Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA Source for Project Management and Engineering Excellence | APPEL SUMMER | 2010

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Inside

Ten Systems Engineering Lessons Learned 

Interview with robert Braun 

Moon Mission on a Shoestring
ON THE COVER

Low-level winds rushing over the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of northwestern 

Africa created these cloud vortex streets. The top of the Hubble Space Telescope 

is visible during its lockdown in the cargo bay of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Photo Credit: NASA
Contents

25

DEPARTMENTS

3 

In This Issue

By Don Cohen

4 

From the APPEL Director

Lessons from Torino

By Ed Hoffman

58 

The Knowledge Notebook

Believing in Science and Progress

By Laurence Prusak 

60 

ASK Interactive

INSIGHTS

21 

Islands and Labyrinths: 

Overcoming Barriers to 

Effective Knowledge Transfer 

By T.J. Elliott To improve knowledge 

sharing, ETS has sponsored new-idea 

contests and forums—both virtual and 

face to face.

25 

Interview with Robert Braun 

By Don Cohen NASA’s Chief Technologist 

talks about fostering innovation.

37 

Featured Invention: NASA Helps 

Extend Medicine’s Reach 

By Bo Schwerin Medical technology 

developed for the space station improves 

remote diagnostics on Earth.

40 

Nurturing Trust 

By Ron Taylor Maintaining trust requires 

constant, careful attention from leaders.

STORIES

5 

Ten Systems Engineering 

Lessons Learned 

By John Ruffa Successful systems 

engineering requires more than technical 

knowledge. 

11 

Moon Mission on a Shoestring

By Haley Stephenson and Matthew Kohut

Ingenuity and discipline make a “faster, 

good enough, cheaper” mission possible.

16 

Reflections of a Deputy 

By Cathy Peddie A good project deputy 

can be a sidekick, sounding board, devil’s 

advocate, coach, and mediator.

32 

Engineers Without Borders 

By Kerry Ellis Building water-treatment 

systems in Rwanda helps engineers solve 

problems in space.

44 

The Decision 

By Harvey Schabes Unexpectedly thrust 

into a leadership role, the author makes a 

difficult decision.

47 

The Big Dig: Learning 

from a Mega Project 

By Virginia Greiman Size, complexity, and 

unforeseen challenges led to cost increases 

on Boston’s Big Dig.

53 

Redesigning the FUSE Mission

By Warren Moos, Dennis McCarthy, and

Jeffrey Kruk Faced with cancellation of 

the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, 

the team found a lower-cost way to achieve 

their aims.

5 11

ASK MAGAZINE | 1
The Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL) and ASK 

Magazine help NASA managers and project teams accomplish today’s missions and 

meet tomorrow’s challenges by sponsoring knowledge-sharing events and publications, 

providing performance enhancement services and tools, supporting career development 

programs, and creating opportunities for project management and engineering 

collaboration with universities, professional associations, industry partners, and other 

government agencies.

ASK Magazine grew out of the Academy and its Knowledge Sharing Initiative, designed 

for program/project managers and engineers to share expertise and lessons learned 

with fellow practitioners across the Agency. Reflecting the Academy’s responsibility for 

project management and engineering development and the challenges of NASA’s new 

mission, ASK includes articles about meeting the technical and managerial demands 

of complex projects, as well as insights into organizational knowledge, learning, 

collaboration, performance measurement and evaluation, and scheduling. We at 

APPEL Knowledge Sharing believe that stories recounting the real-life experiences 

of practitioners communicate important practical wisdom and best practices that 

readers can apply to their own projects and environments. By telling their stories, 

NASA managers, scientists, and engineers share valuable experience-based knowledge 

and foster a community of reflective practitioners. The stories that appear in ASK

are written by the “best of the best” project managers and engineers, primarily from 

NASA, but also from other government agencies, academia, and industry. Who better 

than a project manager or engineer to help a colleague address a critical issue on a 

project? Big projects, small projects—they’re all here in ASK.

You can help ASK provide the stories you need and want by letting our editors know 

what you think about what you read here and by sharing your own stories. To submit 

stories or ask questions about editorial policy, contact Don Cohen, Managing Editor, 

doncohen@rcn.com, 781-860-5270.

For inquiries about APPEL Knowledge Sharing programs and products, please contact 

Yvonne Massaquoi, ASRC Management Services, 6303 Ivy Lane, Suite 130, Greenbelt, 

MD 20770; yvonne.massaquoi@asrcms.com; 301-837-9127. 

To subscribe to ASK, please send your full name and preferred mailing address 

(including mail stop, if applicable) to ASKmagazine@asrcms.com.

Issue No. 39

Staff

APPEL Director and Publisher

Dr. Edward Hoffman

ehoffman@nasa.gov

Editor-in-Chief

Laurence Prusak

larryprusak@gmail.com

Managing Editor

Don Cohen

doncohen@rcn.com

Editor

Kerry Ellis

kerry.ellis@asrcms.com

Contributing Editors

Matt Kohut

mattkohut@infactcommunications.com

Haley Stephenson

haley.stephenson@valador.com

Senior Knowledge Sharing

Consultant

Jon Boyle

jon.boyle@asrcms.com

Knowledge Sharing Analysts

Ben Bruneau

ben.bruneau@asrcms.com

Mai Ebert

mai.ebert@asrcms.com

APPEL program Manager

Yvonne Massaquoi

yvonne.massaquoi@asrcms.com

Design

Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group, Inc.

www.hzdg.com

Printing Specialist

Hanta Ralay

hanta.ralay-1@nasa.gov

Printing

GraphTec
This issue of ASK features two apparently divergent themes. 

One is the importance of far-reaching innovation. In the 

interview, NASA Chief Technologist Robert Braun talks 

about supporting extensive new-technology development 

at NASA. That support will include money to refine and 

test new ideas and, even more importantly, accepting the 

fact that many ambitious new ideas fail. Failure is the price 

we must be willing to pay to achieve real technological 

breakthroughs. (“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” 

poet Robert Browning wrote—a woman’s, too, but Browning 

was writing in the nineteenth century in the voice of Andrea 

del Sarto, a sixteenth-century painter.)

The other theme, the focus of several articles, is nuts-andbolts practicality. As Warren Moos, Dennis McCarthy, and 

Jeffrey Kruk report in “Redesigning the FUSE Mission,” the 

team that designed and built the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic 

Explorer avoided cancellation by finding a way to achieve 

the mission’s science objective at a little more than half the 

original projected cost. The Lunar Crater Observation and 

Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, which sent a spacecraft 

hurtling into a lunar crater to measure water on the moon, 

met a tight budget and schedule by reusing and repurposing 

existing technology (“Moon Mission on a Shoestring”). And 

“Engineers Without Borders” tells how NASA engineers who 

volunteer to develop water-treatment systems in Rwanda 

bring what they learn about using limited resources to 

develop simple, reliable technology back to their work on 

spaceflight technology at Johnson Space Center.

What connects these themes? For one thing, the 

innovation Braun talks about will eventually turn into technical 

resources that make future missions possible and, in some 

cases, more economical and dependable. As he says, newtechnology development is not an end in itself; it will provide 

the capabilities that new NASA flight systems will need.

Their other connection has to do with what John Ruffa calls 

the “non-technical” issues that are as important to mission 

success as technical expertise (“Ten Systems Engineering 

Lessons Learned”). How people work together and relate 

to the organization is critical, whether the goal is radical 

innovation or the economical reuse of existing technologies. 

That is why Braun identifies culture change as essential 

to innovation and why the authors of “Moon Mission on a 

Shoestring” say that teamwork and effective communication 

are responsible for the low-cost success of LCROSS.

There are many such human factors. Probably the 

most important (in part because they influence the others) 

are trust, communication, and shared commitment to a 

mutual goal. Ron Taylor (“Nurturing Trust”) sees trust as 

the foundation of outstanding accomplishment in any 

organization. Ed Hoffman, in his “From the APPEL Director” 

column, describes the role of relationships, communication, 

and commitment in three leading Italian enterprises. Cathy 

Peddie’s “Reflections of a Deputy” shows how valuable a 

trusting, open relationship between a project leader and 

deputy can be. And T.J. Elliott’s “Islands and Labyrinths” 

is essentially about communication—how to forge the 

connections that allow people to share what they know.

Maybe these are obvious truths, but sometimes 

organizations focused on technology need to be reminded 

of the obvious: that project teams succeed when they share 

what they know, understand what their goal is, and trust that 

they’re working together to achieve it.

Don Cohen

Managing Editor

In This Issue

ASK MAGAZINE | 3
Last spring I had the opportunity to visit three 

project-based organizations in the Piedmont region 

of Italy. What I saw was a commitment to three 

elements that might seem an unlikely combination: 

standards and processes, cutting-edge technology, 

and craftsmanship.

My first visit was with Comau, a subsidiary 

of the Fiat Group that specializes in robotics and 

automation systems. My conversations with Valerio 

Crovasce, who leads Comau’s project academy, 

reminded me that in an extremely competitive sector 

like the automotive industry, having a workforce that’s 

highly skilled in project management is a competitive 

advantage. Comau strives to develop standards and 

processes that optimize efficiency for repeatable 

tasks. On the shop floor, you see robots doing highly 

routine, standardized, precise, and sometimes 

dangerous work. At the same time, as a supplier 

producing components and subsystems for others, 

Comau’s leaders understand that the customer is at 

the center of any project; stakeholder management 

is a top concern. Even in an organization focused 

on robotics, relationships are paramount. 

I also visited Thales Alenia, a major European 

aerospace manufacturer. Thales has a strong 

program to develop top young engineers from 

universities and emphasizes learning how to 

think from a systems perspective. I had a tour of 

an immersive learning and working environment 

the company has developed: a three-dimensional 

representation of everything we know about the 

solar system. This simulation, which is based on data 

from the European Space Agency, NASA, and other 

space agencies, is a powerful learning tool. It gives 

individuals the opportunity to communicate in real 

time and form relationships based on learning. 

My final visit was to the Ferrari plant. The 

company was founded as a local entrepreneurial 

venture and still has a strong sense of connection 

to the community. The importance of stories is 

immediately clear. As you enter the facility, you see 

historical cars on display with small placards that 

tell their stories. An executive told me that those cars 

are intended to remind employees of the big picture 

as they walk by them every day on the way to their 

workstations. I was also struck by the strength of 

the craftsman culture, which coexists with precision 

robotics. The men and women working in specific 

production areas are experts empowered with a great 

deal of autonomy, and they exude a sense of pride. 

When you look out on the factory floor, you see 

something utterly unexpected: plants and trees that 

refresh the air. The cars coming off the assembly 

line bear a closer resemblance to works of art than 

to mass-produced automobiles. 

The bottom line is that it takes all three 

elements—high technology, standards and 

processes, and people—working in concert to 

achieve world-class excellence. Technology is 

critical for innovation. Standards and processes are 

means of using knowledge, lessons learned, and 

best practices in pursuit of quality and continuous 

improvement. But neither technology nor standards 

and processes are useful in the absence of highly 

skilled, educated, and motivated people who have 

a sense of dignity and purpose about their work. 

When all three come together, the results are senza 

paragone—without equal. ●

From the APPEL Director

Lessons from Torino

By ED HOFFMAN 

4 | ASK MAGAZINE
Title

By 

Intro

Photo Credit: Goddard Space Flight Center/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly

A full-disk, multiwavelength, extreme ultraviolet 

image of the sun taken by SDO on March 30, 2010. 

When I was appointed the mission systems engineer of 

the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at Goddard 

Space Flight Center, I was understandably nervous. 

While I had served in a variety of technical leadership 

positions on in-house spacecraft development efforts, 

the all-encompassing systems-level responsibility of the 

mission systems engineer position seemed daunting. 

By John Ruffa

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 5
Fortunately, I had the privilege of working with a number of 

experienced systems engineers prior to SDO and had a strong 

technical team to help me navigate the many technical challenges 

we would face. What surprised me was how many non-technical 

issues I would ultimately face on this mission. 

Most systems engineering training focuses on the technical 

issues, often with very little focus on helping the systems engineer 

understand and learn to deal with the non-technical minefields 

that are part of every project. Like technical issues, non-technical 

issues also have the potential to slow or derail progress. 

Realize Most Problems Are Non-Technical 

This was one of the biggest surprises that I have found as an 

engineer and the one for which I received the least amount of 

training and instruction. At the start of SDO, one of the first 

things we did was identify driving issues—the problems and 

challenges we considered the greatest threats to mission success. 

Little did we know that these technical issues were only a subset 

of our problems. 

Early in the SDO development effort, our systems team 

started formulating the concept for a reliable, high-performance 

spacecraft-avionics architecture that would serve as the backbone 

of our solar-science observatory. Many on our team had just 

completed a successful in-house spacecraft, the Wilkinson 

Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). It seemed to make 

sense to build upon the foundation of this previous effort and 

pursue a similar approach.

Nailing down the design and getting buy-in from key players 

was prolonged and painful, however, often resulting in conflict. 

Throughout the process, I was puzzled why an approach that 

was so successful only a few years earlier had turned into a 

nightmare on SDO. It turned out the influence of non-technical 

issues was greater than I’d known. Just because an approach 

was once successful with one team did not guarantee success 

with a completely different team, one with its own mind-set 

and biases. 

These issues can manifest themselves through poor 

communication, turf battles, conflicting agendas, technical 

disconnects, conflicting cultures, and conflicting personalities. 

Anyone who has worked in a team environment is familiar 

with these problems. Non-technical issues that complicate 

communication and the open exchange of information make 

the technical challenges even more difficult. 

Understand and Define Your Team Culture

Every team has a culture—an unwritten philosophy of how 

a team works, communicates, and interacts internally and to 

the outside. A team’s culture helps define its work ethic, its 

attention to detail (or lack thereof), how well (or poorly) people 

are treated, whether questions are openly asked or discouraged, 

whether it is detail (or “big picture”) oriented, and how it 

approaches troubleshooting and problem solving. Some teams 

are meticulous, some more casual, some very process-oriented, 

others less rigid, some open to give-and-take discussions, others 

more regimented in their communication. Many teams are 

unaware that their culture can influence mission success. 

Early in my career at NASA, I worked with a senior 

systems engineer who was meticulous in spacecraft testing and 

troubleshooting, and whose strength in this area contributed 

to the success of numerous satellites. He strongly espoused 

the regular use of the formal problem-reporting system to 

document, track, and close out issues discovered during testing. 

The engineering team was reluctant to formally document 

issues in the system. Some of it was laziness, some of it stemmed 

from the cumbersome nature of the system, and a large part of 

it was the perception that entering a large number of issues into 

the system would somehow tag our development effort as being 

more troubled or problematic than others. 

Fortunately, our senior engineer constantly emphasized 

that the problem-reporting system was simply a valued tool 

to make sure that issues were properly identified, investigated, 

reviewed, and closed out in a rigorous manner. Instead of Photo Credit: Goddard Space Flight Center/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly

A massive plume of dense, cool (only compared with the rest of the solar atmosphere) 

plasma erupts on the sun’s surface, flowing in a loop along a magnetic field line. 

6 | ASK MAGAZINE
making our project seem more risky, he claimed that fully 

documenting issues would enhance the overall reliability 

and, accordingly, the confidence we and our NASA center 

would have in our finished product. He worked with the 

project manager to change the culture of the engineering 

team, promoting the proper use of the problem-reporting 

tool and actively correcting the misperceptions that formally 

documenting problems would mark the project as troubled. 

This effort changed the project engineering team culture and 

the manner in which we investigated, addressed, and closed 

out issues. 

Today, as I look at the engineers who “grew up” on that 

program and now have spread throughout Goddard, I see the 

fruits of that cultural change and the effect it still has in helping 

to ensure reliable spaceflight hardware.

Find a Mentor

On my first flight project, our team presented a spacecraft 

communication-interface approach we had developed to our 

NASA review team. Although we were young and relatively 

new to the world of spacecraft design, we had come up with an 

approach we were proud of. So it was a huge disappointment 

when a senior member of our review team quickly demonstrated 

the complex and cumbersome nature of our implementation. 

He offered a simple, elegant alternative that was a significant 

improvement over our “homegrown” concept. 

Immediately after the review, I thanked him for his input 

and asked if we could talk to him about other aspects of our 

design implementation. This was the beginning of a long and 

fruitful working relationship. He became a trusted mentor and 

friend not only to me, but to other members of my team. 

Systems engineering covers an astonishingly broad area 

of mission requirements, design/implementation details, and 

operations concepts. It is impossible for any individual to possess 

sufficient experience or expertise to understand the complete system 

and its nuances and issues. A wise systems engineer will build an 

informal list of more experienced engineers as go-to contacts for 

dealing with the many technical (and non-technical) issues that will 

inevitably arise. This fellowship of mentors and peers will become 

one of the most valuable tools in the systems engineer’s toolbox.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

When our systems team was assembled on SDO, one of the first 

things we did was ask ourselves, “Who has done this type of 

mission before and what can we learn from them?” We sought 

out knowledgeable people from other missions and picked their 

brains for helpful implementation details and lessons learned. 

Even so, we missed obvious mission contacts who, in retrospect, 

would have helped us tremendously. 

For example, while we aggressively pursued information 

and design details from other solar-science missions, we didn’t 

contact other missions that used geosynchronous orbits until 

much later in our development effort. It would have been very 

helpful to spend more time talking to the geosynchronous 

spacecraft designers to discover issues they faced that differed 

from our previous orbital-design experiences. 

Engineers often spend tremendous effort trying to come up 

with a unique solution rather than build on the foundations of 

others. A wise individual I once worked for was fond of saying, 

“When you are in college and you copy someone else’s work, it’s 

called plagiarism, and it can get you kicked out of school. In the 

world of engineering, this is called good engineering practice, 

and it often results in awards and promotions.”

Aggressively avoid the trap of “not invented here” that 

prevents you from tapping the experience of those who came 

before. You will be the better for it and, in the process, you might 

further build your informal network of peers and mentors.

Realize That People, Not Positions, 

Get the Job Done 

Selecting the right people for specific positions, roles, and 

responsibilities will always make the difference when storms 

Photo Credit: Goddard Space Flight Center/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly

A great deal of plasma (hundreds of millions of tons) is unable to escape the gravitational 

pull of the sun after a prominence eruption and falls back down as “plasma rain.” 

Today, as I look at the engineers who “grew up” on that program

and now have spread throughout Goddard, I see the fruits of

that cultural change and the effect it still has in helping to 

ensure reliable spaceflight hardware.

ASK MAGAZINE | 7
SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument 

captured this image after a solar eruption and a flare.

(technical or otherwise) hit. This may seem obvious, but it is 

astonishing how often some leaders are content to fill positions 

rather than build a team.

Anyone who has worked in a team environment can 

probably recall an example of a well-intentioned individual 

who, for whatever reason (lack of experience or underdeveloped 

interpersonal or communication skills, among others), was a 

poor fit for a key role on a team. When this occurs, the rest of 

the team struggles to compensate for the deficiency. This often 

means either forcing the team to add unplanned additional 

personnel to augment shortcomings in this key role or learning 

to “work around” the individual in question.

Having the right person can make a huge positive difference. 

I recall a time on SDO when the value of talent was recognized 

and used to augment the existing team. Late in the development 

effort, we brought in a highly skilled individual to perform 

technical reviews. After they were completed, rather than let 

this valuable individual go, I went to the project manager and 

requested bringing this engineer on full time. I confessed that I 

hadn’t thought through the specific role this individual would 

fill but emphasized the principle that skilled people are rare, and 

we should grab them first and ask questions later. 

Fortunately, our project manager agreed, and this engineer 

stayed through the rest of the project, solving many technical 

issues and performing as a key member of our systems team. 

Even though we didn’t have a particular position that needed 

filling, we saw the value of a specific individual, realized the 

potential benefit to the team, and grabbed him.

Tear Down Barriers to Open Communication

On every project there are people who choose not to 

communicate openly with their counterparts. As a result, 

communication lines atrophy, slowing or stopping the 

transmission of critical information and risking technical 

disconnects. A wise team lead will aggressively address 

communication issues as they arise. Sometimes all it takes is to 

remind people of the need to communicate and the potential 

consequences of dropped information. 

The corollary principle must also be followed—make every 

effort to promote positive and open communication, whether it 

is by face-to-face meetings, walking around and touching base 

with team members, or doing whatever it takes to foster regular, 

open communication and build positive working relationships.

Recognizing the importance of clear and open 

communication in solving and preventing problems, our SDO 

systems engineering team instituted a weekly team meeting. It 

became a valuable time to not only solve technical issues, but 

to work through disagreements and differences. In addition, 

occasionally we would meet to self-assess our team and honestly 

discuss how we were doing and whether there were areas that 

could be improved. Outside the meetings, I would make a 

point to follow up with team members to make sure there were 

no hidden issues or concerns that were not getting adequate 

exposure in our group meeting. 

These simple actions are not remotely groundbreaking, 

which is exactly the point: communication does not need to be 

elaborate or innovative, it just needs to happen.

Talk to the People Who Actually Do the Work

One of my engineers came into my office to talk about a 

technical problem, quietly indicating that what I thought 

was a technical issue was really due to issues in the working 

relationships between key individuals. When I asked why no 

one had told me about this, he sighed and said, “Of course no 

one at the working level is ever going to approach the mission 

systems engineer to have that kind of conversation.” 

This was the first time I realized that I had now risen to a 

place in the organizational chart that created barriers that would 

impede my understanding of daily issues on the work floor. 

From that day onward, I started making a deliberate effort to 

“walk the floor,” asking questions and listening to the answers 

(whether I liked them or not).

8 | ASK MAGAZINE
This lesson should not have been a revelation. When I was 

a young engineer, I struck up a friendship with a senior manager 

of the engineering directorate at Goddard. Every two or three 

months, he would give me a call, invite me into his office, and 

we would talk about how things were going, what I liked about 

my work and the organization, what I didn’t like, and what 

needed improvement. I learned years later that this was part 

of a calculated effort on his part to stay in touch with people 

within his organization. He regularly met with junior members 

of the department to gain a “boots-on-the-ground” perspective 

of what was really going on. 

On every project, there are the people who are in charge and 

the people who actually do the work. These key workers often 

can tell you the most about what the problems really are, what to 

watch out for, and how to creatively solve problems—and they 

will figure out quickly if you really want to listen. A team lead 

who walks the floor will be far better equipped to accurately 

gauge the issues, understand their impacts, and formulate 

appropriate responses than one who stays in his office. 

Beware “Groupthink”

We admire finely tuned teams that share philosophy and culture 

and can almost finish each other’s sentences because of their 

excellent teamwork. Therein lies a trap that must be avoided: 

becoming so well integrated that groupthink creeps in and 

eliminates valid opposing viewpoints, causing a team to miss 

alternative approaches or, even worse, miss hidden concerns 

until they become real problems. The team lead must take pains 

to cultivate an environment where outside reviews and internal 

minority opinions are not only acceptable but actually sought 

out as part of the normal process of doing business.

On SDO, our project management and systems engineering 

teams worked hard to cultivate an environment where the team 

took the review process seriously as a valuable tool (rather 

than a necessary evil) and saw our review teams as partners 

in developing a successful mission. After our design passed 

through the critical design review, our project manager made a 

habit of updating critical review team members, briefing them 

on significant issues or changes, even when these fell outside 

the normal review “gates.” As a result, we developed a positive 

working relationship with our review team and kept them 

abreast of issues, helping them to be better educated in their 

review and assessment of our progress. 

Internally, we focused on creating an environment where 

the systems team regularly reviewed and questioned major 

design decisions and issues. Our weekly systems team meeting 

served as an anchor to ensure that honest and open discussion 

occurred, and frank communication also occurred at other 

project meetings, including design/development meetings and 

risk meetings. We had no shortage of people willing to challenge 

the status quo and take on devil’s advocate positions. While this 

give-and-take discussion could sometimes be frustrating, in the 

end it resulted in a better team and a more reliable mission.

Build and Preserve a Sense of Ownership 

and Responsibility 

One of the biggest challenges for a strong, dynamic leader is 

to guide team members without diminishing their sense of 

ownership and responsibility. When we started SDO, many 

of us were new to our leadership roles and excited about the 

opportunity to shape this new project. The in-house design 

teams typically see in-house missions as a prime place for pushing 

the technical design boundaries in order to advance the state of 

the art, however, and had their own ideas about design and new 

technology approaches. This often led to conflicts between the 

systems engineering and subsystem design teams. 

Ultimately, the systems team is the technical conscience 

of the mission-development effort and has the responsibility 

to ensure that the trades and compromises made are in the 

overall best interest of the mission. Looking back, I suspect 

there were times where our focus and sense of ownership 

may have unintentionally caused some of our design teams 

Photo Credit: Goddard Space Flight Center/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly

These simple actions are not remotely groundbreaking, 

which is exactly the point: communication does not need 

to be elaborate or innovative, it just needs to happen.

ASK MAGAZINE | 9
to feel that their own sense of ownership and responsibility 

was undercut. 

When talented individuals start sensing that their ownership 

or technical responsibility is being eroded or second-guessed, 

they may fight back, attempting to reassert their roles, or they 

may recognize the futility of their efforts and become passive. 

The challenge of the team lead is to prevent both outcomes 

by not usurping the roles of those underneath him or her, but 

guiding them in a constructive fashion while preserving the 

higher-level system goals. 

Train Your Replacement

A wise senior systems engineer often reminds me that any job 

has two primary components: to do your work with excellence 

and integrity, and to train your replacement. 

Until you train your replacement, you cannot leave your 

current position, since your departure would leave a hole behind. 

Also, the train-your-replacement mentality creates a fertile 

environment where the skills of an organization are continually 

replenished through mentoring and passing of the baton. Finally, 

having a train-your-replacement mind-set transforms the way we 

view and deal with other members of our team. Time and again, 

I see the frustration senior engineers may have with those less 

experienced slowly melt away as they understand the vital role 

they have in passing their knowledge and experience to others. 

Not only does this promote open technical interchange, it also 

creates a nurturing and team-building environment. 

On an earlier mission, when I was ready to take on the new 

challenge of a systems engineering role, the project manager 

insisted that I first identify and train an individual to take 

my place as a flight-component lead. The individual assigned 

to take my place had far more skill and experience in detailed 

flight-hardware design than I did, but he had never had the role 

of coordinating design and testing of a flight component. I was 

able to work closely with him to broaden his already impressive 

skills into a new area. In the same way, the systems engineering 

lead on the project was helping me grow into my new role. The 

added benefit of this approach is that the mentoring relationship 

provides a natural safety net of peers and mentors in the event 

that a person struggles in a new role.

Be Aware

My list of non-technical issues is almost certainly incomplete. My 

aim is not to exhaustively catalog all the non-technical threats 

that engineers may face, but to raise awareness of the impact 

these kinds of issues can have on a technical-development effort. 

That awareness is the first step toward developing a mind-set 

that proactively scans the horizon for these threats, and learning 

the skills and approaches that help the team mitigate and address 

them as they occur. The more prepared a team is to identify 

and address these issues as they arise, the greater the likelihood 

that they can be dealt with before they significantly damage the 

team or the development effort. ●

John Ruffa served as part of the in-house Goddard Space 

Flight Center development teams for the Rossi X-Ray Timing 

Explorer and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. Most 

recently, he served as the mission systems engineer for the Solar 

Dynamics Observatory, which successfully launched from Cape 

Canaveral in February 2010.

Time and again, I see the frustration senior engineers

may have with those less experienced slowly melt away 

as they understand the vital role they have in passing

their knowledge and experience to others. 

10 | ASK MAGAZINE
Title

By 

Intro

Moon Mission On a Shoestring

When NASA announced that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) would 

upgrade from a Delta II to a larger Atlas V launch vehicle, a window of opportunity 

opened for an additional mission to the moon. The Atlas V offered more capacity 

than LRO needed, creating space for a secondary payload. 

By Haley Stephenson and Matthew Kohut

Image courtesy Northrop Grumman

The LCROSS spacecraft employed a novel use of an ESPA ring.

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 11
At Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Fla., LRO 

and LCROSS are united in preparation for fairing installation. 

LCROSS was not about pushing the technical 

envelope. It was about keeping it simple—

keeping it good enough.

12 | ASK MAGAZINE
The Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) posed 

a challenge to interested secondary-payload teams: the chosen 

mission could not interfere with LRO; it could not exceed a mass 

of 1,000 kg; it could not cost more than $79 million; and it had 

to be ready to fly on LRO’s schedule. Of the nineteen proposals 

submitted, ESMD chose the Lunar Crater Observation and 

Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)—a mission that sought to search 

for water on the moon by firing a rocket into the lunar surface 

and studying the debris resulting from the impact. 

Dan Andrews, LCROSS project manager, was charged with 

assembling a team that could develop a satellite on a shoestring 

while coordinating its efforts closely with LRO. “It could have 

been a real recipe for disaster,” he said. “There were plenty of 

reasons why this mission should not have succeeded.” 

The Good-Enough Spacecraft

From Andrews’s perspective, the LCROSS spacecraft had to 

be “faster, good enough, cheaper.” He made clear to his team 

from the beginning that LCROSS was not about maximum 

performance. “It was about cost containment,” Andrews said. 

“LCROSS was not about pushing the technical envelope. It was 

about keeping it simple—keeping it good enough.”

The LCROSS team had twenty-nine months and 

$79 million to build a Class-D mission spacecraft. Class-D 

missions, which are permitted medium or significant risk of not 

achieving mission success, must have low to medium national 

significance, low to medium complexity, low cost, and a mission 

lifetime of less than two years. The low-cost, high-risk-tolerance 

nature of the project led to a design based on heritage hardware, 

parts from LRO, and commercial off-the-shelf components. 

LCROSS’s status as a Class-D mission did not preclude the 

team from practicing risk management. “We were risk tolerant, 

but that doesn’t mean we were risk ignorant,” said Jay Jenkins, 

LCROSS program executive at NASA Headquarters. 

“With the LCROSS instrument testing, we shook, 

cooked, and cooled the mostly commercial off-the-shelf parts 

that could potentially come loose during launch so that we 

were likely to have a tough little spacecraft, but we didn’t test 

to failure,” said Andrews.

LCROSS consisted of a Shepherding Spacecraft (SSC) 

and a Centaur upper-stage rocket. The SSC included a fuel 

tank surrounded by a repurposed Evolved Expendable Launch 

Vehicle (EELV) Secondary Payload Adaptor, also known as an 

ESPA ring. The ESPA ring, conceived by the Air Force Research 

Laboratory as a small-satellite deployment system, had never 

been flown on a NASA mission. Its six bays can hold up to six 

small satellites, but on LCROSS those bays held the principal 

subsystems of the spacecraft. Using the ESPA ring offered a 

significant advantage: its sturdy design had already been tested, 

Photo Credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

facilitating flexible, low-risk integration with the LRO mission.

Close-up image of crater Cabeus A near the 

moon’s south pole showing crater elevation. 

Yellow represents lower elevations. 

Photo Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

ASK MAGAZINE | 13
The off-the-shelf payload instruments included imaging 

equipment found on army tanks, carpet-fiber recycling hardware, 

and instruments used to measure engine-block temperatures for 

NASCAR. The total instrument cost ran about 3 percent of mission 

cost—far lower than possible with custom-built instruments. 

Andrews described this as a capabilities-driven approach. 

“The whole principle of LCROSS was, ‘If there are investments 

that the agency or industry have made and it’s something we 

can employ, then do it,’” he said.

While LCROSS was a Class-D mission, LRO, a Class-B/C 

mission, and the Atlas V rocket, a Class-A vehicle, were held to 

much higher standards. The launch vehicle provider expressed 

concern that LCROSS might interfere with the performance 

of LRO, the primary payload. “It became a lowest-commondenominator problem,” said Andrews. 

LCROSS didn’t have the budget to meet the requirements 

of a Class-A mission, nor was it supposed to. Andrews raised 

the issue with the program office, which eventually facilitated 

some additional testing of its structural hardware to ensure that 

LCROSS satisfied the concerns of all the mission stakeholders. 

Teamwork

Andrews knew he had to establish trust with the other teams 

involved in the mission. LRO, based at Goddard Space Flight 

Center, was understandably cautious about LCROSS hitching a 

ride to the moon with them. Andrews quickly moved to identify 

an LCROSS engineer who could take up residence with the LRO 

team to facilitate quick dialogue and build trust between the two 

missions. With good lines of communication, the two teams 

started to view each other as resources and “worked together like 

a team this agency hasn’t seen in a long time,” said Andrews. 

“These good relationships really pay off when things get tough.”

The crossover and reuse of hardware between the LCROSS 

and LRO spacecraft allowed the teams to learn from and with 

one another. Sometimes they worked in tandem; at other times 

one team would be ahead of the other. “There were things that we 

missed that we either caught later, or missed and LRO caught, and 

vice versa,” said LCROSS Project Systems Engineer Bob Barber. 

A good partnership with Northrop Grumman (NG), the 

spacecraft contractor, was also essential. Neither Andrews nor 

NG Project Manager Steve Carman had ever managed spacecraft 

development before, though both had run spaceflight-hardware 

development projects. “We were both kind of new to the spacecraft 

side of things, but I told my management to provide me with an 

outstanding team, and Dan did the same,” said Carman.

During the first six months, as the project underwent some 

acquisition-related contractual changes, Andrews and Carman 

began to develop a mutual trust. “Ultimately, communication was the 

hallmark of the partnership,” said Carman. “The partnership was not 

something where we said, ‘Sign here—we are partners.’ It grew out 

of a relationship. ... We showed them as we went along that we were 

indeed capable of doing this faster than anything we had done here.”

For Andrews, trust grew out of a shared understanding of the 

way both organizations traditionally operated. “We talked plainly 

about budgets. We talked plainly about the NASA construct, and 

then we talked plainly about how hard it is to move NG’s heavy 

institution,” he said. “I was not holding anything back in terms of 

what I was sharing with them, and I think that set a tone within 

NG [so] that they behaved similarly.”

By the time of the preliminary design review, a cooperative 

dynamic had been established that went beyond business as usual. 

“It was an ‘open kimono’–type relationship where everything was 

kind of on the table,” said Barber. “We wanted a really open and 

honest relationship with them.” NASA team members took part in 

NG’s risk management boards and were invited to staff meetings. 

The relationships didn’t end when people left the project. Both 

NASA and NG experienced turnover, which could have hurt the 

project. In this case, though, several former team members kept 

in touch with their successors. “That’s when you know a team is 

more than just coming to work and doing stuff,” said Barber. 

Tightening the Schedule

To meet the aggressive schedule demands of LCROSS, Carman 

established a baseline project plan with very little margin and 

then challenged key team members to consolidate their subsystem 

schedules. “We had a schedule that was based on ‘When do you 

need it?’ and I was saying, ‘How fast can you do it?’ And so people 

found ways to modify the processes,” said Carman.

For example, the lead propulsion engineer came back to 

Carman and said she could pull six weeks out of the propulsion 

schedule. As the work progressed, the team continued to make 

gains, eventually ending up eight weeks ahead. 

Expediting the Review Process

The LCROSS schedule didn’t allow time for a lengthy review 

process throughout the project life cycle. Andrews and Carman 

The LCROSS mission operations team 

initiated power-up of the LCROSS science 

payload and saw this view of the moon.

Photo Credit: NASA

14 | ASK MAGAZINE
orchestrated a compromise that reduced the number of NG 

internal reviews and made the review process more collaborative. 

Prior to each key milestone review, the teams held a peer 

review, which they called a design audit. Since both NASA 

and NG wanted to send managers and experts to check on the 

project, Pete Klupar, head of the Independent Review Board for 

NASA, jokingly threatened to give a short quiz at the beginning 

of the reviews to determine which stakeholders had done their 

pre-meeting reading and study. This made the point that the 

purpose of the reviews was not to educate the stakeholders, but 

to draw on their expertise. 

By inviting stakeholders to the critical design audit near 

the end of Phase C, the team experienced a relatively smooth 

and quick critical design review. This process was so successful 

that the team then applied the same concept to the validation 

and verification process by instituting verification compliance 

audits. “This very informal, hands-on, roll-up-the-sleeves, noties-allowed stakeholder involvement right from the get-go is all 

reflective of that collaborative process,” said Jenkins. 

Risk Tolerance in Practice

The LCROSS team had to determine how far it was willing to 

go with risks. Too many changes to the spacecraft could turn an 

acceptable risk into one that was too great. 

Early in the project, the team discovered that a capacitor 

responsible for protecting voltage input to a field-programmable 

gate array (FPGA) was identical to one that failed in the power 

system. If the capacitor regulating voltage to the FPGA failed, 

the FPGA would experience voltage stress; it was unclear how 

much stress the FPGA could handle. Loss of this FPGA would 

be a fundamental, unrecoverable problem, potentially ending 

the mission altogether.

“All the probability analysis said this should be a very low risk,” 

said Barber, “but it was a mission killer if the wrong one failed.” 

The capacitor was built into a box that had passed all its 

testing and was performing well. The problem was that the 

location of the capacitor made remote viewing of its condition 

impossible. With little room for error in the budget or schedule, 

the team didn’t want to invite more risk by opening up a tested 

flight box to check the capacitor, which could very well be fine. 

This was one of the most challenging risk trades this project 

would have to navigate. It wasn’t until a change in the Atlas V 

launch manifest led to a delay in the launch date that the 

LCROSS team had the time and resources available to revisit its 

risk list. The team determined that the risk of going in to test 

the capacitor was lower than doing nothing at all.

“We took a risk [opening the box] to try and eliminate what 

we felt was our highest risk [the capacitor]. Then we ended up 

closing that risk, and we took it off the plate,” said Barber. 

Against long odds, the project met its cost and schedule 

constraints and passed its final reviews. It was time for launch.

Low on Fuel

The Atlas V launched LCROSS to the moon on Tuesday, 

June 18, 2009. One hour after launch, LRO separated from 

the rocket to head toward the moon and insert itself into lunar 

orbit. LCROSS took another path. 

Two months into its journey to the moon, LCROSS 

experienced an anomaly while the spacecraft was out of contact 

with NASA’s Deep Space Network. The spacecraft’s inertial 

reference unit—its onboard gyro and primary means of 

measuring rotation rates around each axis for attitude control—

experienced a data fault that resulted in the spacecraft’s thrusters 

firing propellant almost continuously. 

The operations team noticed this once the spacecraft was 

back in contact with the network. Engineers quickly identified 

a probable root cause and contributing factors. Immediate 

steps were taken to stop the thrusters from firing and prevent a 

similar occurrence. The team also adopted new ultra-low fuelconsumption means to conserve propellant. The specific cause 

of the fault remained unresolved, but the engineering teams 

determined that the spacecraft would have enough propellant to 

achieve full mission success even under worst-case conditions.

Smashing Success

Six weeks later, LCROSS lined up on its collision course with 

the moon. Once in position, the Centaur rocket separated from 

the SSC and barreled down toward the moon’s Cabeus crater, 

where it crashed at twice the speed of a bullet. Following minutes 

behind the Centaur, flying through the vapor cloud created by 

the LCROSS impactor, the SSC took pictures, analyzed the 

debris, and sent the data back to Earth before it, too, smashed 

into what turned out to be a soft, porous crater floor. The whole 

sequence, lasting a mere four minutes and nineteen seconds, 

went off without a hitch. ●

With good lines of communication, the two teams started

to view each other as resources and “worked together

like a team this agency hasn’t seen in a long time ...”

ASK MAGAZINE | 15
Title

By 

Intro

When Craig Tooley, the 

Lunar Reconnaissance 

Orbiter (LRO) project 

manager, offered me a job as 

his deputy, I reacted as I had 

to all decisions that have a great 

impact on my life: I slept on it and 

looked at it in the cold, cruel light 

of dawn. As I left his office, he had 

asked me if I was ready to follow him to 

the moon. I thought, catchy sales pitch, 

but I’m still following my process. I made 

the right decision the next day, accepting 

the position. Being the LRO deputy project 

manager has been one of the best experiences of 

my NASA career. LRO was launched on June 18, 

2009. Flying in a 50 km polar orbit above the moon’s 

surface, the orbiter will collect data sets for a year from 

seven instruments to provide a comprehensive atlas for 

future exploration. How cool is it to have been part of a 

historic mission that took NASA and the United States back 

to the moon after forty years?!

Reflections

of a deputy

By Cathy Peddie

16 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY
Goddard’s Laser Ranging Facility directs a laser toward 

the LRO spacecraft in orbit around the moon.

Photo Credit: Goddard Space Flight Center/Tom Zagwodzki

ASK MAGAZINE | 17
Craig and I are different; we came to our partnership with 

complementary skills that proved to be a good formula for 

managing LRO. As in any relationship, we started out knowing 

the obvious differences but discovered others as we went along. 

Craig’s mechanical background and interests came into play when 

we divided the project into our “watch areas” to help us meet the 

demanding LRO schedule. He took on the mechanical, thermal, 

and post-integration and testing areas, while I focused on project 

management, systems engineering, and mission operations. 

Typically NASA projects do not staff adequately in the early 

stages. We like to keep them lean (and sometimes mean) until 

funding or other avenues are provided. Deputies are brought on 

when the go-ahead is given or the project manager screams for 

help. On LRO, I was brought in just prior to the preliminary 

design review (PDR) after a series of organizational and political 

changes drove the need for an expanded project office and 

additional staff.

I have had deputy positions before—as deputy project 

manager, deputy program manager, deputy chief, and deputy 

director. But in the midst of the LRO preparation for launch 

and early mission, moments of reflection brought home things 

that my mentors, family, and friends had been telling me all 

along. My thoughts on some common themes and threads in 

the variety of deputy positions I’ve held may be useful to those 

who are deputies or those who want to become deputies, or to 

help some decide that they don’t ever want to become one!

Roles and Expectations

My general approach to each deputy position is to try to act 

the way I would want a deputy to work with me if I ever get 

lucky enough to be in a position to have a deputy myself. One 

of the first things I like to do is sit down with my new boss and 

talk about our expectations. I like to know why a deputy was 

needed, what environment we’re in, why they hired me, and 

what they want from me. Expectations are a two-way street. 

The deputy also comes with a set of expectations, including 

what they want from the job, what skills and experience they 

bring to the table, and what they can offer that may not have 

been thought of previously. I like to do this on day one or even 

earlier to open the door for frank, interactive communication 

right away.

It is important to establish how you are going to work 

together to get everyone going in the right direction. Establishing 

roles and responsibilities helps alleviate confusion from the 

beginning. On LRO, we started with obvious project-manager 

and deputy-project-manager divisions of labor, knowing our 

roles would evolve as we learned more about each other and as 

project demands would dictate. Having worked on projects for 

many years, I took on the “easy” things in the project’s dailytask listing while I came up to speed on what LRO needed. 

Within the first couple of months, I took care of the project 

management stuff the project manager had not had time to 

do (project plan, procurement shepherding, establishment and 

revamping of risk management and configuration management 

processes, and lead for the critical design review [CDR] that 

came eight months after PDR).

If you don’t define roles and responsibilities clearly, you can 

run into the “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome and 

other confusions, conflicts, and inefficiencies. To make effective 

use of the deputy, it is crucial to delineate roles, responsibilities, 

and lines of authority and, above all, to communicate, 

communicate, communicate. Close communication between 

the deputy and his or her boss remains essential throughout the 

life of the project to make sure you stay on the same wavelength. 

That may mean talking every day, texting, using Facebook or 

Twitter—whatever works for the people involved.

On LRO, we had to implement a “divide and conquer” 

strategy in order to meet the aggressive schedule. Unfortunately, 

this meant that there had to be a separation not only in duties 

but geographical locations between the project manager and me. 

Keeping project activities going in concert under the circumstances 

presented a tremendous management challenge. Constant 

communication and support were crucial. When manager and 

LRO Deputy Project Manager Cathy Peddie

Photo Credit: NASA

stands in front of LRO in a clean room.

18 | ASK MAGAZINE
deputy have a shared knowledge and understanding of what the 

project needs, the deputy can step in instantly when needed.

Like any relationship, the manager–deputy relationship 

needs to be worked at continually. Lines of authority along with 

areas of responsibility must be clearly understood by all and 

worked out for the benefit of the project. In organizations and 

teams, people will sometimes try to play one off the other, like 

kids playing mom off dad. If they don’t like your decision they 

may try out the other “parent.” It is important to understand 

where authority resides. Above all, the deputy must be supported. 

I have always said, “The minute I’m not supported is the minute 

I can’t help.”

Using Differences

It is important to take advantage of differences in management 

styles, skills, and strengths and weaknesses in the context of the 

team environment. I have never been a clone of the person I was 

the deputy to. In fact, being different is often cited positively 

in my performance appraisal. In all my deputy positions, those 

differences have worked well for me and my bosses. Groupthink 

is a real danger in programs, projects, and organizations. Having 

a different perspective can help management see all sides of 

situations to make the best decisions possible.

The LRO project manager had worked with many of his team 

members for decades. I was the outsider who didn’t grow up either 

with them or at Goddard. He was concerned about groupthink on 

the project and didn’t want a “yes” person. This was challenging 

for both of us, as the inevitable human dynamics came into play 

when the “outsider” had a different opinion. You don’t have to 

be belligerent about it, but you have to be able to provide that 

different perspective and say, “Before we make that decision, have 

you thought of ....” It takes courage to speak up and do what’s 

best for the team, the project, and the person you are deputy to, as 

well as yourself. Most of the LRO team did not have experience 

in mission operations and extended missions. They often did 

not understand nor want to focus on aspects beyond integration, 

testing, and launch. It often felt like a trial by groupthink to have 

to prove the need for focus on the requirements of LRO’s unique 

mission to the moon. Understanding and appreciating that need 

came only after the orbiter reached its destination and successfully 

transmitted data back.

Ascertaining each other’s management style (how each of 

you deals with people as well as managing the organization and 

project) will help ensure that the deputy and primary person play 

to one another’s strengths and offset weaknesses. This assessment 

will help both determine how best to work together and how 

LRO Project Manager 

Craig Tooley examines 

data on LRO’s orbit 

Photo Credit: NASA

insertion around the moon. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 19
Cathy Peddie is the deputy project manager for the Joint Dark 

Energy Mission project. She has enjoyed working on a variety 

of NASA projects and programs in both space and aeronautics. 

Prior to coming to NASA, she was in the U.S. Air Force working 

on spaceflight programs.

A technician integrates one of the Lunar 

Reconnaissance Orbiter’s narrow-angle

Photo Credit: NASA/Debbie McCallum 

camera instruments.

to deploy themselves when they inevitably need to divide and 

conquer to get the job done. It is also important to take the team 

environment into account. Managing a NASA in-house team is 

very different from managing a prime contractor, international 

team, or a virtual team with members across the country. Different 

styles and techniques are needed in each situation. 

As a “people person,” one of the first things I do in any job 

is get to know the folks I am going to work with. Knowing your 

people and what is going on in the organization can definitely 

help ensure things are running smoothly and give your boss a 

perspective that helps him or her make informed decisions.

Flexibility

Deputies wear many hats. They can be the backup or standin when the primary person goes on travel or is out sick or 

on vacation. They can be designated technical lead to focus 

on a particular area, lead a tiger team, troubleshoot an area, 

or pull the whole thing together. A deputy can be a business 

lead, ensuring that all the business processes are working well 

and the project stays within cost and schedule. They can also 

own project processes, ensuring that those processes work for 

the project, rather than dominate it. On LRO, I revamped the 

configuration management and risk management processes, 

making them tools that helped LRO as opposed to just “check 

the box” items or bureaucratic burdens. 

A deputy can be a coach, helping team members work 

together to make the most of their diverse skills mix. They can 

be supportive, giving the much needed pat on the back that lets 

the team know when they are doing a good job. In this same 

vein, a deputy can be a trainer or mentor to those on the team. 

Sometimes people need a counselor, too. I often wish I had a 

psychology degree in addition to my engineering degree, since 

they don’t really teach you about people skills in engineering 

school. You just figure it out along the way, or are lucky enough 

to have those skills to begin with. I swear there is an enormous 

sign above my office door that says, “Complaints Department.” 

I’ve been trying to get rid of it for years! People may be afraid 

to speak to the boss to say things like, “Hey, you’ve messed up,” 

or, “Let’s try a different way.” A deputy can be an emissary for 

someone who may be too afraid to speak up.

Many times a deputy is the lead pooper scooper, ensuring that 

things get cleaned up. They are the “closer” in some situations, 

tying up loose ends—a critically important project function.

The Power of Two

Having a deputy means having someone to share the burden 

and the workload. I’ve often told my bosses, “You are not 

alone. I’ve got your back, go ahead and do what you need to 

do.” Having a deputy means having a readily available second 

opinion, another viewpoint, and a sounding board. Before a 

project manager makes a decision he or she may want to try it 

out on a trusted sidekick first—someone who won’t hesitate to 

tell the truth. The combination of the manager’s and deputy’s 

different skills can make a dynamic duo and high-performing 

management team. Ensuring that you make the best use of that 

person you brought onboard can pay huge dividends.

The LRO project experience helped bring home all these 

lessons for me. My project manager and I were partners, our 

skills were complementary, and we evolved our relationship 

throughout the project. We were flexible in how we worked and 

continued to shift and evolve as the situation demanded. Those 

things and our common passion for LRO helped us manage a 

historic project successfully. ●

20 | ASK MAGAZINE
Organizations—and the people who make them run—expect and desire a return on the knowledge 

they possess. In economic terms, they wish to collect and maximize the “rents” possible from the 

application and combination of knowledge contained in patents, documents, and—most important 

of all—employees. Yet leaders of all types have reason to fear that such is not the case.

Islands and Labyrinths: Overcoming 

Barriers to Effective Knowledge Transfer

 By T.J. Elliott

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 21
Capitalizing on organizational knowledge requires conveying 

it to people or groups who need it but don’t have it. Why is 

this so challenging for people and organizations? A gap exists 

between and among human beings across which important tacit 

knowledge often cannot pass. Imparting what is in your head 

successfully to another person requires effort. It does happen, 

but neither automatically nor naturally. 

Individual employees array like islands in the contemporary 

work world; their mode of work disconnects them from their 

fellow employees. Either they sit at their laptops working on 

individual projects with a small number of peers, unaware of 

the existence of others who possess knowledge that would prove 

useful, or they attend countless meetings with too many people, 

where competition for scarce resources makes them resist 

connection with others. Whether unaware or resistant, they lose 

opportunities to view situations differently, choose solutions 

more cogently, and devise innovations plentifully. 

Organizations often make the problem worse. They become 

labyrinths that foil earnest attempts to find or use knowledge. 

Their systems, policies, and cultures often combine to render 

it harder—if not impossible—to make something out of the 

knowledge contained within their boundaries. Wittingly or not, 

they create bottlenecks, cul-de-sacs, and other barriers.

This insight is not original. The separation between the 

potential and actual value of collective knowledge was recognized 

before Peter Drucker even coined the term “knowledge worker” 

in 1959. But understanding this disjointed reality can cure the 

practitioner of arrogant plans and unrealistic aspirations while 

prodding productive experiments associated with individuals 

and organizations.

The issues with the “islands” include the following: 

• The way we see ourselves—thinking we know more than 

we know and/or that we are always right.

• The way we see others—failing to listen to that which 

does not confirm existing beliefs.

• The way we make sense of what we see—a mix of biases, 

heuristics, and filters.

For eight years, participants in leadership development 

groups at Educational Testing Service (ETS) have been asked to 

solve “wicked problems.” Invariably, the early sessions are replete 

with statements rather than questions: faced with the challenge 

of cutting overhead, they talk about turning off the lights; 

challenged to develop a new product, they present pet ideas. Only 

when they are directed to reflect and are shown the patterns of 

their early communication—all advocacy, no inquiry—do they 

ask questions of each other and question their own assumptions. 

What keeps us as islands at times is the recognition that allowing 

other knowledge into our space could work against our interests 

in multiple ways. In some instances, the effect is only irritation 

at having to change our views; in other cases, the consequence 

would be a loss of authority or rewards.

And organizations? Their very structure forms the first set 

of barriers. The organizational chart of the founders may erect 

“walls” among various personnel and functions rather than create 

conduits for communication. Successive designs repeat this 

Individual employees array like

islands in the contemporary 

work world; their mode of work

disconnects them from their 

fellow employees.

22 | ASK MAGAZINE
error. Matrix-, line-, market-, or geographic-themed structures 

create different versions of the problem, moving the walls but 

not tearing them down. Formalization of accountability can 

stifle ideas and isolate information as individuals are excluded 

from meetings or e-mail distribution lists, and differences of 

opinion are quietly discouraged. Systems grow so cumbersome 

that even when we see what needs to be fixed their structure 

disallows it because of the time or money involved.

Consider this example of organization as labyrinth: A 

customer service representative notices that the way in which 

a form is configured for registrations causes multiple errors 

by customers, which require human resolution. To solve the 

problem, a request for removal of one word in one field is made. 

The organization’s systems are such, however, that the initial 

estimate of the cost to fix the software would be a prohibitive 

$2 million. The IT folks acknowledge also that they are 

concerned they would “break something” in the application if 

they made the change. They lacked the tools to “see” all the 

places in the application that would be affected by the name 

change for the field. Such a remedy requires dedicated testers 

and no budget existed for that resource. Important knowledge 

existed but the reality of the organization’s systems prevented it 

from being applied profitably.

The intent here is not to vilify corporate structures or 

individual knowledge workers. The challenge is to focus less 

on regretting the labyrinth’s frustrations or the individual’s 

insularity and more on navigating to get what is needed to 

produce what is desired. Organizations may appoint centurions 

who keep knowledge away from leadership, breed groupthink, 

and focus on politics so much that knowledge is subverted, 

but it is impossible to accomplish complex work without the 

coordinating structures they provide. Similarly, individuals may 

dissemble, distort, defer, and dismiss the knowledge of others, 

but we should concentrate on those instances when collaboration 

and creation transpire.

Here are two approaches that have shown promise at ETS.

Blogs, Contests, and Weak Ties

One of the realities of employees being spread like islands 

within an organization is that their connections are usually 

weak with all but their specific group. But so-called weak 

(rather than non-existent) connections are a good source of 

new ideas. Sociologist Ron Burt makes the case succinctly: 

“The weak-tie argument is elegantly simple ... people live 

in a cluster of others with whom they have strong relations. 

Information circulates at a high velocity within these clusters. 

Each person tends to know what the others know. The spread 

of information on new ideas and opportunities, therefore, must 

come through the weak ties that connect people in separate 

clusters.” Having an area where employees can exercise these 

weak ties to encounter new expertise or ideas holds promise, 

but hosting a blog, wiki, or other social-media space without 

a specific purpose and facilitation will fail. Running contests 

in order to elicit knowledge that is held throughout the 

organization can motivate the sharing. 

ETS ran “Margin for Mission,” inviting staff to submit 

ideas for generating revenue or saving money. Each participant 

received a certificate for a free cup of coffee or tea, with larger 

prizes awarded at the end of each month for the best idea. The 

message was that as a not-for-profit we must increase our revenue 

and control our expenses to be able to fulfill our mission. The 

contest ran for ten weeks and had submissions from almost one 

quarter of ETSers that were read in turn by an equal number 

of “lurkers.” The prizes were modest—a $250 gift certificate 

to Amazon—but the rewards were significant: employees were 

introduced to other individuals and their ideas.

Connect and Then Connect Some More 

We established our “Knowledge Workings” blog to create 

different combinations of people by arranging forums where 

they are more likely to meet and converse with coworkers outside 

their disciplines. We started virtually and then built upon those 

connections for face-to-face events. For example, there were 

One of the realities of employees being spread like islands within an

organization is that their connections are usually weak with all but 

their specific group. But so-called weak (rather than non-existent) 

connections are a good source of new ideas.

ASK MAGAZINE | 23
As ETS’s vice president of Strategic Workforce Solutions and its chief 

learning officer, T.J. Elliott has overall responsibility for functions 

that include recruitment, benefit provision and compensation 

through knowledge, process and project management, performance 

improvement, and learning and development.

1,259 online entries in 2009; fewer than 400 netted a reply. So 

we threw the “Blog Oscars” and had those who contributed the 

most stroll down a red carpet while all “lurkers” could watch 

and enjoy refreshments, bringing together colleagues who rarely 

interact. Such combinations help all to understand the tectonics 

of knowledge in the organization better. Then it becomes 

possible to create an “earthquake” by forming cross-divisional, 

cross-functional teams that have dual goals of solving wicked 

problems and learning about how they defeated the drooping 

entropy of human communication to do so. Invariably—when 

adeptly facilitated—they learn a great deal from each other.

In developing such connections, try to get the leaders out of 

the way. Bob Sutton has noted how some leaders brilliantly dilute 

their influence but stir their people by taking a backseat in some 

discussions. A senior leader in our San Antonio headquarters has 

held mixed lunches with every one of the four hundred people 

there. He speaks sparsely and almost always to prompt others 

to take the lead in discussing what they know that they think 

others should know. 

Avoid the Folly of “Build It and They Will Come”

Building new systems designed to capture and transfer 

knowledge does little to overcome individual and organizational 

barriers to knowledge sharing and use. Experience discredits 

such systems. At ETS we now require leadership to build bridges 

among existing systems. Can the Quality Management System 

talk to the SharePoint platform and vice versa? Is there a map of 

all governance groups so that they know where they might find 

additional information? Do new hires receive an orientation 

that offers the obvious but often overlooked opportunity to 

meet other people? Are there interview series at which those with 

important information from the front lines of your business are 

questioned carefully and inventively in front of an audience of 

coworkers who don’t know them? We undertook experiments 

based on each of the above questions to expose knowledge to 

a greater audience that either could not find it or didn’t even 

know to look. 

If the connecting happens and the weak ties deliver, then 

more people will know not only what others do, but also new 

things as knowledge combines, generates, and recreates. In such 

a circumstance, the islands are bridged and the labyrinth comes 

with a GPS. ●

Building new systems designed to 

capture and transfer knowledge

does little to overcome individual 

and organizational barriers to 

knowledge sharing and use. 

Experience discredits such systems.

24 | ASK MAGAZINE
Cohen: How do you see your role as 

chief technologist at NASA?

Braun: I am the administrator’s primary 

advocate and advisor for technology 

matters across the agency. The president’s 

FY11 budget request—yet to be 

approved by Congress—is what I would 

call a technology-enabled approach to 

exploration. That plan includes a wide 

variety of technology programs within the 

mission directorates and a new technology 

program outside the directorates. I 

directly manage the technology that’s 

outside the mission directorates and work 

with the mission directorates’ associate 

administrators on their technology 

portfolios. As a technology-oriented 

agency, it’s very important that NASA 

communicate a single message about 

what we’re doing in technology. One 

of my roles is to develop a coordinated 

policy to communicate the benefits of 

our technology programs, both to the 

space program and to life here on Earth.

Cohen: I know your job is new, but can 

you give an example of the kinds of 

things you’ve been involved in so far?

Braun: Coming into NASA from my 

university job, I thought I was going to 

be solely focused on developing plans for 

NASA’s new technology programs. I have 

been doing that, but also much more. 

I go to the major policy meetings to 

Robert Braun was named NASA Chief Technologist in 

February 2010. His NASA career began at Langley Research 

Center in 1987. From 2003 until his return to NASA, he led 

a research and education program at Georgia Tech focused 

on designing flight systems and technologies for planetary 

exploration. Don Cohen and Academy for Program/Project 

and Engineering Leadership Director Ed Hoffman talked 

with him at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

 I nter v iew W ith

Robert 

Braun

 By Don Cohen

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 25
speak up from a technology perspective. 

I’ve testified in the Senate Commerce 

Committee in a technology-oriented 

hearing along with the president’s science 

advisor, Dr. John Holdren. I’ve spoken 

about the importance of technology at 

many of the NASA centers, at universities, 

and to industry groups. And I’m working 

closely with the mission directorates’ 

associate administrators, helping to plan 

their technology programs.

Cohen: So the job is a lot more public 

than you expected.

Braun: It’s a lot more than I expected. 

And more public.

Hoffman: Are there organizations out 

there that you’d like us to be more like 

or get closer to?

Braun: Yes. I’ve been meeting with 

my counterparts at other government 

agencies. I have a great relationship with 

Dave Neyland, the director of the TTO 

[Tactical Technical Office] at DARPA 

[Defense Advanced Research Projects 

Agency]. I’ve also spoken with leaders at 

AFOSR [Air Force Office of Scientific 

Research]. I’m meeting today with the 

director of ARPA-E, the new advanced 

research project within the Department 

of Energy. 

For NASA to be successful in 

technology, we need to learn lessons from 

across the government. And we need 

a model that spans our many different 

kinds of technology programs. There is 

no one-size-fits-all technology program. 

We need programs that are wide open 

and searching for the best ideas across 

the globe—involving the NASA centers, 

Mars Microprobe was a failure in the mission sense 

... But the lessons learned, the experience gained by

the people who brought us Mars Microprobe, was

directly utilized in the development of a concept that

is now the baseline for a very important future spacescience mission. 

26 | ASK MAGAZINE
our university partners, folks in industry, 

and our international partners. We also 

need the capability to fund high-value 

technology in strategic areas. And we need 

to have the flexibility to allow failure. If 

we take large risks, some of our technology 

programs will fail. In my view, that’s a 

hard sell at NASA. The most frequent 

motto you hear at NASA is “failure is 

not an option.” In our human spaceflight 

program, that is the correct mantra. But 

as we go from human spaceflight to large, 

flagship robotic missions, to small robotic 

missions, all the way down to technology 

demonstrations, we need to be able to dial 

up the risk we’re willing to take. If we’re 

afraid to fail down at the technology 

level, we won’t make the major advances 

that are critical to our future and that our 

nation has come to expect of NASA.

Hoffman: If you tell project managers 

that you expect high performance within 

cost and schedule, the first thing they 

try to do is limit risk by limiting new 

technologies.

Braun: That’s absolutely right.

Cohen: Can you create room in projects 

for three or four approaches to the same 

technology issue?

Braun: What we’re going to do is identify 

the capabilities that we need. For instance, 

we need to be able to land the equivalent of 

a two-story house on the surface of Mars. 

There are several technological approaches 

to doing that—all in their infancy. You 

can imagine teams of folks from around 

the country or perhaps around the world 

responding with multiple technological 

solutions. What we would like to do is 

fund several of these to the point at which 

they’re mature enough for us to make an 

intelligent decision about which solution 

is likely to pan out. Then we would put 

additional funds toward that particular 

solution and take it to a flight-test program. 

Only then, when it’s been flight proven, 

would we bank on that technology.

Cohen: Is a willingness to fail one of the 

lessons learned from DARPA?

Braun: Absolutely. DARPA’s philosophy 

is that about 10 percent of the missions 

they invest in will actually make it 

through to some future capability for the 

war fighter. That’s their goal. They fund 

parallel teams taking parallel approaches, 

and they’re willing to terminate these 

activities when they need to. They do 

that all the time. At NASA, we haven’t 

had the fortitude to do that. We start 

technology programs and don’t turn 

them off. We need to pursue advances 

which will not all succeed and use strong 

program management skills to terminate 

activities that are not bearing fruit.

Cohen: If people believe failure is not an 

option, that’s hard to do.

Braun: I agree. Just last week two 

interesting news stories about failures 

came out a day apart from each other. 

The air force and DARPA together flew 

a hypersonic vehicle at Mach 20. Then 

they lost control of the vehicle, and it was 

terminated. The newspaper headline was, 

“DARPA breaks world speed record.” 

Further down, the article talked about 

how the mission was a failure. Around 

that same time, NASA had a balloon crash 

in Australia. That was a headline story 

on CNN. Admittedly, there was a fairly 

dramatic video of the balloon crash—

that’s part of the reason it got hyped in 

the media. We are just now beginning to 

investigate the specifics of that particular 

failure. Was it a failure because we were 

attempting to take too large a step or 

because we made a mistake? In my view, 

if it was a failure because we were taking a 

large step, that should be acceptable.

Cohen: Jim March at Stanford has talked 

about the fact that the failure rate for 

innovative work is very high.

Braun: In its early days, NASA was good 

at taking risks and accepting the fact that 

not everything was going to succeed. 

Over time, we’ve gotten more and more 

risk averse. That’s one of the things I’m 

trying to help change.

Cohen: In addition to trying to make 

failure more acceptable and funding 

potentially innovative work, are there 

things that can be done to foster 

innovation?

Braun: I think the amount of innovation 

in an organization is largely a function of 

how that organization values innovation. 

If you incentivize smart, creative people 

to be innovative, they will. If, instead, 

you incentivize them to work rigorously 

on one program for their entire career, 

they will do that. One of the things I 

think we need is more small projects. 

We need a greater diversity of projects 

and informed risk-taking so that we can 

stimulate innovation, particularly in the 

ASK MAGAZINE | 27
NASA field centers. The centers are full 

of creative, bright, and talented people. 

We need to unleash their potential.

Cohen: So you see the issue as innovators 

ready to be unleashed, rather than having 

to train people to think innovatively?

Braun: Yes. Innovators are going to 

come out of the woodwork when they’re 

incentivized to do so. Previously, there 

was no place in NASA for their ideas to 

go. There was no chance for those ideas to 

mature even a little bit, and they stayed in 

concept-land forever. In many cases, there 

wasn’t even enough funding to write a 

paper, let alone take an idea from a paper 

study to a laboratory test or a flight test 

to prove that the relevant physics made 

sense. Over the last few years, funding to 

mature new ideas at NASA has become 

very tight. As part of the president’s FY11 

budget request, we are creating a new 

program called the Center Innovation 

Fund that the center directors will 

control and manage. They’ll be getting 

some guidance from Headquarters on the 

kinds of activities the fund can be used 

for, but basically they’ll be able to make 

quick decisions at the field centers about 

new ideas. Think of it as seed money to 

get new ideas moving so they can get to 

the point where we can see if they have 

any merit and, if so, how to transition 

them into a larger technology program or 

a flight program. Of course, I would also 

like to hire more people, and young people 

in particular. I’d like to hire one hundred 

young fresh-outs a year to each center. 

That would be another way of pushing 

innovation. You see this at Google, for 

instance. They are constantly bringing 

in new people and looking at new ideas. 

Not everything Google tries works. They 

accept failure and that helps their culture 

of innovation. 

Cohen: In your earlier work with NASA 

or elsewhere, have you been part of 

innovative programs?

Braun: The first flight program I worked 

on as a young engineer at NASA was 

Mars Pathfinder. Pathfinder was our 

first attempt to go back to Mars after 

the 1992 failure of the Mars Observer, a 

billion-dollar orbiter that reached Mars, 

pressurized its fuel tanks, and then was 

never heard from again. Following that 

failure, the associate administrator for the 

Science Mission Directorate and a project 

manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

[JPL] put their careers on the line and 

created Mars Pathfinder. Pathfinder was 

designed to land on the Mars surface—

something much harder than going into 

orbit around Mars—and that hadn’t been 

done since Viking. And they were going 

to do it for $250 million, a quarter of the 

Observer budget. The best-known Mars 

Pathfinder innovation was the airbag 

system that allowed the lander to bounce 

and roll to a stop. The Sojourner rover 

was another—the first rover on another 

planet. Mars Pathfinder accomplished 

its science objectives and its technology 

objectives, but that’s not the whole story. 

Prior to Pathfinder, there was no 

Mars program in NASA and no Mars 

community of scientists and engineers. 

The public was not really engaged in the 

idea of sending spacecraft and eventually 

humans to Mars. You may remember that 

Pathfinder set a record for the number of 

Web hits after its landing on July 4, 1997. 

Public interest went through the roof. 

Shortly after that, the Mars program 

was established; it’s been a funded line in 

the NASA budget ever since. The Mars 

Exploration Program Analysis Group, a 

collection of hundreds of scientists and 

engineers from around the world, was 

formed. That group provides scientific 

advice to the program on how it should 

proceed in the future. It has been so 

successful that there’s now a VEXAG 

for Venus and an OPAG for the outer 

planets. My colleagues who cut their teeth 

on Mars Pathfinder went on to work on 

later Mars missions. Some worked on the 

Mars Exploration Rovers and on various 

Discovery and New Frontiers missions; 

some are now working on the Mars 

Science Laboratory. So when I think back 

on Pathfinder, I don’t just think about its 

science and technology success. I think 

about the fact that for $250 million—

a relatively small amount of money 

then and today—Mars Pathfinder was 

a game changer for the way we do 

planetary science. Innovative technologies 

can lead to entirely new ways for us to go 

about our business of aeronautics and 

space exploration.

Cohen: Among other things, they can 

create new communities.

Braun: Yes. New communities, new 

innovators, new businesses. They can affect 

the U.S. economy through technological 

stimulus.

Hoffman: People at NASA sometimes 

make fun of the term “game changing” 

because it’s become so ubiquitous. 

28 | ASK MAGAZINE
Maybe you can talk about what gamechanging technology means.

Braun: I think we’d all agree that the 

Internet was a game changer. That the 

cell phone was as well. These technologies 

changed the way we do business. Those 

are everyday examples. NASA can change 

the way we go about future missions. 

What we’re doing in NASA’s technology 

programs is investing in a broad portfolio 

of technologies so that the success of some 

of them will enable future NASA missions 

that we cannot even imagine today and 

will allow us to go about our currently 

planned future missions in entirely new 

ways that significantly reduce the cost 

or the travel time. What about enabling 

not only planetary exploration but 

interstellar exploration? We can’t do that 

with today’s technology because of the 

time scales involved. We’re talking about 

investments that could allow entirely new 

ways of doing these missions. That’s my 

definition of game changing.

Cohen: So you see the new technology 

initiatives directly supporting NASA’s 

flight missions?

Braun: Yes. It’s not that we need to do 

research and technology development 

instead of flight systems or operations. 

We need all three. But without research 

and technology development, we’d just 

be doing incremental missions. Science 

missions based on existing technologies 

would make scientific advances, but the 

pace at which those advances will be 

achieved would be slow. We certainly 

wouldn’t be doing the kinds of human 

exploration missions that the president is 

talking about. We can’t do human deepspace exploration without an investment 

in technology. What I believe is required, 

and the president’s budget request 

highlights, is balancing these three longstanding core competencies at NASA: 

research and technology development, 

flight systems development, and mission 

operations. All three are required for 

NASA to be the cutting-edge agency that 

the nation expects it to be.

Hoffman: Seventy percent of our 

scientific missions are international 

partnerships. Universities drive a lot of 

the science. Anything that comes out of 

here will permeate these other places.

Braun: Reaching out broadly and 

partnering is a big part of the job. For 

an idea to succeed and be picked up 

by somebody else, a few things have 

to happen. First, you have to have the 

ideas, and I believe that NASA has 

When I started at Langley, having more senior people 

I could go to at any time with any question and who

never told me that my ideas were stupid was a 

tremendous asset and learning experience. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 29
them. Second, you have to have a place 

to incubate and mature those ideas. That 

hasn’t existed previously, but it will if the 

president’s budget request is approved by 

Congress. Third, you have to make those 

ideas public, partnering with academia, 

with industry, with our international 

partners. If, for whatever reason, NASA 

can’t capitalize on a particular good idea 

today, perhaps the commercial world will 

pick it up. Perhaps another government 

agency will pick it up. But they have to 

know about it first.

Cohen: Can you give another example 

of a mission you were involved in that 

generated valuable new technology?

Braun: Right after Pathfinder I worked 

on something called the Mars Microprobe 

mission, a New Millennium project. 

The New Millennium program within 

the Science Mission Directorate was the 

last significant program that enabled 

people to take technologies into a flightrelevant environment and prove them. 

Unfortunately, it’s been in decline from a 

funding perspective over the last few years. 

In this particular New Millennium project, 

a handful of us developed a basketballsized aeroshell called a single-stage entry 

system because it didn’t have deployables: 

it didn’t have a parachute, it didn’t have 

airbags. This system was designed to fly 

all the way through the Mars atmosphere, 

impact the ground, and push a penetrator 

into the subsurface. We tested the system 

and it looked pretty good. We did a lot of 

analysis. We flew it. Two of the systems 

flew all the way to Mars along with the 

Mars Polar Lander in 1999. The whole 

New Millennium activity cost $25 million. 

They were lost with the lander. Some 

people would say that was a failure. 

The next mission I went to work on 

was the Mars sample return Earth-entry 

vehicle. This is a highly valued component 

of a highly valued mission, something the 

Mars community is very interested in 

doing one day. The Earth-entry vehicle 

is the piece that would bring the samples 

back from Mars safely through the 

earth’s atmosphere for recovery. My team 

was selected competitively to develop 

that system. We proposed a single-stage 

entry system based largely on what we 

had learned from the Mars Microprobe 

project. Mars Microprobe was a failure 

in the mission sense; I’m not trying to 

gloss that over. But the lessons learned, 

the experience gained by the people 

who brought us Mars Microprobe, was 

directly utilized in the development of a 

concept that is now the baseline for a very 

important future space-science mission. 

Single-stage entry systems have since been 

proposed by a number of organizations 

to return samples from comets and the 

moon. Another way you can tell whether 

you have a good idea is by the number of 

people who adopt it.

Cohen: You got $25 million worth of 

learning.

Braun: I learned just as much from 

the $25-million, rapid-development Mars

Microprobe as I did working on the 

DARPA’s philosophy is that about 10 percent of the

missions they invest in will actually make it through to

some future capability for the war fighter. 

30 | ASK MAGAZINE
$250-million Mars Pathfinder. One 

was a failure, one a success. Working 

on that “failure,” I improved my skills 

as an engineer, I improved my systems 

knowledge, and I learned valuable lessons 

that I could apply to future systems.

Hoffman: A project is a project. 

Braun: As long as you get to hardware 

and some sort of demonstration. It can 

be a ground-based demonstration; it 

doesn’t have to be a flight. Too often we 

never get out of the paper phase. There 

are technologies for scientific exploration, 

human exploration, and aeronautics that 

have been documented in report after 

report for decades. A healthy technology 

program should allow people to take 

those technologies from the concept 

world, where they’ve been stuck for 

decades, and into the flight world (where 

“flight” can mean ground-based testing, 

atmospheric testing, low-Earth-orbit 

testing—whatever is needed to prove 

the core technology). That’s what’s been 

missing in NASA over the last decade.

Cohen: Are there ways, other than 

assertion, to create a culture where 

valuable failure is OK?

Braun: It’s a long-term process. There are 

several approaches I’m working on. One 

is communicating. We need to assure the 

NASA workforce, industry, and academia 

that informed risk-taking is acceptable. 

The current system forces them to act 

as if failure is not an option even for a 

$25-million ground-based test. The 

second step is to design for failure through 

our acquisition strategy—to actually plan 

on having a certain percentage of failures. 

The third piece is to set up the technology 

development program with defined gates 

where one plans to terminate activities, 

and everyone knows that it doesn’t mean 

the end of the world. If we’re going to have 

five parallel efforts for a given capability, 

at some point we’re going to terminate 

four of them.

Hoffman: Today you get communities 

locked in to self-preservation, as opposed 

to going on to the next cool thing.

Cohen: When people hear stories of 

someone promoted because of an 

interesting failure, they’ll be convinced.

Braun: I intend to celebrate failure. Not 

because we made a metric-to-English 

conversion error. Failure because we went 

after a large goal, made progress, and did 

all the right things, but didn’t quite make 

it to that goal. I’m sure they’re celebrating 

in DARPA today because they flew a 

Mach-20 vehicle. Did they succeed in 

their objectives? Absolutely not.

Hoffman: Before we finish, tell us about 

what prepared you for where you are 

today.

Braun: A breadth and diversity of 

educational and professional experiences 

prepared me for this assignment. I 

grew up with a father who pointed me 

in this direction at an early age. He 

was an electrical engineer at the Johns 

Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. I 

had excellent educational opportunities 

at Penn State, George Washington 

University, and Stanford. I’ve also worked 

for extended periods of time at three 

different NASA centers. I was always 

a Langley employee, but I was often 

on a development assignment: at Ames 

Research Center for a couple of years, at 

JPL for Mars missions. When I started 

at Langley, having more senior people I 

could go to at any time with any question 

and who never told me that my ideas 

were stupid was a tremendous asset and 

learning experience. Langley sponsored 

both my master’s degree and my PhD 

through various Office of Education 

programs. Also very important was 

leaving the agency in 2003 and going 

to a major research university like 

Georgia Tech, where I could view the 

agency from the outside and see the 

immensely strong capabilities of the 

outside world. Previously, inside NASA, I 

hadn’t looked outside as much as I should 

have. Coming back from the outside, I 

see the value in these partnerships much 

more clearly. ●

ASK MAGAZINE | 31
Founded in 2001 at the University of Colorado, EWB-USA has 

grown to more than 250 chapters comprising 12,000 volunteers 

working in 45 developing countries. One of the founding 

volunteers, Evan Thomas, began working at the Johnson Space 

Center in 2004 and started a local chapter for the NASA center. 

In their time off from work on human spaceflight, NASA 

engineers, scientists, astronauts, and contractors work with local 

professionals and students to help solve energy and water-supply 

problems in areas much closer than space, but still challenging 

to reach. In the process of serving those communities, they have 

developed skills that serve their NASA work as well.

Planning and Partnership

Every EWB-USA project requires careful planning, because 

a solution that has worked in one location may not work in 

another. For example, a water-treatment system in Rwanda the 

Johnson chapter worked on required a very different approach 

than a system in Aguilar, Mexico, another community in which 

they’ve worked.

Traditional water systems for developing communities 

often begin with drilling wells. If wells aren’t feasible, other 

options such as water protection, rainwater catchments, and 

point-of-use water treatment, which are small-scale systems 

that may treat a couple liters per hour, are used. None of 

these proved to be a perfect solution for Rwanda. “It’s so 

mountainous, wells aren’t feasible. So densely populated, you 

can’t isolate areas for source-water protection. It’s so poor and 

densely populated, point-of-use systems aren’t practical. You’d 

have to distribute millions of them, and people can’t afford the 

replacement costs,” Thomas explained.

Rwanda needed a new solution. “We looked at all these 

options and didn’t see anything that we could adapt, so we 

ended up inventing our own water-treatment system,” Thomas 

said. The result was a gravity-fed system that runs water first 

through a gravel filter, then a rapid sand filter, and then through 

a solar-powered ultraviolet disinfection system. According to 

Thomas, “It’s kind of a hybrid between the small-scale, simple 

technologies and the higher-tech, higher-volume technologies.” 

The system can treat up to 50,000 liters of water a day for 3,000 

people, and it can be maintained for less than one-fifth of a cent 

per liter—about one cent per gallon. 

The process—from identifying a community in need to 

implementing a solution—can take years. EWB-USA wants 

to ensure all volunteers involved not only present viable, 

sustainable engineering solutions, but also commit to seeing 

their projects through to implementation. Planning, review, 

and commitment are key parts of EWB-USA’s success 

in managing projects around the world, even in the most 

remote areas.

Before anything is built, a few members of a chapter will visit 

a community to learn more about its needs and resources. “We sit 

down with the community members; identify what their critical 

public health needs are; work with them on what we might be 

able to contribute, what they’ll be able to contribute, potential 

timeline; and then go back and start developing technologies,” 

said Thomas. This initial visit also helps begin the partnership 

that is crucial to these projects succeeding.

“The first time you go to a community and see they 

aren’t drinking clean water, you want to get back as soon as 

you can to solve that problem,” said Dan Garguilo, a systems 

According to the World Bank, more than 1.1 billion people do not have access 

to clean, safe water, and 1.6 million children die each year as a result of illness 

related to inadequate water supply and sanitation. Engineers Without Borders–USA 

(EWB-USA), a volunteer organization, is working to change that.

engineers 

By Kerry Ellis

32 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY
Primus, an orphan at the Mugonero 

Orphanage in western Rwanda, 

drinks the first glass of water from 

EWB-JSC’s water-treatment system.

without borders Photo Credit: EWB-JSC/Evan Thomas

ASK MAGAZINE | 33
engineer at Johnson and current president of the EWB Johnson 

(EWB-JSC) chapter, “but we still have a lot of steps and projectapproval processes to ensure that what we’re doing is going to 

be sustainable and appropriate and maintainable by whatever 

community we’re working in.”

Every project requires at least a five-year commitment 

from volunteer chapters, during which time members of the 

community will learn about the system and how to maintain it. 

Only a few members of the team that helps design, build, and test 

new systems in Houston make the journey for installation, since 

traveling to Rwanda is expensive. Cost also prevents engineers 

from being able to fly in to make repairs or replacements on 

any system they install, so EWB-USA partners together closely 

with the communities they help to ensure people within the 

community are trained on the minimal maintenance the watertreatment systems require.

Problem Solving in Rwanda

Relying on local maintenance and supplies requires any 

EWB-USA engineering system to be a relatively low-tech, 

sustainable, and functional solution. “We call it ‘appropriate 

technology,’” said Thomas. “Our water-treatment system is a 

good example of that. We use gravity, which is always there, plus 

gravel, sand, and drums that are available locally.”

The only high-tech element the Johnson chapter used 

in their water-treatment system at a local orphanage was an 

ultraviolet light, which could treat thousands of liters of water 

a day instead of a couple of liters an hour. “Our decision to 

use an ultraviolet light was not trivial,” Thomas explained. “It’s 

important to make sure we have a supply chain for replacing, 

properly disposing, and maintaining those lights.” 

The limited time, people, and resources available to 

EWB-USA creates a challenging environment in which to 

problem solve when things go wrong. “We prototype all our 

systems in Houston and try to work out all the kinks here, but 

you never get everything figured out,” explained Garguilo. 

“Without fail ... there’s always a new problem that presents 

itself. You don’t want to leave not having a project implemented, 

so there’s a lot of scrambling and trying to problem solve on the 

go in places where you can’t pop down to a hardware store. You 

have to figure it out right there with whatever you brought with 

you or what you can find locally.”

Photo Credit: EWB-JSC/Evan Thomas

34 | ASK MAGAZINE
During one trip, the volunteers discovered a problem 

that compromised the entire water-filtration system at an 

orphanage—two days before they were scheduled to leave.

“Most of the projects we’ve done have been a variation 

of a rapid sand filter for clean water. The concept is pretty 

straightforward: filtering water through sand,” Garguilo 

explained. “When you buy sand here in the states, you can buy 

nice, clean, sifted sand. The sand we got locally in Rwanda, 

people went down to the beach for. We were prepared for that. 

We brought the necessary equipment to sift the sand to get the 

right particle size, but it’s very dirty. How do you clean sand 

without reliable access to water?” 

The orphanage helped the EWB-JSC engineers by grabbing 

the jerricans they use to haul water and retrieving water from a 

nearby lake so the sand could be washed. What the volunteers 

didn’t know was that some of the cans had previously been used 

to haul kerosene. 

“We were running water through the system to clean it, and 

we started to smell something,” recalled Garguilo. “It was in the 

middle of the night, too. Since time is of the essence, and it gets 

dark at 6:00 p.m., we oftentimes work well past darkness.” 

Far Left: EWB-JSC volunteers in Muramba, Rwanda.

Left: EWB-USA volunteers after the installation of an early water-treatment 

system. This design has evolved into iterations treating water across the country.

They realized the next morning the entire system was 

coated with oil from kerosene residue. “You couldn’t just go 

grab a hose and plug it in somewhere and start flushing out the 

system,” Garguilo said, “we had to find something locally that 

could work. Luckily, we happened to find some apple blossom 

shampoo a previous volunteer had left. Of course, soap reacts 

with oil to break it down.” 

The volunteers poured the shampoo into the system to rinse 

it as best they could, and there was just enough soap to break 

down all the oils and flush out the system. “The water smelled 

like apple blossoms for a little while, but it was at least clean,” 

Garguilo recalled with a chuckle. “The smell eventually washed 

out, but that was one of those, ‘Oh no, we’re screwed,’ moments. 

Working with limited resources is always a challenge.”

Learning from the Challenges

Many of the Johnson volunteers find themselves using their 

field experience from Rwanda and Mexico at their day jobs, not 

the other way around. Their hands-on experience and problem 

solving with EWB-USA has proved helpful when they are 

designing systems for space.

“We’re working in extreme environments in both cases,” 

said Garguilo. “When you have to plan project implementation 

in the developing world, you have a finite amount of money and 

resources to do the project; it’s almost like working in space. You 

have to plan everything out to the nth degree, account for all the 

tools you’re going to need, know what materials are available for 

you. You have to work efficiently and take your environment into 

consideration. All these things are similar to when we’re working on 

ISS [International Space Station] or other planetary missions.”

“The similarities are very strong,” added Thomas. “You’re 

living in a very harsh environment with very little maintenance 

and resupply. You have to keep people alive and healthy for a 

long period of time, and you have dirty water, you have dirty 

The system can treat up to 50,000 

liters of water a day for 3,000 

people, and it can be maintained for

less than one-fifth of a cent per

liter—about one cent per gallon.

= < 1¢ per gallon

Photo Credit: EWB-JSC/Evan Thomas

ASK MAGAZINE | 35
EWB-JSC continues its work with the people of Rwanda 

and Mexico on a regular basis, helping install new systems and 

maintain existing ones. Despite the distance, the communities 

and EWB-JSC make every effort to stay connected through 

e-mail, phone calls, and periodic visits.

The relationships go both ways. Astronaut Ron Garan, who 

volunteered with EWB-JSC and has since created a non-profit 

organization to help with EWB-USA’s maintenance efforts, 

made certain the children of the orphanage in Rwanda knew 

that he had not only become a part of their community, but 

they had become a part of his. Last year, he flew photos from 

the orphanage with him into space, and those photos now hang 

in Rwanda for the community to enjoy. ●

EWB-JSC volunteer Evan Thomas working in Muramba, Rwanda, to assess a 

surface-water pipeline.

Photo Credit: EWB-JSC/Evan Thomas

air, you need sustainable sources of power and energy. Keeping 

people alive on a lunar outpost, in my opinion, is far, far more 

similar to keeping people alive in Rwanda than it is even to 

keeping people alive on space station.” 

If the water processor on ISS failed, engineers would not be 

able to see or touch the system, and the information they could 

receive about the problem would be limited. “That’s similar to 

when I’m sitting in my apartment in Houston and I have a really 

sketchy e-mail trying to explain why my water-treatment system 

in Rwanda isn’t working anymore,” said Thomas. “That’s a 

challenge, but it also makes you think about how you design 

these systems and how you train people to maintain these 

systems to keep them simple so they don’t fail all the time.”

EWB-JSC gives engineers an opportunity to build and repair 

systems in Rwanda relatively quickly compared with systems in 

space; they also benefit from being able to work on a project from 

start to finish. “It takes a long time to develop this technology at 

NASA,” said Thomas, who works in water recovery and water 

management systems in the life-support branch at Johnson. 

“Most civil-servant engineers don’t get to spend too much time 

in the lab or tinkering with hardware. Through EWB-USA, 

I’ve gotten my hands dirty, I’ve built water-treatment systems, 

I’ve implemented them, and we’re treating drinking water for 

people on a daily basis. All that research, all that development 

effort, all that experimental design and implementation, I truly 

think makes me a better NASA engineer.”

Volunteering with EWB-JSC also gives people who normally 

wouldn’t work together within NASA a chance to collaborate, 

creating a network for sharing knowledge and mentoring that 

might not have happened otherwise. “It’s a vibrant community,” 

said Thomas, “and it’s helped my day job. People that I normally 

would never have worked with, now I know them and can call 

them up. Knowing who the experts are and where and being 

able to call directly is invaluable. When you’re getting dirty 

in the field, it really helps you get to know somebody.” NASA 

center volunteers also partner with local university and industry 

volunteers, expanding their knowledge network to outside the 

agency as well. 

36 | ASK MAGAZINE
Title

By 

In spring 2008, Dr. Scott Dulchavsky diagnosed high-altitude 

pulmonary edema in a climber more than 20,000 feet up the 

slope of Mount Everest. Dr. Dulchavsky made the diagnosis 

from his office in Detroit, half a world away. The story behind 

this long-distance medical achievement begins with a seemingly 

unrelated fact: There is no X-ray machine on the International 

Space Station (ISS).

On the ISS, diagnosing an injury or other medical issue 

can be problematic; bulky medical-imaging devices like X-ray, 

CAT, or MRI machines are too large and heavy for costly 

transportation into space. And while crew medical officers 

receive some diagnostic training, the nearest doctors and 

fully equipped hospitals are 250 miles away on Earth. Future 

astronauts on long-term moon or Mars expeditions will face 

even greater challenges.

The ISS does have an ultrasound machine—at 168 pounds, 

much smaller than its imaging-technology counterparts—

installed as part of the Human Research Facility for experiments 

on the effects of microgravity on human health. During medical 

use, the ultrasound machine’s hand-held transducer emits highfrequency sound waves that partially reflect at points of differing 

density, such as between soft tissue and bone. The machine’s 

computer translates the echoes into a two- or three-dimensional 

video representation. On Earth, ultrasound is commonly used for 

imaging fetus development, abdominal conditions like gallstones, 

and blood flow in patients with arterial disease. Unconventional 

applications, like diagnosing broken bones or collapsed lungs, 

were not explored given the ready availability of X-ray and MRI 

machines in hospitals and the high density differences of bone and 

air, which completely reflect the ultrasound waves and prevent 

clear images of deeper tissue.

That changed in 2000, when NASA approached 

Dr. Dulchavsky, chair of the Department of Surgery at Henry 

Ford Hospital in Detroit, to make ultrasound a more versatile 

diagnostic technique and to adapt it for remote use on the 

ISS. Dr. Dulchavsky tested new ultrasound applications and 

found that, in many cases, such as with collapsed lungs, the 

technique worked better than X-ray imaging. He became lead 

investigator for the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in 

Microgravity (ADUM) experiment, a collaborative effort 

between Johnson Space Center, Henry Ford Hospital, and Wyle 

Laboratories Inc. in Houston.

Aided by Onboard Proficiency Enhancer (OPE) software, 

cue cards, and direct communication with doctors on Earth, 

ISS crewmembers with only minimal ultrasound training 

(about three hours as opposed to about five hundred hours 

for a professional) used nontraditional ultrasound techniques 

pioneered by Dr. Dulchavsky’s team for capturing images of a 

wide range of body parts. These novel ultrasound techniques 

can evaluate infections in the teeth or sinus cavities or judge the 

effects of spaceflight on the central nervous system by measuring 

changes in the diameter of the eye’s optic nerve sheath as a gauge 

of pressure around the brain. Experts on the ground received 

diagnostic-quality images from the ISS through a satellite 

downlink, demonstrating the effectiveness of ultrasound as a 

multipurpose, remote-diagnostic tool in space. 

In keeping with NASA’s mandate to translate space 

technologies into applications for terrestrial use, Henry Ford 

Hospital doctors and Wyle engineers worked to find ways to 

overcome a major obstacle to bringing the ADUM-developed 

remote-ultrasound procedures down to Earth: There were no costeffective, technologically viable methods for sending ultrasound 

scans over long distances without a loss of image quality. 

“We have a great satellite hookup and a big telemedical 

network at NASA, but we don’t have these for common 

terrestrial use,” said Dr. Dulchavsky. 

To overcome this problem, they collaborated with Epiphan 

Systems Inc., a computer-imaging industry leader headquartered 

in Canada with offices in Springfield, New Jersey. The 

cooperation resulted in the formation of Mediphan, a remote–

Featured Invention: 

NASA Helps Extend Medicine’s Reach 

By Bo Schwerin

Image courtesy NASA Spinoff

Mediphan’s MedRecorder 

and DistanceDoc devices 

enable the remote-ultrasound 

techniques developed for space 

to be employed on Earth. 

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 37
Right: This climber was diagnosed with high-altitude pulmonary edema while 

more than 20,000 feet up the slope of Mount Everest—miles from professional 

medical personnel.

Below: Remote ultrasound procedures help provide for medical diagnoses on 

the International Space Station.

Photos courtesy NASA Spinoff

38 | ASK MAGAZINE
medical diagnostics technology company. Mediphan drew on 

NASA expertise to adapt Epiphan’s video-streaming innovations 

into a practical solution and has developed and commercialized 

two tools for terrestrial telemedical use. 

DistanceDoc, an external video-frame grabber, makes use of 

Epiphan’s video graphics array (VGA) capture technology to take 

diagnostic-quality and Digital Imaging and Communications in 

Medicine (DICOM) standard stills or video from the ultrasound 

monitor (or any other medical device with a video display, 

such as an electrocardiogram or ventilator). It then allows the 

ultrasound operator to transmit the images securely over the 

Internet in real time and at near-original resolution. The second 

tool, MedRecorder, is a similar device that captures diagnosticquality and DICOM imaging, then stores and archives it for 

later reference, like an external hard drive.

Each device plugs into the VGA port of any standard 

ultrasound machine and then connects to a computer by a 

universal serial bus, or USB, 2.0. A non-physician can, with 

minimal technical know-how, install Mediphan’s technology 

and use it to send medical imaging for consultation with 

experts. Coupled with the highly portable General Electric 

LOGIQ laptop ultrasound machine and the NASA-developed 

OPE instructional software now modified for broader use, even 

the medically inexperienced can consult with distant doctors to 

diagnose medical issues when and where they occur. 

“Immediacy in point of care is essential,” said Dr. Dulchavsky. 

“We can now have non-skilled individuals on site doing what 

traditionally only highly skilled individuals are able to do.”

The applications of remote-ultrasound diagnostic capabilities 

are widespread and increasing. The major professional sports 

teams in Detroit are all using the ultrasound procedure, OPE 

software, and Mediphan devices for immediate locker-room 

diagnoses of injuries that happen during practice and games. 

Olympians at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy, 

benefited from the telemedical procedure, as did athletes at last 

year’s Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Currently, 

the procedure is used for day-to-day oversight of Olympians in 

training facilities across the United States. It also allows trainers 

to establish baseline evaluations of athletes’ body structures, 

making for easier recognition of damage due to injury. More 

than 345 musculoskeletal ultrasound examinations have been 

performed on Olympians and professional athletes so far, a 

number of these with remote guidance.

The technology is also helping improve education, allowing 

a medical student on duty to share diagnostic information with 

an attending doctor elsewhere. The MedRecorder offers medical 

students the ability to archive personal portfolios documenting 

proficiency in diagnostic techniques and provides an affordable 

way to store and maintain records. 

Meanwhile, the United Nations Millennium Project, which 

has among its goals improved maternal care in underserved areas, 

plans to use the telemedical procedure in developing countries. 

Dr. Dulchavsky and NASA engineers are currently working 

to create a highly versatile, environmentally robust device that 

could serve as a kind of information node connecting patients in 

remote areas to distant experts via Mediphan technology. Then, 

Dr. Dulchavsky said, “we could utilize the techniques and 

technologies that we developed for use on the ISS to diagnose 

a wide variety of medical issues, such as traumatic injury, 

problematic pregnancies, and certain infectious diseases.”

Last year, working at a distance with a NASA team in the 

Mars-like environment of Devon Island in northern Canada, 

Dr. Dulchavsky performed the first-ever remote guidance of a 

simulated appendectomy. One day, the same technique may be 

used to do the real thing in a village in Madagascar, on the slope 

of Everest, or on Mars itself. ●

This article was originally published in NASA’s Spinoff 2009.

Bo Schwerin is an award-winning author and works at the NASA Center for Aerospace 

Information as a senior science writer for NASA’s annual Spinoff publication.

We could utilize the techniques and

technologies that we developed for

use on the ISS to diagnose a wide

variety of medical issues ...

ASK MAGAZINE | 39
Title

By 

Intro

By Ron Taylor

Nurturing Trust

40 | ASK MAGAZINE | INSIGHT
In my father’s generation, leaders were expected to give orders 

and workers were expected to take them. You did what you were 

told to do or you were fired. 

In my generation, leaders are expected, in style if not in spirit, 

to take their workers’ views into consideration. People expect 

their jobs to be challenging, interesting, and engaging. The 

leaders of successful organizations know this, and know how to 

keep their employees challenged, interested, and engaged. They 

do it by recognizing that their own success depends on how well 

their employees perform and by investing time and energy in 

helping others succeed. 

The Challenges

The Washington, D.C., chapter of the Project Management 

Institute (PMIWDC) has nearly nine thousand members. The 

position of president and CEO, which I was proud to hold in 

2007 and 2008, came with interesting challenges:

• The sheer size of the organization. The nearly 

nine thousand members of the PMIWDC chapter paid 

us to work for them. Practically speaking, each member 

was also a client, so we had nearly nine thousand clients. 

That meant nine thousand sets of demands. 

• Leading and motivating a large group of volunteers. I had 

a staff of approximately 260 people, of whom 255 were 

volunteers. That meant they could leave at any time for 

any reason without any consequences. My job was to keep 

them involved, engaged, and on the team.

• I could not use any of the traditional means of motivating 

my staff. I could not hire anyone, fire anyone (without 

a lot of pain), promote anyone, demote anyone, or give 

anyone a corner office, company stock, or a coffee cup. 

During my two years as CEO we increased our membership 

an extraordinary 25 percent, doubled our revenue, and implemented 

nearly 120 new initiatives. 

We were selected PMI’s Chapter of the Year in both 2007 

and 2008 (we won the “Recognition of Excellence” award in 

2008); three of our major programs were so successful they also 

received PMI’s Recognition of Excellence awards; two of our 

volunteers were given awards for their service; and I was named 

PMI 2008 Leader of the Year. 

How did we accomplish all this? The first thing we had to 

do was establish and then nurture a climate of trust. 

Nurturing Trust

Trust is foundational—you can accomplish wonders with it 

and very little without it. A reputation for trustworthiness and 

your willingness to trust others are worth more than just about 

anything else. Like many things of value, trust is fragile. Like 

many fragile things, it requires a great deal of care.

Some leaders cite the importance of “building” or 

“establishing” trust. I have found it to be more important to 

nurture trust—to keep it alive through constant attention. You 

nurture trust by acting in accord with the recognition that 

everything you say and everything you do either contributes to 

or erodes trust. 

 Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. During my presentation 

on leadership at the 2009 NASA Project Management (PM) 

Challenge, I asked if anyone had experienced a loss of trust. 

One man volunteered his story about how his boss had violated 

his trust. The more he talked the more agitated he became. His 

emotion suggested that the incident must have been quite recent. 

I asked him when this happened and he said it was twenty years 

ago, but the wound was still fresh and the pain was still raw. 

Use Your Leadership Moments

Most leadership moments are little ones: a conversation with a 

colleague or a response to an e-mail message. They are available 

to everyone, regardless of where they are in the organization. 

You’ll probably have at least fifty leadership moments today. 

Leadership moments represent opportunities to demonstrate 

“If you fail to honor your people, 

they will fail to honor you.”

– Lao Tzu (604–531 B.C.), founder of Taoism

ASK MAGAZINE | 41
your ability to lead and to share your leadership philosophy. Use 

them to nurture an atmosphere of trust. 

Use Team Meetings

The way you conduct team meetings can allow you to nurture 

trust at both the individual and corporate level. 

Consider a person we’ll call “Adrian.” Adrian was a leader 

who said all the right things, but betrayed his true nature in 

team meetings. He professed to value everyone’s opinions, but 

he really believed that life was a war and his team members were 

his troops. 

That meant you were either with him or against him. Team 

meetings became “battles.” Before each one he would hold 

private “strategy sessions” with a small group of people to plan 

how they would handle agenda items so he could have his way. 

As the team meeting unfolded, each person in the strategy 

session would play his or her part, and dissenting opinions 

would be politely, or not so politely, dismissed. 

It wasn’t long before the rest of the team learned what was 

happening. The net effect was that Adrian divided the team, 

drove a wedge between those who attended the strategy sessions 

and the other team members, and reduced the team meetings 

to playlets. Even those in the strategy sessions began privately 

referring to the team meetings as “kabuki” and became as 

disengaged as their colleagues. 

Adrian was not capable of trusting the opinions of others. 

He was so afraid of taking that risk that he surrounded himself 

with what he thought were his supporters in the strategy sessions 

and bulldozed his way through the meetings. As a result, he 

missed out on the value of additional information, insights, and 

solutions. Ultimately, he won the battles and lost the team.

Throughout my career I have viewed my job as helping 

others reach the best decisions about things we all thought were 

important, not jamming my ideas through. To accomplish this 

I have had other people suggest agenda items for meetings rather 

than selecting all the items myself. 

In that way we would be sure to include topics they were 

interested in, and give each of them an opportunity to discuss 

what they had been doing and their proposals for new initiatives. 

This placed the emphasis where it belonged—on the team, 

not me.

Speak Their Language

Sometimes we bounce ideas off others to help clarify our 

thinking. That can be a useful and productive strategy. If you 

always go to the same people, however, you may want to ask 

yourself why you’re limiting your options. If it’s because they all 

speak your language, perhaps you need to learn another one.

I made it a point not to go to the same people each time. I 

am especially interested in learning the opinions of the quieter 

people. Asking them in a casual one-on-one conversation 

encourages them to eventually share their opinions in team 

meetings, to everyone’s benefit. 

I also wanted to make sure everyone felt like part of the 

team, and I wanted to learn not only what they thought but 

how they thought. 

Sometimes we bounce ideas off

others to help clarify our thinking. 

That can be a useful and productive

strategy. If you always go to the

same people, however, you may want

to ask yourself why you’re limiting

your options.

42 | ASK MAGAZINE
I learned what people thought by simply asking for their 

opinion. That can provide valuable information, and some 

leaders stop there. They take the answer back to their cave and 

add it to the pile of opinions. It was more important to me to 

know how people thought, because that gave me insight into the 

way I could best work with them. 

As you get to know the people in your organization or on 

your team, you will be able to understand both what and how 

they think—but only if you make the effort. Learning this 

technique allows you to nurture trust with them more easily 

because you’re communicating on the same frequency. 

Choose Your Words Carefully

This is especially challenging when you’re stressed, or so 

focused on a task that you forget the importance of nurturing 

trust at every moment. There is a huge difference between 

telling someone, “That’s your job,” and saying, “I trust 

your judgment.” In the former instance, your conversation 

is directive and confrontational. In the latter it is directive 

and supportive. Imagine what it would feel like to be on the 

receiving end of those conversations and it is easy to make the 

right choice.

Ask for Help When You Need It

One of the best ways to nurture trust is to ask for help. Admitting, 

for example, that you don’t know how to drive business to a 

Web site doesn’t make you weaker, it makes you more human, 

more approachable, and ultimately more respected. 

Some leaders try to have all the answers all the time. They 

subscribe to a kind of “ninja leader” act that is as unreasonable 

as it is unattainable. They become so wrapped up in the act that 

they don’t realize they’re getting in their own way. 

There is, in fact, both great freedom and great power in being 

occasionally vulnerable. Like everyone in your organization, 

you have your own strengths and weaknesses, so admit that you 

cannot do or know everything. 

You have to be selective in your vulnerability, of course. If 

you are the CEO, I don’t recommend that you tell people you 

have no idea what the strategic direction of the organization 

should be and you would like someone to handle that for you. 

Use your common sense to know when to ask for help, 

but don’t be afraid to be human. By asking for help you 

allow someone else to solve a problem that you have admitted 

you can’t solve. You not only empower other people, you 

also encourage them to take on additional responsibilities 

and establish a bond of trust based on your vulnerability and 

their capability. 

Never Compromise Your Integrity

Sometimes, in the course of leading others, you have to make a 

trade-off among virtues. You may have to act like everything is 

fine when you would rather curl up in a ball. There is one thing 

you simply can’t do: compromise your integrity.

To nurture trust, you can’t be mostly honest or mostly fair. 

You can’t take a moment off. You always have to deliver honesty 

and trust. 

As soon as you lie, cheat, or act dishonestly, you have 

broken trust, and you may never regain it. Worse yet, you can 

safely assume that the person whose trust you have broken will 

tell other people (remember the man at the 2009 NASA PM 

Challenge?) and that your damaged reputation will follow you. 

Lying, cheating, or acting dishonestly will do more damage to 

you than to others, diminishing you as a human being. ●

Ron Taylor is the founder of the Ron Taylor Group, which 

specializes in project management and leadership training. He 

is past president of the Project Management Institute (PMI) 

Washington, D.C., chapter and was named 2008 PMI Leader of 

the Year.

Throughout my career I have viewed my job as helping others reach the

best decisions about things we all thought were important, not jamming

my ideas through. To accomplish this I have had other people suggest

agenda items for meetings rather than selecting all the items myself.

ASK MAGAZINE | 43
By Harvey Schabes

44 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY
The call came in at approximately 4:30 in the morning. 

The information was provided. I asked for the caller’s 

recommendation, and I made the decision, a decision that 

has haunted me ever since. Did I do the right thing? Would I 

do it again?

In November 2004, I was named the deputy director of the 

Center Operations Directorate at Glenn Research Center. It was 

my first position at this level of management and responsibility. 

As a rookie, I tried to learn as much as I could from those around 

me. I consider myself a reflective learner, always asking why, 

what, and how so as to learn and benefit from each situation and 

experience and be better for it in the future. 

Which brings us to December 22.

As the holiday season neared, many people at Glenn began to 

take time off, so temporary assignments and acting positions were 

common. When the director of Center Operations talked to me 

that day, he informed me that he was leaving for the remainder 

of the holiday season and that I should do what was necessary to 

keep things moving. He also said that, since he was going to be out 

of town, the center’s Emergency Preparedness coordinator would 

call me for any required action if there were any emergencies. He 

mentioned as well that the center director, his deputy, and the 

associate director were also going to be on leave the next day. As 

the afternoon drew to a close, the weather people in the Cleveland 

area were predicting snow, but their predictions frequently don’t 

come to pass. In any event, I went about my normal activities 

and went home and to bed that night not really concerned that I 

would be required to do anything special. 

But at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday, December 23, my cell phone 

rang. It was the center’s Emergency Preparedness coordinator. 

He informed me that many local highways were impassable, 

none of the center’s roads or parking lots had been plowed (many 

of the people who would have normally performed this function 

weren’t able to get in to work), and the police were advising 

against travel. He recommended that the center be closed for 

the day. I asked some questions about snowfall amounts and 

 ’Twas the night before the night before the night 

before Christmas, a cold and snowy night.

ASK MAGAZINE | 45
Harvey Schabes is the operations integration manager for 

the Engineering Directorate at Glenn Research Center. He has 

been at NASA for more than twenty-seven years and has served 

as a researcher, project engineer, project manager, and manager 

in both technical and administrative organizations.

The key learning that I am left with is this: if asked for a decision, make it; 

if asked for an opinion, give it; if given the opportunity to lead, lead!

locations across the city and what was being predicted for the 

next few hours and then said, “Yes”—do what is necessary to 

close the center and notify the appropriate authorities. 

After hanging up, I lay there wondering, what have I done? 

I just closed the center! I quickly turned on the TV and was 

somewhat reassured by news reports about the severity of the 

storm, but all I kept wondering was, what have I done? At about 

8:00 in the morning I called the associate director and told him 

what had happened. He assured me I did the right thing. We 

would talk several times throughout the day, eventually deciding 

that the snow had subsided and the roads improved enough to 

open the center for second-shift operations.

When I came to work on Monday, December 27, the deputy 

center director wanted to know who the hell shut down the center. 

He had decided to come to work that Thursday. After driving 

through bad weather that tripled his commute time, he got to 

Glenn only to be told by security that the center was closed. I 

raised my hand and sheepishly said, “I did.” A week later, I went 

in to the center director’s office and said with a smile on my face, 

“Forgive me; I am the guy who shut your center.”

He smiled and said, “You did the right thing!” 

Word spread quickly; I was given a new title: the “guy who 

shut the center.” Even today, six years later, whenever snowflakes 

begin to fall, people still say, “Hey, Harvey, are you going to shut 

the center again?”

Over the years, I have reflected on that phone call and my 

decision. I always come to the same conclusion: I would do it 

again. I also have tried to understand what lessons from that 

experience I can apply to future situations. The key learning that 

I am left with is this: if asked for a decision, make it; if asked for 

an opinion, give it; if given the opportunity to lead, lead! 

A leadership lesson I received early in my career also comes 

to mind. It was taught to me by John Hodge, a space visionary 

and great leader whom I was exposed to in the early days of 

space station. I was lucky to have known and learned from him. 

One of the things he told me was, “Ask for forgiveness, not for 

permission.” At the time, I wasn’t sure what that meant or when I 

would apply it, but in fact I have used it many times and in many 

situations. I am not so confident in my abilities or my opinion 

that I don’t have doubts or allow others to question or challenge 

me, but when faced with that critical moment when I have to 

step up or step aside and wait for “permission,” I remember John’s 

words. I give it my best shot and live with the consequences.

I have also never shied away from answering a question, even 

if the answer is, “I don’t know.” As I reflect (something else John 

Hodge and others have instilled in me as a virtue) on why I act 

this way, I recognize that it is essential to me that I share what I 

know, realize what I don’t know, and learn from all situations. 

Knowledge can be viewed as power, but the truly powerful share 

their knowledge with others. There is so much that each person 

brings to a team or life situation; it is incumbent on each of us to 

share what we know and learn from what others know.

I also believe that the deputy center director who wanted 

to know who the hell had closed the center ultimately came 

to view me in a different light—as someone willing to take 

responsibility and be accountable for his actions and, therefore, 

as a capable manager with great potential. While I am not today 

in a position likely to give me even temporary authority to shut 

a NASA center, I still try to follow the same maxim: if asked, 

answer; if leadership is needed, lead. ●

46 | ASK MAGAZINE
Title

By 

Intro

The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, part of the Big Dig 

project in Boston, is the widest cable-stayed bridge in the world. Photo Credit: Rick Berk

Learning from a Mega Project 

By Virginia Greiman

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 47
Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, commonly known as 

the Big Dig, was the largest, most complex, and most technically 

challenging highway project in American history. Larger than the

Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, and the Alaska Pipeline projects, 

it was built through the heart of one of the nation’s oldest cities. Its

list of engineering firsts include the deepest underwater connection

and the largest slurry-wall application in North America, 

unprecedented ground freezing, extensive deep-soil mixing 

programs to stabilize Boston’s soils, the world’s widest cable-stayed 

bridge, and the largest tunnel-ventilation system in the world. 

48 | ASK MAGAZINE
The Big Dig is also famous for cost increases. Its initial estimated 

cost was $2.56 billion. Estimates increased to $7.74 billion in 

1992, to $10.4 billion in 1994, and, finally, $14.8 billion in 

2007—more than five times the original estimate. The reported 

reasons for the cost escalation included inflation, the failure 

to assess unknown subsurface conditions, environmental and 

mitigation costs, and expanded scope. Mitigation alone required 

1,500 unanticipated, separate agreements. 

The Big Dig was led by Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, one of 

the largest and most experienced teams in infrastructure design 

and construction. Extensive environmental feasibility studies, 

risk assessments, and other documentation were completed 

prior to the project’s start. Nonetheless, costs increased across 

all contracts throughout the project’s life cycle despite enormous 

efforts to transfer, mitigate, or avoid risk and contain costs. 

In other words, things can go dramatically wrong despite 

the best efforts. Few infrastructure projects have used as 

many innovative tools and programs to control project risk 

and cost as the Big Dig. These included an owner-controlled 

insurance program that saved $500 million by providing group 

coverage for contractors, subcontractors, and designers and an 

unprecedented safety program; a cost-containment program that 

saved $1.2 billion; an integrated audit program that identified 

and mitigated existing and potential overruns and delays; a labor 

agreement that established a no-strike, no-slowdown guarantee 

for the life of the project; a quality-assurance program that was 

recognized by the Federal Highway Administration as one of 

five noteworthy accomplishments; and a dispute-resolution 

process that avoided extensive litigation costs. 

Causes of Cost Escalation 

To address major problems in mega-project management, 

Boston University, through its Mega-Project Research Program, 

has begun researching mega projects to help understand current 

practices, develop new practices and frameworks, and learn how 

to prevent or reduce risks before they cause serious problems 

or even project failure. Our research on the Big Dig has 

shown us that no single catastrophic event or small number of 

contracts caused costs to escalate. Multiple decisions by project 

management across all contracts contributed to the increases. 

The critical cause was a lack of experience and knowledge about 

dealing with the complexity and uncertainty that giant projects 

bring with them.

Using preliminary Big Dig data, we studied the impact of 

inflation, often claimed to be a major cost-escalation factor. The 

Big Dig reported that about half the cost growth was caused by 

inflation, but official inflation rates over the life of the project 

do not support the claim. Some of the increase can be attributed 

to an unrealistic initial cost estimate. Research shows that 

mega-project costs are consistently underestimated, a practice 

often attributed to the desire of project advocates to have their 

projects approved. 

Design and Construction Risks

The most difficult problems on the Big Dig involved the means 

and methods used to address issues raised in the project’s 

design and drawings, and the failure to properly account for 

subsurface conditions during the construction process. Project 

documents show that the challenges of subsurface conditions 

were substantially underestimated. The sheer size of this project 

and the fact that construction occurred in a busy city resulted in 

having to deal with many unanticipated conditions and a large 

volume of claims and changes. 

The surprises included uncharted utilities, archeological 

discoveries, ground-water conditions, environmental problems, 

weak soil, and hazardous materials. The project faced safety and 

health issues, frequent design changes, and changes in schedules 

and milestones. The unexpected discovery of 150-year-old 

revolutionary-era sites and Native American artifacts was one 

surprise complication and source of delays, requiring approvals 

from yet another diverse set of stakeholders, including historical 

and preservation organizations and Native American groups.

Interstate 93 tunnel in Boston, part of the Big Dig.

Photo Credit: Rene Schwietzke

ASK MAGAZINE | 49
Underground Utility Protection

To protect against losses caused by the disruption and failure 

of underground utilities, a Big Dig utility program relocated 

29 miles of gas, electric, telephone, sewer, water, and other utility 

lines maintained by thirty-one separate companies in 1996. Some 

of this infrastructure was more than 150 years old; a complete 

lack of knowledge on the age, condition, and location of most 

of the utilities required submission of “as-built” drawings by all 

project contractors—drawings of existing conditions rather than 

planned or proposed construction. The project had to deal with 

utilities that were shown on as-built drawings but never installed, 

and damage and flooding caused by underground sewer pipes 

not identified on the drawings. With large buildings located 

within feet of construction, the risk was high that damage to 

the infrastructure would shut down the operations of Boston’s 

major financial centers. One wrong move could have shut down 

the Federal Reserve Building and affected the country’s financial 

system for days, months, or even years. 

During the span of the project, 5,000 miles of fiber-optic 

cable and 200,000 miles of copper cable were installed. This 

required more than 80,000 hours of construction and 5,000 

construction workers operating 24/7. Between 1996 and 2000, 

the rate of utility damage decreased 86 percent, with cost savings 

approximated at $50 million. Despite many problems and risks, 

the utility program improved safety, quality, schedule, budget, 

insurance costs, and public relations. 

Delayed Integrated Project Management

The Big Dig relied heavily on a collaborative, integrated projectmanagement team that involved all participants in decision 

making. Unfortunately, the Big Dig’s project organization 

was not fully integrated until July 1, 1998, when design of 

the project was 99 percent complete and construction was 

45.9 percent complete. If there is a single cause for the massive cost 

escalation on the Big Dig, it probably involves the management 

of the project’s complex integration.

Integration problems were exacerbated by the project’s 

organizational structure, which separated design from 

construction through its traditional design-bid-build model and 

required managing thousands of stakeholders. True integration 

calls for a design-build model from the beginning of the project. 

Because contracts were negotiated separately with designers and 

contractors, there was little room for collaboration among the 

project’s most important stakeholders. Under a design-build 

model, designer and contractor are retained at the same time, 

developing a strong working relationship from the start through 

shared goals and methodology.

Problems in integration resulted in part from the sheer 

number of internal and external stakeholders, their interactions, 

and the ever-changing dynamics of managing the relationships. 

Each of the Big Dig’s 110 major contracts involved intensely 

complicated technical, legal, and economic issues and numerous 

processes and procedures as well as a complex regulatory scheme. 

The Big Dig may have suffered not from too few processes 

True integration calls for a design-build model from the beginning of

the project. ... Under a design-build model, designer and contractor are

retained at the same time, developing a strong working relationship from

the start through shared goals and methodology.

The Big Dig during construction.

Photo Credit: adm

50 | ASK MAGAZINE
and procedures, but too many complex processes that made it 

difficult to monitor and enforce in a uniform manner. 

In the early phases of the project, there was little 

communication between and among many of the internal and 

external stakeholders, other than an impressive outreach to the 

local community, particularly residents living close to several of the 

project’s major worksites. Community and social costs were vastly 

underestimated on the Big Dig. No one ever envisioned the full 

cost of dealing with the media, community interests, numerous 

regulatory agencies, auditors, and neighborhood stakeholders.

The government served in a dual role as regulator and owner 

of the Big Dig. The project organizational structure required 

that some managers report directly to the governmental 

owner, while other managers reported to the project’s design 

and construction program manager. A truly integrated project 

should centralize decision making and accountability for all core 

functions of the project.

The Value of Partnering

The concept of “partnering” was first used by DuPont Engineering 

on a large-scale construction project in the mid-1980s, and the 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was the first public agency to use 

partnering in its construction projects. Partnering is now widely 

used by numerous government and construction entities around 

the world. It involves an agreement to share project risks and 

to establish and promote partnership relationships. Partnering 

is a team problem-solving approach intended to eliminate the 

adversarial-relationship problems between owner and contractor 

by focusing on mutual interests with the help of a neutral 

facilitator. On the Big Dig, partnerships were used to improve 

schedule adherence, quality, safety, and project performance, as 

well as to reduce costs, claims, disputes, and litigation. 

Partnering at the Big Dig was initially implemented in 

1992, primarily on construction contracts, but its success in 

construction led to its use elsewhere. Almost one hundred 

partnerships existed on the Big Dig, based on contract values 

ranging from $4 million to half a billion dollars. Though 

partnering is not always contractually required, on the Big Dig 

it was included in all construction contracts with a duration of 

at least one year and a value of $1 million or more. 

Partnering sessions were held on a regular basis to discuss 

project needs, to resolve problems, and to improve controls. 

Partnering activities included leadership training, seminars, and 

executive meetings. Federal and state government officials and 

the contractors’ project management teams met regularly with an 

independent expert to assist in developing a single, integrated team. 

Sharing knowledge, risk, and liability, partnering reduced the cost 

of contractor claims, increased the number of value-engineering 

savings proposals, and helped keep projects on schedule. 

Here’s one example. Big Dig leaks, which delayed 

construction, often had several causes and flow paths. Assessing 

responsibility for leaks in the Fort Point Channel tunnel area, 

government lawyers, aided by an independent expert engineer 

with substantial marine geotechnical experience, spent more 

Signs from the Big Dig construction area.

Photo Credit: Stephen Gore

ASK MAGAZINE | 51
than two thousand hours trying to establish the exact cause 

of the leak, but could not do so with certainty. The leak was 

attributable to unexpected site conditions and to contractor 

performance issues compounded by pressure to complete the 

job quickly. To avoid costly litigation, the Metropolitan Transit 

Authority decided to mediate the issue before two sitting 

judges on the Armed Services Contract Board of Appeals. 

The mediation process took three months and succeeded in 

convincing the parties that liability should be shared between 

the owner and the contractor. 

Given the scope and complexity of the Big Dig, experts have 

concluded that the project would have been simply unmanageable 

without partnering. Though the benefits of partnering on the 

Big Dig have not been quantified, there is sufficient data to 

support the conclusion that partnering contributed significantly 

to the reduction of claims and the avoidance of expensive and 

time-consuming litigation.

These are the most important lessons about partnering 

learned from the Big Dig experience:

• Partnering requires focus on determining the root cause of 

problems, not assessing blame.

• Subcontractors should be included in the partnering 

sessions; they can be crucial to the success of the project 

and help balance the teams.

• Risk should be shared jointly among partners whenever 

possible to encourage innovation and continuous 

improvement, particularly where the technology is new, 

the risks are unknown, and the stakes are high. On the Big 

Dig, risks were shared among the owner and contractors 

to facilitate tunnel jacking, deep underwater connections, 

and technology interfaces between contractors. 

• Teaching problem-solving skills is a major benefit of 

partnering. 

• Partnering should never replace independent and rigorous 

oversight of the project. 

Learning from the Big Dig

Mega projects will always struggle with unforeseen events, 

massive regulatory requirements, technical complexities, 

community concerns, and a challenging political environment. 

What we have learned from the Big Dig can help future large 

projects. Of the many lessons this huge undertaking has 

provided, these are the major ones:

• Project integration is critical to success.

• Goals and incentives must be mutual and built into 

contracts throughout the project life cycle to ensure 

quality, safety, financial soundness, and a commitment to 

meeting budget and schedule.

• Continuous improvement and rigorous oversight are both 

essential.

• Doing things as they have always been done does not work 

for complex projects that require constant innovation and 

a culture of collaboration. ●

Virginia Greiman is an assistant professor at Boston 

University and former deputy general counsel and risk manager 

of Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project.

Partnering requires focus on

determining the root cause of

problems, not assessing blame.

52 | ASK MAGAZINE
Title

By 

Intro

Redesigning

THE

MISSION

By Warren Moos, Dennis McCarthy, and Jeffrey KruK

FUSE

Image Credit: NASA/Casey Reed

This artist’s illustration depicts the binary system LH54-425, 

which consists of two very massive stars. Using FUSE 

and ground-based telescopes, astronomers were able to 

determine properties of this rare, young binary-star system.

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 53
In its more than eight years of operation, FUSE addressed 

interesting astrophysical problems: What is the abundance of 

atomic deuterium in the Milky Way galaxy? Are the “missing” 

baryons in the nearby universe in fact hidden as hot plasma? 

Does a giant halo of hot plasma surround our galaxy? 

The science harvest was rich. FUSE obtained 

65,000,000 seconds of observations on approximately 2,850 

different objects. The data were analyzed by both the principal 

investigator science team and guest investigators selected by 

NASA in highly competitive proposal competitions, with the 

majority of observations going to guest investigators. So far, 

there have been more than 1,300 publications based on the data, 

with no end in sight. The FUSE grating and detector technology 

were adapted for the cosmic origins spectrograph, installed on 

Hubble during Servicing Mission 4 in May 2009.

All this from a mission that was officially canceled in 

1994. The success of the restructured program for a technically 

demanding mission is a tribute to the discipline, focus, and 

cooperation of the mission team members.

Cancellation and a New Direction

The development of the FUSE mission was delayed because of the 

Challenger accident in 1986 and NASA’s budget environment at 

the time—a delay that made changes in the technical approach 

possible, which significantly reduced technical and schedule risk. 

The grazing-incidence telescope design was replaced by normalincidence optics coated with silicon carbide coatings, a technique 

invented in 1988. Aspheric gratings were replaced by easier-tomake spherical gratings with holographic correction of the major 

optical aberrations, another development of that period.

A high-Earth orbit was specified on the grounds that operating 

an astronomical observatory in a low-Earth orbit would be complex 

and expensive. One of the triumphs of the restructured FUSE 

program would be the demonstration that low-Earth astronomical 

observations were feasible in a modest-cost mission. 

By the summer of 1994, the mission was ready to start 

Phases C and D, but budgetary pressures stretched out the 

schedule even further, causing the estimated cost to balloon. At 

the same time, NASA’s “faster, better, cheaper” mantra signaled 

the drive to increase launch frequency. The FUSE project was 

about to receive a major setback, one that actually led to an 

earlier launch and highly successful program.

On September 6, 1994, NASA Headquarters informed 

Principal Investigator Warren Moos and Project Manager 

Dennis McCarthy that FUSE was canceled. Serious negotiations 

began with NASA (with John Bahcall and others playing 

important roles) to preserve the science program. A meeting was 

held with Wes Huntress, NASA Associate Administrator for 

Space Science, on September 9, 1994. Huntress directed Johns 

Hopkins University to prepare a proposal for a $100-million 

mission that would retain the essential science. The principal 

investigator would assume control of all segments of the mission 

while NASA would be responsible for the launch. 

A proposal for Phases C/D of that mission was due in 

January ’95. An intense four months followed. The core 

spectrographs were retained, but anything “nice but not crucial” 

was eliminated. A low-Earth orbit instead of a high-Earth orbit 

became possible because Hopkins showed (with Space Telescope 

Science Institute help) that it need not be overly complex. After 

extensive review, including a non-advocate review, NASA gave 

approval for the “new” FUSE mission to enter Phases C and D.

Phases C and D of the mission began January 25, 1995. To 

keep development and flight-operation costs low, we established 

these principles and practices:

The Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) was conceived in the early eighties as a follow-on 

to the Copernicus mission, launched in the early seventies. Using modern detectors, FUSE would 

have ten to a hundred-thousand times more capability and reach billions of light years into the 

universe, compared with the few-thousand-light-year limit of Copernicus. FUSE looked at the far 

ultraviolet (905–1,187 Å) region of the astronomical electromagnetic spectrum, complementing the 

capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope, which has a sensitivity that drops rapidly below 1,200 Å. 

It was launched June 24, 1999, and was decommissioned on October 18, 2007. 

54 | ASK MAGAZINE
• Maintain a cost-conscious management and engineering 

philosophy, and continually involve systems engineering 

in all aspects of design and test

• Maximize use of existing team-member facilities, 

equipment, and personnel

• Reuse existing ground-support equipment designs and 

equipment from previous programs

• Extensively use component, subsystem, and system tests 

rather than complex analyses and simulations to verify 

and understand actual performance and design margins

• Establish a “quick react” process to respond to critical 

component failures during integration and testing

• Give design engineers formal accept/reject responsibility 

for their components, with concurrence from the Johns 

Hopkins product assurance manager 

• Develop a malfunction and software-problem reporting 

process to give accept/reject responsibility to engineers 

at the integration level, with Johns Hopkins productassurance concurrence

The FUSE restructured team tailored documentation to meet 

unique mission requirements, centralized systems engineering, 

integrated the team to ensure maximum communication at 

minimum cost, and streamlined the management team, with 

the Johns Hopkins principal investigator responsible for the 

mission and Goddard Space Flight Center providing contract 

administration and oversight. As a result, it was able to design 

to cost and maintain a fixed schedule. 

The team developed a formal de-scope process. The detailed 

de-scope plan was a primary tool for managing risk and dealing 

with circumstances that could have an unacceptable impact 

on cost or schedule. We had identified de-scope options and 

Photo Credit: NASA

While a crane lifts NASA’s FUSE satellite, workers at 

Hangar AE, Cape Canaveral Air Station, help guide it 

toward the circular payload-attach fitting in front of it.

ASK MAGAZINE | 55
contingencies during the remainder of Phase B. The principal 

investigator and science team prioritized the requirements on 

the mission and its systems, and defined the minimum 

performance floor.

In addition, Hopkins formed a small, highly experienced, 

standing review team to review and evaluate the FUSE program 

semiannually. These reviews were tied to the semiannual 

Goddard review and other reviews, including non-advocate 

review, preliminary design review (PDR), critical design review 

(CDR), and pre-ship spectrograph, pre-ship spacecraft, pre-test 

satellite, and pre-ship satellite reviews.

Hopkins also conducted informal incremental “peer reviews” 

at the subsystem level between expert teams as part of the process 

leading up to major project reviews. Technical experts from the 

university, Goddard, and other institutions engaged in informal 

roundtable reviews of plans, designs, and implementations at key 

development stages. The results of each individual peer review 

were presented at each major program review. Peer reviews made 

major contributions to developing the proper subsystem designs, 

interfaces, design margins, analyses, implementation plans, and 

testing. The Hopkins review team presented their findings to 

Goddard independently prior to launch.

Testing and Flight

The integration and test plan was shaped by cost and schedule 

constraints, and by the unique demands of far-ultraviolet (FUV) 

optics. Testing at FUV wavelengths requires the entire instrument 

to be under a high-vacuum environment. In addition, FUV optics 

are extremely sensitive to molecular contamination, requiring 

careful material selection and rigorous cleaning and handling 

procedures for ground-support equipment as well as flight 

hardware. Also, the lithium fluoride overcoat on the aluminum 

optics was susceptible to degradation by water vapor, requiring a 

near-continuous dry-nitrogen purge. 

Our general approach was to perform rigorous acceptance 

testing of subsystems prior to delivery and to perform extensive 

testing of the integrated satellite, but to limit testing at intermediate 

levels of assembly. Thermal vacuum testing of the satellite included 

an optical end-to-end test, with full-aperture FUV illumination 

of all four telescopes. This gave us comprehensive performance 

testing and mission-sequence testing in a flight-like environment.

How did things turn out? On-orbit instrument spacecraft 

and instrument performance met or exceeded all requirements. 

There were some problems to overcome, however. One was that 

the co-alignment of the four telescopes was affected by changes in 

the spacecraft orientation relative to the sun; testing such effects 

during integration and testing is one example of something that 

was not feasible given our cost constraints. This particular problem 

was solved by changes to operational procedures at a modest cost 

to observing efficiency. 

There were also several instrument-software problems not 

caught by the usual suite of stress-test configurations. These 

problems became manifest over the course of days and weeks 

of uninterrupted running, which would not have been practical 

when testing with the integrated satellite. A high-fidelity simulator 

dedicated to use by the operations team would have made such 

tests possible, and generally would have helped to reduce some of 

the demands of the integration and testing schedule. 

The on-orbit problems that did have a significant impact on 

the mission were the eventual failures of most of the gyroscopes 

and all the reaction wheels. These problems, too, were overcome 

(until the failure of the last reaction wheel) by means of extensive 

redesign of the spacecraft and instrument software, and of the 

observation-planning system on the ground. 

56 | ASK MAGAZINE

Peer reviews made major contributions to developing

the proper subsystem designs, interfaces, design margins, 

analyses, implementation plans, and testing.
This would not have been possible without the continued 

involvement of the original software developers for these 

systems. Was the low-cost development approach a factor 

in these failures? The gyros were selected based on cost, and 

it is conceivable that more expensive gyros would have lasted 

longer. Even without the flight-software redesign, however, gyro 

failures would not have terminated the mission until well after 

FUSE’s planned three-year lifetime. The reaction-wheel failures 

would have terminated the mission after roughly two and a half 

years had we not developed a work-around, but cost was not 

a factor in selecting the wheels, and there were no hints prior 

to launch that they would have a limited life. Had there been 

such hints, cost would not have precluded having a fully 

redundant set of wheels.

FUSE was the first principal investigator–class astronomy 

mission managed by an academic division of a university. Our 

modus operandi was to procure an “off-the-shelf” spacecraft and 

ground system at a fixed price, and develop the instrument. 

Buying two and developing only one made it possible to maintain 

cost and schedule.

The spacecraft cost less than $35 million, the ground system 

was less than $4 million, and the science team “got religion” on 

holding the instrument to a fixed cost. They were realistic in 

deciding what capabilities we had to keep and what we could 

sacrifice. The integrated nature of the team meant sufficient 

two-way interaction between the scientists in operations 

and instrumentation with the engineering staff to generally 

communicate and clarify requirements and keep them realistic. 

The total program cost $120 million, 60 percent less than the 

proposed cost of the original FUSE. With contributions from 

the Canadian Space Agency (fine-guidance sensor) and France 

(diffraction gratings), the launch date was accelerated by two 

years, and the instrument retained a majority of the original 

FUSE science capabilities.

This restructured project flew two years early at substantially 

reduced cost and produced a comprehensive program that 

operated for eight years and achieved high-priority science. ●

Jeffrey Kruk is a principal research scientist in the 

Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins 

University. He is currently working on development of the Joint 

Dark Energy Mission, a collaborative effort of NASA and the 

Department of Energy. He was the system scientist for FUSE 

prior to its launch, and the mission systems engineer and deputy 

chief of observatory operations following launch.

Dennis McCarthy is currently a consultant to NASA. 

Previously, he was program director for FUSE. Other positions 

he held include deputy associate director of flight projects at 

Goddard for Hubble Space Telescope, associate director for the 

Space Sciences Directorate, and deputy project manager for 

the Cosmic Background Explorer, which won the Nobel Prize in 

Physics in 2006.

Warren Moos was the principal investigator for FUSE. He is 

currently the co-chair of the Joint Dark Energy Mission Interim 

Science Working Group and a research professor in the Department 

of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University.

FUSE satellite control center 

at Johns Hopkins University.

Photo Credit: Johns Hopkins University FUSE Project

ASK MAGAZINE | 57
Believing in Science and Progress

By Laurence Prusak

The Knowledge Notebook

One of the great questions in history is why the 

Industrial Revolution that started in the eighteenth 

century and went on to radically change almost 

every aspect of the way people live developed 

in the West, and especially the northwest corner 

of Europe. While it is relatively easy to understand 

more or less exactly what occurred, there are 

many and varied answers to the question of why it 

happened where it did. The question has become 

even more interesting with the development of a 

more global historic perspective than we in the 

West had a few decades ago. We now know that 

China and India were as technologically advanced 

as the West as late as the seventeenth century 

and that these two countries had many of the 

ingredients that could have brought about an 

industrial revolution in those countries. So why 

the West?

A wonderful new book has recently been 

published that, to my mind, gives the best and 

most sensible answer to this question. The answer 

offers valuable lessons for the present that may be 

especially relevant to NASA’s future. 

Joel Mokyr is a distinguished professor of 

economics and history at Northeastern University. 

He has written many important works, including 

The Gifts of Athena, the best book available on our 

knowledge-based economy. His new book, The 

Enlightened Economy, is the culmination of his many 

years of studying how and why ideas interact with 

material conditions and culture to produce economic 

change. It is a long and wonderfully written account 

of how and why England in particular—that small 

island—was the first society to actively industrialize 

and thereby transform the world. 

What makes this book so important today 

is Mokyr’s insistence that ideas have great 

consequences. He argues that it was the ideas in 

people’s minds in England that made the Industrial 

Revolution happen there. While this may seem 

obvious to many of us, it surely isn’t obvious to the 

authors of many economics and even history texts 

who seem to ignore the very possibility that ideas 

have the power to shape events. 

Mokyr identifies two related English notions 

that made the advances we sum up as the 

Industrial Revolution possible. One is a deep and 

sustained belief in science; the other is the belief 

that science applied through technologies can 

bring about material progress. Those beliefs had a 

long lineage in England dating back at least to the 

seventeenth century, observable in the writings of 

Francis Bacon on the scientific method and the 

founding of the Royal Society in the middle of 

that century. Why these developments occurred 

there and then is still a controversial subject, but 

there is some consensus on the importance of 

several factors: considerable individual freedom, 

the lack of a single dominant religion and the 

growth of religious dissent, high literacy rates, 

and the relative prosperity that encouraged a 

belief in progress—perhaps aided and abetted by 

some Calvinist religious beliefs. 

In any case, the early industrial pioneers in 

England not only had some knowledge of various 

sciences but—even more important—they 

believed in science, progress, and technology. The 

Enlightenment—often thought to be mainly a 

French phenomenon—was just as strong a force in 

England and had the added benefit there of being 

more strongly supported by English institutions 

than in any other eighteenth-century country. It 

58 | ASK MAGAZINE
was also far more widespread in terms of classes of people. These 

factors combined to drive the continuous quest for progress and 

material experimentation that led to the dramatic changes of 

the Industrial Revolution. 

We can easily see a similar set of beliefs in many of our 

American enlightenment figures—Franklin and Jefferson come 

immediately to mind—and it is no coincidence that the United 

States became the second-strongest industrial power a hundred 

years or so after England, and then forged ahead to develop 

great economic and technical strengths.

It is not hard to see why these lessons are of great value today. 

Widespread belief in science and progress—and the support 

that follows from that belief—seems to be waning in the West 

while it remains or (more to the point) has grown increasingly 

powerful in the East. So many other things dominate our lives 

and thoughts here, including the remarkable and constant 

floods of trivia that absorb so much of our attention. If we are 

ever to have another great leap of material, economic, social, 

and technical progress similar to those that took place in the 

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we will have to find ways 

as a culture to once again fall in love with science and renew our 

faith in the idea of progress. ●

If we are ever to have another

great leap of material, economic, 

social, and technical progress

similar to those that took place

in the eighteenth and nineteenth 

centuries, we will have to find ways

as a culture to once again fall in

love with science and renew our

faith in the idea of progress.

ASK MAGAZINE | 59
ASKinteractive

For More on 

Our Stories

Additional information pertaining 

to articles featured in this issue 

can be found by visiting the 

following Web sites:

• Lunar Reconnaissance 

Orbiter: www.nasa.gov/

mission_pages/LRO/main/

index.html

• Lunar Crater Observation 

and Sensing Satellite: 

www.nasa.gov/mission_

pages/LCROSS/main

• Solar Dynamics 

Observatory: www.nasa.gov/

mission_pages/sdo/main/

index.html

feedback

We welcome your comments on what you’ve read in this issue of ASK and your suggestions for articles you 

would like to see in future issues. Share your thoughts with us at askmagazine.nasa.gov/about/write.html.

Summer of Innovation

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden kicked off the agency’s new Summer of 

Innovation initiative in June while at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The pilot 

program, a cornerstone of the Educate to Innovate campaign announced by 

President Obama last November, will engage thousands of middle-school 

students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) during 

the summer months. Summer of Innovation is designed to improve STEM 

teaching and learning in partnership with federal agencies, academic and 

informal organizations, nonprofits, and industry. To learn more about this 

program and the opportunities available, visit www.nasa.gov/soi. 

Web of Knowledge

Learn about new discoveries in Earth science as they happen, and from 

the people making them happen. NASA’s “What on Earth” blog provides 

regular updates about NASA missions that shed new light on Earth. Posts 

regularly include new images, videos, and facts, sharing “the evolution of 

scientific debates, the practical application of NASA science, and—most of 

all—sharing the fun of watching science in progress,” according to the site. 

Learn more about our planet at blogs.nasa.gov/cm/newui/blog/viewpostlist.

jsp?blogname=whatonearth.

NASA in the News

NASA is seeking private and corporate sponsors for the Centennial Challenges, a 

program of incentive prizes designed for the “citizen inventor” that generates creative 

solutions to problems of interest to NASA and the nation. Centennial Challenge events 

typically include public audiences and are televised or broadcast over the Internet via 

streaming video, providing high-visibility opportunities for public outreach and education. 

Potential sponsors can be for-profit companies and corporations, universities and other 

nonprofit or educational organizations, professional or public organizations, and individuals. Those interested 

in discussing sponsorship opportunities should respond to a “Request for Information” at prod.nais.nasa.gov 

/cgi-bin/eps/synopsis.cgi?acqid=141911. Visit www.nasa.gov/challenges to learn more about the program.

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