Aleph W. Qin

My name is Albert “Aleph” Qin.

I’m currently a student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Aleph comes from aleph null (ℵ₀), the smallest infinite cardinal number.

Nov. 7, 2024 – Ambition

One of my guiding lights is the prospect of expansion into space. Humans have a natural desire to expand. Earth is a large place, but it will limit our species’ growth in technology and innovation. We are limited by things like material price and availability, and in turn it drives up costs of electronics and living.

Recently AstroForge, a company centered around asteroid mining, received the US’s first commercial deep space license, allowing them to communicate with their satellites in deep space. This is a monumental achievement— it sets the stage for a future of innovation and development in space, and expands humanity’s horizons outward into space. The significance of the license extends outward. The first potentially of many, it allows companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and many more up and coming startups like AstroForge to also conduct deep space missions and communicate with their spacecraft.

The push to commercialize space could be a new era of development for technology. It could bring about new industries for those growing into a field of engineers and technicians. While some positions and technologies begin to stagnate, new and more exciting innovation is slowly coming to life. For the first time ever, phones and computers could start introducing atoms mined not from beneath our feet, but from up in the sky— a seemingly limitless frontier for humanity to harness and take advantage of.

Personally, I believe that this new field could be something different. Space as of today is for all of humanity to gaze upon. No one really owns things in space. But if companies start laying claim to asteroids and objects in space, which most likely will come to fruit, we may have a chance to do thing differently.

We as a species have the chance to cooperate with each other.

With the advent of expansion into space, we can do things differently. Why fight over money and power when space is so full of everything we could ever need? Many companies can spring up and aid in a global effort to colonize space, and they can even do what they want with little disruption to each other. New technology could be developed alongside one another, each adding to a symphony like a well-oiled machine. In an article by the Harvard Business Review, many cases of non-disruptive innovation are given. The invention of new credit card readers for small businesses allowed many small companies and stores to accept card payment, where prior only large chains and locations with huge budgets could afford to have them installed. The creation of this new market didn’t hurt credit card companies, nor did it hurt any other credit card reader manufacturers. It introduced a new and unique field that brought good change to the world and was able to stay its own.

Exploitation of resources in space is not only a brand new industry, it could drive a new era as well, supplying more precious metals to Earth than mining companies can source up just from Earth’s crust. AstroForge focuses on PGMs, or platinum-group metals. This particular group is critical in the manufacture of jewelry, electronics, and catalysts. With another source of PGMs, the cost of medical devices, magnets, high-quality performance electronics, and even cars could see a significant decrease for the consumer.

As humanity continues to grow and develop, the creation of affordable products is important for all of society to thrive by. With the rate at which new technology is being developed, humanity will need a constant and abundant flow of resources to continue to produce enough electronics. The secrets lay in the stars.

Dec. 11, 2024 – Ideation

From November 14 to 17, I competed in a competition hosted by the Hoeft Technology and Management Program of UIUC called the Ideation Challenge. While the results of the challenge were not released until today, the in-between time allowed me to piece together my thoughts and reflect on the challenge.

The Ideation Challenge was, in some ways, my first real exposure to many subjects: real-world systems engineering, conceptualization of technology, and management of companies. It taught me the hidden complexities of managing, where I realized that management wasn’t as simple as commanding a force to accomplish a task. Behind all that lies careful planning that encompasses any gaps and inconsistencies in a concept.

This year, the Ideation Challenge’s prompt was based on innovative solutions to the increasing number and severity of natural disasters.

For the Challenge, I participated in a team of 3 with fellow students whom I had prior never met. Considering I stepped into the challenge with only concepts and ideas of what I could come up with, it was certainly a surprise to be able to work harmoniously with my fellow teammates. Over the course of three days and nights, we managed to come up with a solution to the problem of post-disaster debris, involving a cleanup, transport, and recycling system.

After a natural disaster, destroyed buildings are usually torn down and scrapped. Most of the scraps and debris are sent to landfills, where they lay and fester for decades to centuries. We believed there was more that could be done and money to be made.

Our solution prioritized a full-width solution that could encompass many different scenarios, and would involve new materials science research to produce composites made out of recycled materials. The system was designed to produce a new industry providing high quality and stronger building materials that would eventually be cheaper and thus more effective in building new housing and infrastructure. It would be a green and multipurpose solution to not only reuse material, but also reduce landfill waste.

With every solution comes a variety of issues and caveats.

Although our conceptualization at the time was sound and seemed to hold, after deeper analysis after the competition ended, a plethora of issues arose. While the solution in itself was plausible over time, we did not effectively account for long-term development. Right now, recycling tends to be much more expensive than purchasing new materials. While it is true that eventually recycling would become cheaper, it would likely not happen in the next few decades.

Because we also relied on government and private company sponsorships, it would also be unlikely for us to receive the necessary funding. Although our green initiatives are good-mannered and convincing, it just simply wasn’t the right time for our innovations to prosper, given that new materials are so relatively cheap. It was an oversight on how we would integrate into government programs and long term sustainability of our company.

Another oversight was the emphasis on new and innovative technology. In our system, we emphasized the management and viability of our solution more than the technology itself, trying to plan and create an entire solution rather than just fleshed-out pieces of it. In hindsight, it may have been more prudent to pick a portion of the solution of implementing technology, and focus on that aspect. For example, we could have emphasized the usefulness of drones, which could be designed to conduct mass surveys of damaged areas and implement uses of AI to detect and respond to emergencies.

Had we more time, we believe we had the right ideas in our drone implementation and composites.

It may however have been better to separate the two concepts and focus on one — making both of them adaptable for all types of natural disasters. Drones, for example, we originally contemplated as a such one-fits-all solution. Among the specifics were a modular drone capable of surveillance, firefighting, reconnaissance, delivery, and many more types of disaster-response. We overlooked the prospect because we felt that, because it was already given as a suggestion, would not have been innovative nor unique. However, we definitely could have accomplished this endeavor; we already had conceptualizations of a drone which would spread seeds along flammable land — native plantlife which absorbs moisture and prevents fire from spreading easily.

In our project’s design review, a key criticism we had received was that owning an end-to-end solution is unrealistic and difficult. Thus, in the future, it may be better to think of more short-term solutions. No one can see into the future with certainty, and developing one massive solution may be too ambitious.

Recognizing and learning from your mistakes is always a strength when it comes to creation and innovation.

Dreams are dreams, but it takes hard work and many steps to make them come true.