Article by Sam O’Hara Enable Services
Featured Main Image (image of the galaxy from space)
On 16th July 1969 , the world witnessed the beginning of the end to the Moon Race when NASA launched the Apollo 11 spacecraft.
Four days later, 650 million TV viewers watched Neil Armstrong address the world as he planted his boot in the Sea of Tranquillity. NASA had masterminded the first mission to land man on the surface of the moon ahead of the Soviets.
But like any great organisation with grand ambitions, the things that you can see only happen because of what you can’t see, and NASA united a huge number of moving parts to bring its space dream to reality.
The spacecraft’s Command & Service module was made by Los Angeles-based North American . The lunar module, which was on its fifth iteration by the Apollo 11 mission, was designed and built by the engineers at Grumman in New York. The Saturn V rocket was a joint effort that included modern day aerospace giant Boeing. And the grand launch itself required an equally spectacular location to take flight which only the Kennedy Space Center , today employing over 13,000 staff, could facilitate.
Image: The team at NASA in the Mission Operations Control Room during the Apollo 11 landing
And yet, it took less than nine years from the moment newly-elected US President John F. Kennedy challenged congress to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon to complete the mission. That’s an immense amount of research, development, testing and launch calculations from a huge pool of people to manage in a short amount of time considering the technology available at the time. But in the end, they were successful.
Fast forward to 2024, and the landscape has changed immeasurably. Ambition continues to grow within the community, but public interest has shifted from discovery to engagement. Research by the Pew Research Center found that 55% of adults in the US expect to be able to travel in space in the next 50 years. Considering that the first flight of this type completed its maiden voyage last year, the appetite is understandable.
There’s also more competition, chiefly from SpaceX, to make space flight a more regular, cost-effective occurrence.
But as the Apollo mission proved, working towards a common goal for technological leaps forward is a proven strategy, even if each cog works differently. But that doesn’t mean commercial interests must be siloed outside of discovery.
Image: Archive photo of engineers at NASA celebrating the success of the Apollo 11 mission
Enter CRM, the business tool designed from the ground up that combines every cog to produce a well-oiled machine for the purpose of progress.
CRM, short for Customer Relationship Management, is the modern day equivalent of NASA storing designs, test calculations and individual projects in facilities using a binder farm of written spreadsheets and paper calculations. But it also includes their partners’ notes too, stored in a neat, logical order to make any questions just a short search away.
However, the modern conveniences of cloud computing and complex number crunching is a key proponent for any business.
Not just a tool for storing data and managing relationships, projects of all shapes and sizes can live in one too, with the added benefit of producing data reports to help visualise it all. Alternatively if you have a bespoke solution for analysis already, CRMs can integrate with it.
They also work from anywhere in the world so your teams are not bound to one location, but CRMs also integrate with communications apps that mitigate the social impact of remote workers. Talent shouldn’t be limited to those based in certain locations, and CRMs make this a problem of the past.
And for those that do have commercial objectives, all the ingredients are there to cook up sales too. Based on public appetite, space tourism appears to be the next big goal, but without working in combination with R&D, that simply doesn’t happen. Without the public’s appetite for space travel, funding opportunities dwindle so it’s in the entire community’s interest to work together.
But what all of this ultimately boils down to is that in the internet age, it’s possible to take the working philosophy employed by NASA to win the Space Race, and evolve it with modern tech. Space science thrives with collective output from all stakeholders, proved by NASA in the 1960s.
CRM is the ultimate 21st century tool for sharing that single data source. Uniting with CRM facilitates the collective progress needed to continue forward, free from the confines of competition. That can come when the hard yards are done.
So when you’re looking for a solution to you and your partners’ projects, consider a CRM so that your “first step on the moon” moment is less ‘one small step for man’, and more ‘one giant leap for mankind’.
If you want to see how this might look, get in touch with us at enable. With over 20 years experience in providing CRM, including solutions for science and technology communities, you can reach out to our team at ‘sales@enable.services’.
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