I work at NASA and I review SBIR proposals from time to time. Most proposals are pretty mediocre. Some are physically impossible.
Coherent writing and formatting helps. Clearly explaining what your tech is and what advantages it could offer the funding agency for the listed objectives in their particular topic. You'd be surprised how many companies don't actually make any clear objective case with facts and figures, or look at all from the organization's point of view. Also, keep in mind that the reviewers may not all be deep experts in every possible obscure tech. You don't want to force them to do a ton of research just to understand wtf you're talking about.
Even if you do everything right, you might not get selected for obvious reason. At least at NASA, there always seem to be managers with their own opinions that have some kind of mysterious influence in the background. Plenty of good proposals don't get awarded, so it doesn't necessarily mean there was something wrong with it.
I guess if one color pixel was significantly less efficient, and that color was also overrepresented on the display, then MAYBE changing to grayscale would require slightly less power to display the same intensity. But I don’t think that convoluted scenario probably isn’t what this person was thinking.
Every single example given under “In Chinese, affirmation is often compiled through negation:” sounds completely natural to me, as a midwestern American English speaker.
However the direct affirmations are also acceptable. Maybe the difference is more that both are pretty acceptable in English, but that is less true for Chinese. Or at least the version he speaks.
Option 1 isn’t really an option, unfortunately. There are no viable single launch options using it. So it’s really SLS x 2. But building and launching one SLS at a time is almost too much as it is. If that’s the only option, I think Artemis is dead and we should start over.
I think we use the same PPBE process at NASA. Many of the systems and procedures that NASA uses are are defense-derived. If it's anything like what we do, then it's a total mess and we mostly just go through the motions with it, knowing it doesn't actually reflect reality and it's kind of a waste of time for everybody.
However, it's risky to assume that scrapping a crappy system will result in things being better. The current shitty system was almost certainly the result of scrapping and replacing something else that had some problems.
Anyway, hopefully this works well, because we'll probably end up copying it at NASA.
I'm a NASA civil servant and I'm regularly involved with SBIR contracts. While there are definite wins that make the SBIR program feel totally worth it, those are probably exception.
A big factor, however, is that much the tech NASA needs to develop for space applications has no commercial viability outside of NASA. We're the only potential buyer. And since it wasn't directly motivated by a specific NASA program and funded by a NASA project dollars, it has little chance to continue development once the SBIR contract ends. For many technologies, SBIR funding is the only fundamental tech development funding they get at all.
How can a private company develop a technology only the government needs when the funding from the government is extremely irregular, inconsistent, and insufficient?
I guess they could have a bunch of irons in the fire so they have a decent shot of getting some funding for anything they can do to stay in business. Maybe some of them eventually turn into SBIR mills.
Having industrial design and a nice webpage complete before there is any hardware at all seems like a major red flag to me. Who is actually going to manufacture this?
Coherent writing and formatting helps. Clearly explaining what your tech is and what advantages it could offer the funding agency for the listed objectives in their particular topic. You'd be surprised how many companies don't actually make any clear objective case with facts and figures, or look at all from the organization's point of view. Also, keep in mind that the reviewers may not all be deep experts in every possible obscure tech. You don't want to force them to do a ton of research just to understand wtf you're talking about.
Even if you do everything right, you might not get selected for obvious reason. At least at NASA, there always seem to be managers with their own opinions that have some kind of mysterious influence in the background. Plenty of good proposals don't get awarded, so it doesn't necessarily mean there was something wrong with it.