come back from our little holiday.

"How's the system coming along?" Thomas asked me as we relaxed in the great room of the lodge after a day of skiing.

"We're making more progress now," I said. "I've had to compromise on both function and dimension, but not so much that it won't meet most of my objectives. Kevin is a real find, Thomas. He has such an orderly mind and his layout is so clean that I'm sure anyone looking at it, even in the prototype stage, is going to be impressed with it. And Georgette has been the outside observer that asks the questions we forget to ask."

"When do you think you'll be at the testing stage?"

"Soon. We're going to build a second prototype to feature the functions that the first doesn't do, then test them both. I'm hoping early May or thereabouts if all goes well. We seem to have gotten over the major hurdles now."

"Do you intend to show it to others ... potential investors perhaps?"

"Not until we're satisfied it will do what we claim and do it under stressful conditions. Kevin and I have talked about it and we think we'll do a lot of our testing in Nevada. Probably around Nellis Air Force base. He says that area has both the terrain and water conditions that will meet our needs. Then we'll do some testing in areas that have known contamination problems. We'll have to work that out, but some of the cattle ranches in Idaho and Montana have water contaminated from animal wastes. That would be a good place to test as well."

"That sounds like a lot of time and effort still to complete the trials."

"I think that's in Kevin's nature. His air force and Lockheed training pounded that into him, he claims. When it comes to airplanes, if it ain't right, they often fall out of the sky. Not good," I chuckled as I recalled Kevin's comments.

"Looks like you've been keeping the budget under control according to Georgette. How are your classes going?"

"I'm doing fine. I just have to remember to put them first and finish what I started. I'll be done in late April and then I can devote all my time to the project. In the meantime, Kevin will be working on it full time and I'll be able to get updates daily."

"Good for you, John. Keep your focus on school and let Kevin carry the load for now. By the way, have you given any thought about our conversation on how to reward him for his design work?"

"I think a piece of the action would be the best solution," I said. "He's been great and very easy to work with and his ideas are always well thought out. The question is, how big a piece?"