National Aeronautics and Space Administration 

Academy Sharing Knowledge 

The NASA Source for Project Management and Engineering Excellence | APPEL FALL | 2009
 

Inside 

Preserving iss Knowledge 

APollo Technology: BAcK To The FuTure 

sTePs To excellence 
’

 

 ’ Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team 

ON THE COVER 

NASAs Hubble Space Telescope snapped this view of a colorful assortment of 

100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster, Omega Centauri, 

with its new Wide Field Camera 3, installed during the May 2009 servicing 

mission. The photograph showcases the camera s color versatility, revealing in 

ultraviolet and visible light a variety of stars in key stages of their life cycles. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 1 

Contents 

DEPARTMENTS 

3 

In This Issue 

By Don Cohen 

4 

From the APPEL Director 

By eD hoffman 

62 

The Knowledge Notebook 

By LaurenCe Prusak 

64 

ASK Interactive 

5 17 

INSIGHTS 

10 

STEPs to Excellence 

An ambitious new program will increase the 

knowledge and skill of safety and mission 

assurance professionals. 

17 

Apollo Technology: Back to the Future 

By Piers Bizony Technologies devised by 

Apollo engineers still have the power to 

amaze and inspire. 

31 

Interview with George Morrow 

By Don Cohen The director of the Flight 

Projects Directorate at Goddard talks about 

the importance of independent review, the 

dangers of too much optimism, and the 

value of hands-on experience. 

39 

Magnetospheric Multiscale: An 

In-House and Contracted Mission 

By karen haLterman Managers of a 

science mission deal with the advantages 

and disadvantages of working in house 

and working with contractors. 

48 

Managing Conversations for 

Performance Breakthroughs 

By Gerry DaeLemans Bringing attention 

to negative background conversations 

can improve morale and performance. 

54 

Nobody’s Perfect: The Benefits 

of Independent Review 

By mark saunDers anD James ortiz 

Independent review boards help project 

teams identify and solve potential problems. 

58 

Gettysburg Addressed: Common 

Ground for NASA Engineers and 

Civil War Generals 

By haLey stePhenson Participants in a 

leadership development program learn 

about communication, trust, and decision 

making on a Civil War battlefield. 

10 

STORIES 

5 

In Their Own Words: Preserving 

International Space Station 

Knowledge 

By tim howeLL Understanding how space 

station technology really works means 

capturing the thoughts and experiences 

of the people who designed it. 

13 

Protecting Shuttle 

and the Environment 

By steve GLover When environmental 

concerns change or eliminate any of the 

thousands of products the shuttle depends 

on, the Shuttle Environmental Assurance 

team must find a reliable substitute. 

22 

Son of LEM:
 

Lunar Lander Design Today
 

By John f. ConnoLLy To design a new 

lunar lander, the Altair team applies new 

processes to old challenges. 

26 

What Would Max Do? 

By Dawn sChaiBLe Developing an alternative 

launch abort system for the Orion crew 

module provides an opportunity for learning. 

37 

HOPE for the Future 

A new program gives young engineers and 

managers an opportunity to take a project 

from concept to launch. 

44 

Ingenuity and Improvisation 

By Jim hoDGes The builders of Langley’s 

docking simulator found new uses for 

surplus and scavenged equipment. 

51 

Science from the Sky 

By kerry eLLis The flying laboratories of 

NASA’s Airborne Science Program carry 

dozens of Earth-science experiments. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Issue No. 36 

Staff 

APPEL DIREcTOR AND PubLISHER 

Dr. Edward Hoffman 

ehoffman@nasa.gov 

EDITOR-IN-cHIEf 

Laurence Prusak 

lprusak@msn.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 

Katherine Thomas 

katherine.thomas@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 

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 

Katherine Thomas, ASRC Management Services, 6303 Ivy Lane, Suite 130, Greenbelt, 

MD 20770; katherine.thomas@asrcms.com; 301-793-9973. 

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 3 

In This Issue
 

“Looking back and looking forward” is one way to sum up 

the learning strategies considered in this issue of ASK. 

Looking back—learning from the past—is a familiar idea 

at NASA. Program and project teams have long depended 

on technical documentation of past missions and the advice 

of “graybeards” to help them solve contemporary problems. 

Some articles here look at what the past has to offer in 

interesting ways. Piers Bizony’s “Apollo Technology: Back 

to the Future” effectively dispels the myth that the Apollo 

mission’s computers and other technologies were primitive 

by today’s standards; it suggests how much we can learn 

from the work that began almost half a century ago. “Son 

of LEM,” by John Connolly, reinforces the point: designers 

of the new Altair lunar lander have discovered how brilliantly 

their counterparts in the sixties met the challenge of reaching 

(and leaving) the moon, and how much their new, larger 

spacecraft will resemble its predecessor. “What Would Max 

Do?” (by Dawn Schaible) is the story of a Langley team using 

principles of simplicity articulated by NASA pioneer Max 

Faget to build an alternative launch abort system for the new 

Orion crew vehicle. 

The participants in the Systems Engineering Leadership 

Development Program have been learning from the more 

distant past. Haley Stephenson (“Gettysburg Addressed”) 

shows how the experience of Civil War generals at the battle 

of Gettysburg illuminates issues project leaders wrestle 

with today. The basic factors that define leadership— 

good communication, analysis of complex situations, trust, 

decision making—have not changed over time. 

These backward looks are part of NASA’s preparation for 

a demanding future. “Fresh-outs” who have recently joined 

the agency and men and women who are still students 

today will create new vehicles and instruments for ambitious 

science and exploration missions in the next decades. 

Several articles in this issue highlight new programs that will 

help give them the knowledge and skills they will need. The 

Hands-On Project Experience (HOPE), jointly sponsored by 

theAcademyofProgram/ProjectandEngineeringLeadership 

and the Science Mission Directorate, gives young engineers 

and managers an opportunity to carry a small flight project 

from start to finish. As George Morrow says in the interview, 

hands-on work is an essential source of deep expertise 

that cannot be gained in any other way. STEP, the Safety 

and Mission Assurance Technical Excellence Program, will 

provide a complete, four-level development program for 

safety and mission assurance professionals that includes 

everything from online courses and case studies to on-thejob learning and membership in professional societies. Both 

of these educational efforts recognize the point Laurence 

Prusak makes in “The Knowledge Notebook”—that real 

learning takes time and comes from experience and 

interaction with others. And in “Nobody’s Perfect,” Mark 

Saunders and James Ortiz describe an independent review 

process that combines learning from experienced veterans 

with learning by doing real project work. 

Finally, “In Their Own Words” looks forward to a time 

when our present is the past a new NASA generation looks 

back to for knowledge. Tim Howell describes a program to 

capture the thinking of International Space Station designers: 

not only what they did but how and why they made those 

choices and how their technologies really work. Their words 

provide the kind of rich context that turns information from 

the past into knowledge for the future. 

Don Cohen 

Managing Editor 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 | ASK MAGAZINE 

From the APPEL Director
 

The Conspiracy of Optimism, 


the Dangers of Pessimism 

By ED HOFFMAN 

The traditional tools of project management do 

not help leaders with one of their most critical jobs: 

defining reality. 

Last summer I took my son to France, and we 

visited the beaches of Normandy where the D-day 

landing took place. While we were there, I heard a 

story about how the day before the landing—after 

months of planning—General Eisenhower, the 

Supreme Allied Commander, wrote two letters. 

One was a message of inspiration that was delivered 

to every soldier, sailor, and airman who took part 

in the invasion. The second, written in the event 

that the invasion failed, said, “If any blame or fault 

attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” 

That’s a powerful story, and it speaks to the 

challenge of leading a complex project. Leadership 

expert Noel Tichy has said that a leader has to 

perform two core functions: define reality and 

mobilize resources. Eisenhower and the other leaders 

who conceived the D-day landing defined reality as 

they understood it and conveyed that understanding 

to everyone involved in the operation. As Supreme 

Allied Commander, Eisenhower understood how 

perilous the conditions would be for the troops 

storming the beaches and did everything in his 

power to provide the resources necessary to succeed. 

He recognized the importance of inspiring his forces 

and expressing appreciation for their sacrifices. His 

words neither sugarcoated the dangers ahead nor 

dwelt on them, and he made himself accountable 

in the event that his definition of reality or his 

mobilization of resources fell short. 

This delicate balance between maintaining 

a positive outlook and remaining grounded in 

reality is familiar territory for leaders of complex 

projects. There are two traps that must be avoided. 

The first is the conspiracy of optimism. Optimism 

that is not grounded in reality results in failure. It 

leads team members to hold their tongues when 

they should speak up, for fear of being branded the 

bearer of bad news. Transparently false optimism 

will destroy a leader’s credibility with the team. 

The second trap is the danger of pessimism. 

A manager who conveys a sense of doom about a 

project’s prospects will create a negative story line 

for the team. Eventually that story becomes a selffulfilling prophecy. Team members will believe 

that their project is slated for cancellation, cuts, or 

failure. Instead of working hard, they will begin 

looking for cover or the nearest exit. 

The standard tools of the project manager’s 

tradedon’toffermuchguidanceabouthowtodefine 

reality and navigate this balance. Experienced 

leaders know how far they can push their teams to 

come up with breakthrough solutions for seemingly 

intractable problems. They invite open discussions 

grounded in interpretations of hard data, and they 

give their teams resources and latitude to work 

creatively. They motivate by defining reality in 

terms of the mission context, sometimes using 

external pressures to set up an underdog dynamic. 

They stretch their teams without breaking them. 

These skills cannot be taught in a classroom or 

captured in a professional certificate. The ability to 

define reality in a way that strikes a proper balance 

between motivating the team and acknowledging 

hard truths can only be learned on the job. It is the 

essence of leadership. ●
Title

By 

Intro

 

 

STORy | ASK MAGAZINE | 5 

In Their Own
 words

Preserving International Space 

Station Knowledge 

By TIM HOWELL 

Photo Credit: NASA 

The STS-97 crew delivered and installed the P6 

truss, which contains the first U.S. solar arrays, 

during ISS assembly mission 4A. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 | ASK MAGAZINE 

As a new International Space Station (ISS) engineering manager in 1986, I quickly learned that 

having the right mix of people was the key to my team’s success and that sustaining success depended 

on an environment that encouraged people to pass on experiences. I also learned that maintaining 

performance over time as team members leave an organization is especially challenging. These 

revelations would serve as a foundation for Design Knowledge Capture initiatives started in late 

1997. What follows is a story about gathering stories from ISS engineers who explained, in their own 

words, how their designs work. 

Design of the power management and distribution system, which 

I had been part of, was nearly complete in 1997, and engineering 

design activities were shifting to sustaining engineering, 

assembly, and test. The Rocketdyne ISS sustaining engineering 

team began discussions with the Johnson Space Center ISS 

program office to establish methods for capturing design 

knowledge. The designs themselves were well documented, but 

we wanted to meet with as many design experts as possible so 

they could explain how the space station really worked. 

“I don’t want to call a console operator to ask how long 

a remote-power control module will last before it fails and 

get an answer quoted from a spec document on that person’s 

computer,” said the NASA ISS program manager at Johnson. 

“I want that console operator to tell me what the real design 

margins are based on what he or she has learned from the 

person who designed it.” NASA wanted subcontractors to pass 

on the experiences of the original designers to maintain strong 

design knowledge over a projected thirty years of on-orbit 

operation. In other words, NASA was saying, “Show us how 

it works.” 

A Rocketdyne colleague, John Rank, and I developed a 

proposal to interview ISS subject-matter experts. The plan 

focused not on collecting documents, but on gathering experts’ 

thoughts, experiences, and explanations of how and why 

designs worked. We thought that capturing these “nuggets 

of knowledge” in their own words would provide contextual 

explanations that might help a console operator or astronaut in 

2010 and 2030 understand the ISS design concepts, strengths, 

and limits. We knew it would be difficult to capture ten years of 

collective design knowledge and wisdom, but it was important 

to the future success of ISS to try. 

With limited time and resources, we focused on identifying 

key experts before they left the program. Our mantra was, 

“Who is the go-to person?” With the help of team managers 

and coworkers, we were on a mission to find ISS subjectmatter experts who were identified by their peers as the most 

knowledgeable in their engineering disciplines. 

The Design Knowledge Capture initiative had three elements: 

1. Ask subject experts to help design specific questions they 

would ask a peer. The questions needed to be specific 

to the system, hardware component, or software and 

to the design discipline. We solicited responses from a 

cross section of engineering and manufacturing program 

experts in areas including electrical, mechanical, software, 

and systems. We learned that involving program experts 

in the design of probing questions yielded richer, more 

detailed, “how does it work” answers. These same experts 

were our first interview subjects. 

2. Establish	 interview, presentation, or demonstration 

recording methods. We respected each individual’s 

willingness to have sometimes very personal one-onone discussions about his or her design development 

experiences. Asking permission to record video made 

most people self-conscious and reluctant to discuss factual 

details for fear of making a mistake, but we assured them 

that we would not publish their sessions until they had 

reviewed and approved them. This put most people at 

ease and made them feel involved in the process. 

3. Publish Web-based, indexed interview content organized 

by system (such as power management, thermal controls, 

or communications). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- 

International Space Station 

nickel hydrogen batteries. 

Image Credit: NASA 

ASK MAGAZINE | 7 ASK MAGAZINE | 7 

Planning how to deliver an expert’s information was 

as important as capturing it. “Capture, Index, Share” was a 

Design Knowledge Capture slogan. If any of those elements 

are missing, knowledge cannot be transferred. Indexing was 

particularly important for quick subject searches and learning 

retention. No one wants to watch a two-hour interview to get to 

the information they need. 

Weestablishedapointperson,or“sitefocal,”ateachcompany 

we planned to visit. These people knew their organizations well 

and guided our search for subject experts, especially those who 

would soon retire or move on to other programs. We asked team 

managers to identify the most knowledgeable people and then 

asked these experts to recommend peers. During this process 

we would ask, for example, what is the most important thing 

someone should know about an orbital replacement unit, 

thermal radiator, or blanket-box release mechanism? These 

leading questions were intended to start a dialogue to help an 

expert recall design details. We often facilitated roundtable 

discussions among teammates; one person would remind 

another of a performance value, margin-of-safety calculation, 

or the how and why of a test failure. Using video to capture 

experts’ own words was as close as we could get to placing future 

students in the room at that moment. 

Good learning occurs when one can see, hear, and read at the 

same time. This is known as the “3–D” effect of learning. What 

you see may be body language or expression. You hear voice 

inflections. Reading gives you the details that substantiate the 

verbal or visual information. Each sensory experience reinforces 

the others. This rich learning experience improves retention as 

well as understanding. 

Some Stories from the Field 

Here are a few examples of Design Knowledge Capture in action. 

The First Solar Array–Deployment Assembly Mission 

Several months before deployment, design engineers 

demonstrated solar-array design elements for Design Knowledge 

Capture video sessions. Sessions included solar-cell design and 

fabrication, blanket-box release mechanism tests, and arraytensioning pulley design. 

Recorded sessions were published to the ISS knowledge 

management Web site ahead of the launch and assembly 

sequence. The site was available to NASA and ISS subcontractors 

to augment existing procedures and specifications. Between 

1999 and 2001, the site received on average 2,000 hits 

per day. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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8 | ASK MAGAZINE 

The STS 104 crew used the Space Shuttle Atlantis s 

robotic arm to install the new Joint Airlock from 

which both Russian and American spacewalks 

may take place. The high pressure gas assembly 

supports spacewalk operations and augments the 

Zvezda Service Module gas resupply system. 

Design engineers knew the array panel material had a surface 

tension that could cause panels to stick together when deployed 

after a long period of storage in their protective blanket boxes. 

The longer the arrays were stored, the greater the possibility two 

panels would not unfold smoothly. Successful deployment tests 

suggested this was a minor concern, but random panel surfacetension release caused a yo-yo motion of the partially deployed 

array during the P6 truss solar-array deployment that resulted in 

tensioning cables jumping off their spring-loaded pulleys. 

Armed with a good understanding of solar-array design, 

members of the astronaut office and solar-array design engineers 

designed an extravehicular activity (EVA) cable-retraction tool, 

video recorded how to reinstall the cables, and transmitted the 

video to ISS astronauts. Astronauts reinstalled the tensioning 

cables and successfully deployed the P6 arrays during the next 

EVA. NASA now deploys the arrays more slowly, with periodic 

pauses to allow time for panels to unfold and minimize sudden 

tension-cable retraction. ISS astronauts also have the benefit of 

a “how-to” training video if the problem reoccurs. 

EVA Airlock Design 

When we first approached the one EVA airlock systems 

engineer still working on final design revisions and overseeing 

the assembly and test of the main ISS EVA airlock, he replied 

that he didn’t have much to share. This was a common 

reaction. We all tend to forget what we know or think what 

we know is not especially important. After explaining that 

the Design Knowledge Capture initiatives were attempting to 

capture undocumented design knowledge, he replied, “OK, if 

it is OK with my manager.” With his manager’s blessing, we 

spent eight hours recording his explanation of airlock systems 

design principles. We then suited up with cameras in hand 

for a clean-room guided tour of the airlock in its current state 

of final assembly. The mix of documentation and visual and 

verbal explanation of airlock systems provided rich contextual 

knowledge. We learned three months later the engineer had left 

the company to build a house in Alaska. 

Battery Orbital Replacement Units 

One of the companies we worked with worried that sharing 

detailed ISS battery design concepts might expose information 

thatwoulddamageitscompetitiveedgeorevenviolateU.S.export 

laws. Many ISS component designs are based on trade secrets 

and proprietary information. The solution? Design engineers 

teamed up to record their design rationale through presentations 

and one-on-one discussions and edited their recordings before 

Photo Credit: NASA 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 9 

I don’t want to call a console operator to ask how long 

a remote-power control module will last before it fails 

and get an answer quoted from a spec document on 

that person’s computer,” said the NASA ISS program 

manager at Johnson. “I want that console operator to 

tell me what the real design margins are based on what 

he or she has learned from the person who designed it. 

delivering the final tapes to ensure that proprietary information 

would be protected and correct information would be conveyed. 

The process of revisiting design decisions and trade-offs was as 

valuable to them as the final video. The engineers were afforded 

time to reflect and reaffirm that the designs were the best they 

could be. These recorded sessions were also used to train others 

within the company. 

A Rich Resource 

There are nearly three hundred video stories like these archived 

in the ISS knowledge management Web site at Johnson Space 

Center. The site’s one-on-one or group knowledge-sharing 

sessions are supplemented by written replies to questionnaires 

and Orbital Replacement Unit Handbooks. Similar methods 

have been used on the shuttle program. Senior shuttle design 

engineers provided video-recorded information that was used to 

train mission-support personnel. The information contributed 

to a 100 percent graduation success rate for the first class. 

When we started in 1997, SharePoint, AskMe, LinkedIn, 

and other social-networking tools did not exist. These tools 

expand our ability to connect and share. I have wondered 

what it would be like to have a one-on-one conversation with 

Albert Einstein through Facebook. But these new technologies 

do not replace other, older methods of teaching and learning. 

We learn from each other and we learn by doing. Face-to-face 

mentoring and roundtable discussions still provide the richest 

form of knowledge exchange; there is no substitute for engaging 

in direct conversation where one idea triggers another or point– 

counterpoint debate leads to a solution. But videos that preserve 

the subtle body language, speech inflections, and contextual 

references of a face-to-face conversation may be the next best 

way to preserve and experience an expert’s explanation of design 

concepts long after that expert is gone. 

We continue to work to bring people together face to 

face and virtually to share ideas. We encourage knowledge 

“stewards” to help others discover the wealth of “live” 

knowledge available within their organization. Through both 

practice and technology, we have expanded the casual watercooler conversation to collaborative communities with few 

boundaries. The sharing of knowledge by experts “in their 

own words” will continue to be an important contributor to 

successful missions. ●

Tim Howell was an ISS engineering and manufacturing 

manager at Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, Calif., for ten years. He 

went on to lead ISS Design Knowledge Capture and contribute to 

B-1B, B2, shuttle, and multiple rocket engine tacit knowledgecapture initiatives. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10 | ASK MAGAZINE | INSIGHT 

STEPs to Excellence 

The Level 1 curriculum of NASA’s new Safety and Mission Assurance Technical Excellence 

Program (STEP) culminates in dramatic studies of times when efforts to ensure crew safety and 

flight success fell short. Among them are the Apollo 1 capsule fire, the oxygen tank explosion 

that crippled Apollo 13, and the Challenger and Columbia disasters. The online studies guide 

participants in the program through the circumstances and technical sources of the failures 

toward an analysis of root causes that typically reveals a dangerous convergence of technical, 

managerial, and cultural weaknesses. 

In the Apollo 1 case, for instance, the danger posed by a capsule 

atmosphere of 100 percent oxygen went unrecognized in part 

because a string of successful Mercury and Gemini flights using 

a pure oxygen atmosphere had created complacency. Combined 

with deficiencies in quality control, safety and test procedures, 

and communication, that failure to recognize a serious risk cost 

the lives of three astronauts. 

After studying a case, participants take an exam on the 

SystemforAdministration,Training,andEducationalResources 

for NASA (SATERN) Web site to show they have mastered the 

material. The cases come at the end of approximately twentyfive hours of online coursework on subjects including systems 

engineering, operational safety, software assurance, and quality 

engineering. Those who successfully complete the entire Level 1 

curriculum will receive a certificate signed by Bryan O’Connor, 

NASA’s Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA), and 

their center SMA director. 

Why STEP? 

According to O’Connor, STEP is a response to an assessment 

by professionals in the field that NASA’s approach to career 

advancement and competency-oriented training for safety and 

mission assurance personnel was “haphazard.” O’Connor has 

noted that reviews after the Challenger accident mentioned 

“the silent safety program” and adds that it was silent because 

at that time safety people didn’t know what to say. The 

quality of NASA’s safety program has improved since then, 

but the need for consistent and comprehensive professional 

development remains. 

The STEP program, which is being run by the NASA 

Safety Center in Cleveland under the auspices of the Technical 

Excellence Office, is designed to develop SMA professionals 

who can be full, credible participants in NASA programs and 

projects because they have mastered the tools and practices of 

their discipline and earned the respect of their engineering and 

management colleagues. By asking the necessary tough questions 

early in the design process—questions like, “What if it doesn’t 

work that way?” or “What if it fails?”—and working with the rest 

of the team to find constructive answers, they will help design 

safety into the agency’s missions from the beginning. Skilled 

safety and mission assurance professionals who know not only 

what the rules are but why the rules exist will, says O’Connor, 

be in a position to say “yes, if” rather than “no, because” when 

safety-related design issues arise. The goal of the STEP program 

is to help them reach that level of knowledge and ability. 

John Marinaro, director of the Technical Excellence Office 

and leader of the STEP team, says that STEP will provide a 

path to that technical excellence, help create a robust safety and 

mission assurance community of practice, and foster improved 

collaboration between SMA and engineering at NASA. 

Designing STEP Level 1 

To develop the Level 1 program, the STEP team assessed 

twenty NASA and outside learning programs, did six months 
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12 | ASK MAGAZINE 

of benchmarking, and worked closely with NASA’s Chief 

Engineer and the Academy of Program/Project and Engineering 

Leadership, or APPEL, to design and develop course material. 

APPEL has worked closely with the STEP team for two years. 

The safety training programs at Marshall Space Flight Center 

and Johnson Space Center were also key contributors to the 

STEP concept. 

APPEL Deputy Director Roger Forsgren says, “The NASA 

Safety Center explained that they were beginning to build a new 

training program for safety engineers throughout the agency. 

They requested design help from APPEL because they were 

familiar with our program and wanted to model their training 

program after ours. This is exactly the type of collaboration 

that Chief Engineer Mike Ryschkewitsch wants APPEL to 

pursue. I think some of our most significant help went into the 

STEP Handbook Web site. APPEL is proud of the usability 

and functionality built into that design. It will help make the 

training process more intuitive and, therefore, more effective.” 

In the summer of 2009, 250 SMA professionals at Glenn 

Research Center and Johnson Space Center participated in a 

pilot program to test the Level 1 curriculum. The pilot led to 

some small changes—a few of the lessons were judged to be too 

long; some participants objected to the proliferation of confusing 

acronyms—but the general response was overwhelmingly 

positive. Almost half the pilot participants received credit for 

completing the full Level 1 curriculum, which consists of 

twenty-two SATERN modules. 

On September 3, Level 1 was officially rolled out to the 

agency as a whole by way of a Webcast that was viewed by more 

than one thousand civil servants and contractors at NASA 

centers and other facilities. Immediately after the Webcast, 

Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, Stennis 

Space Center, and NASA Headquarters offered Level 1 courses 

that were taken by more than four hundred individuals and 

facilitated by the SMA directors at those centers. In all, more 

than 1,200 people have registered for STEP in its first month 

and more than 250 have graduated from Level 1. 

The STEP program is voluntary but strongly recommended 

for SMA professionals as a means to measure and continually 

advance the proficiency of the SMA workforce. Level 1 consists 

entirely of online courses that participants can fit into their 

individual work schedules. The STEP development team has 

demonstrated the capability to develop state-of-the-art training 

modules, but the STEP philosophy is to use as much proven existing 

learning material as possible, from all available sources. There 

are, for instance, one-hour video courses on risk management, 

decision analysis, and systems engineering produced by the 

APPEL team that introduce and sum up their longer courses 

on those subjects. “We reviewed the STEP competencies and 

matched them to our APPEL courses,” Forsgren notes. “APPEL 

also brought several instructors to Cleveland to tape core and 

domain topic overviews.” The videos are linked to accompanying 

slides; users can listen to the lectures straight through 

or click on a slide to jump to the related part of the lecture. 

A Four-STEP Program 

STEP will eventually entail four progressively more sophisticated 

and demanding levels of coursework, on-the-job training, and 

continuing education that could include work toward advanced 

degrees and membership in professional societies. The higherlevel curricula will be increasingly discipline-specific. Marinaro 

points out that supervisors are required to create individual plans 

for the professional development of each employee in the agency. 

He believes that this process is seldom fully understood by 

supervisors or employees; doing it well can be labor intensive. 

Marinaro believes that STEP is one of the first 

comprehensive, career-oriented development programs in the 

civil-servant sector that will provide safety leaders with a full road 

map for the six primary safety disciplines at NASA. It provides 

a training model that can be easily adapted to other career 

fields. This should provide an instant resource to improve the 

individual development plan process and solve a major technical 

competency-development challenge for safety. The aim will be 

to match the learning process to participants’ professional aims 

and the particular demands of their jobs. SMA professionals who 

have taken other safety-related courses or who have many years 

of experience in the field will be able to get credit through an 

equivalency process and, with the aid of their supervisors, focus 

on STEP program aspects that meet their individual needs. 

The full four-level STEP program will blend and balance 

the convenience of self-directed online learning with the more 

time- and resource-intensive instructor-led courses, on-the-job 

training, and enrichment experiences that contribute to the rich 

and subtle knowledge that the work requires. 

STEP’s multiyear approach to continuing education is a 

major commitment. Completing the entire program will require 

approximately 550 hours of academic work plus extensive onthe-job training. Marinaro describes STEP as a “career-oriented 

professional development system” that will make a crucial 

contribution to developing subject-matter experts in safety 

disciplines. The ultimate goal of the program is to produce a corps 

of outstanding safety and mission assurance professionals who 

will make an important and lasting contribution to the success 

and safety of future NASA missions. It is a resource that will also 

be available to civil servants and contractors outside the NASA 

safety community and in other agencies. It will ultimately provide 

a repository and set of references to more than 3,000 hours of 

safety and engineering competency-oriented training. ●
y elsn

prTitle

By otecting 

Intro

STORy | ASK MAGAZINE | 13 

By STEvE GLOvEr 

rohn TeK/ASA: Ntidero Cto

Launch Pad 39B and Space 

hP

Shuttle Atlantis glow in the dusk. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14 | ASK MAGAZINE 

NASA’s Space Shuttle is one of the most complex systems ever designed, manufactured, and operated. 

The shuttle program is organizationally complex, too. The program elements that keep it flying are 

located in many NASA centers, with prime contractors and supporting suppliers spread across the 

United States. Many of the industries supporting the shuttle, though mainly located in the United 

States, have parts of their operations in other countries. Coordinating the work of these many 

organizations requires a major integration effort. The complexity of the shuttle and its support 

structure adds to the challenge of tracking and responding to environmentally driven reformulation 

and obsolescence of some of the several thousand products the program uses. 

Generally speaking, environmental regulations have evolved from 

an early 1980s focus on establishing compliance requirements 

and cleaning up contaminated sites to pollution prevention, 

risk, source control, green engineering, and sustainability. This 

change includes an industry trend toward reducing the use 

and production of many chemicals with the potential to harm 

humans or the environment. The resulting numerous material 

and product changes, reformulations, and closeouts raise issues 

for NASA as well as for the Department of Defense, other 

federal agencies, and private industry. 

The effects of these changes are of special concern to 

human spaceflight programs, which require highly reliable 

systems. Environmental regulations and environmentally driven 

industrial trends can lead to a host of consequences, including 

risks to safety, schedule, cost, performance, and reliability. 

One chemical change can potentially involve numerous flight 

hardware materials. Finding adequate replacements may involve 

extensive testing and qualification efforts. 

The thermal protection system used on the external tank 

offers one example of continuing environmental challenges. The 

system contains foam materials that insulate the liquid hydrogen 

and liquid oxygen propellants inside the tank, maintaining them 

at their cryogenic temperatures and preventing ice formation 

on the tank exterior. A chemical blowing agent provides the 

critical insulation and cell-structure properties of these foams. 

The foam blowing agent used early in the shuttle program 

was chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)-11, a class I ozone-depleting 

chemical. It was phased out of production at the end of 1995 by 

Environmental Protection Agency regulations. 

Considerable research and development were required 

to qualify a replacement agent: hydrochlorofluorocarbon 

(HCFC)-141b, a class II blowing agent with lower ozonedepleting potential. When, in 2003, regulations also phased 

this material out of production, the shuttle program and 

NASA Environmental Management Division worked with the 

Environmental Protection Agency to obtain an allowance to 

continue production of this flight-critical material until the end 

of the program. The orbiters and solid rocket boosters also used 

this foam, but the orbiter project team has been able to replace 

HCFC-141b with an insulating material that is free of ozonedepleting chemicals. 

The Environmental Challenge 

Identifying and mitigating environmentally driven risk is a 

large, complex, challenging task. Obsolescence risks stem from 

both regulatory influences and industrial trends. Regulations 

for a particular chemical may include detailed requirements 

affecting production, uses, discharges, and emissions. Some 

chemicals are placed on watch lists as agencies evaluate their 

potential health and environmental effects. Some are regulated 

outside the United States, and chemicals may be regulated at 

the federal, state, and local level. To further complicate matters, 

regulations are subject to continual updates and changes. 

Industrial changes may occur for a number of reasons. 

Companies may decide to eliminate or reduce the use of certain 

chemicals based on their regulatory status, their known or potential 

toxicity, or the likelihood of future regulation. Our concerns about 

these changes fall into two categories: unidentified changes and 

material performance changes. Not knowing when a company 

changes a formulation is of course a major concern. 

Space Shuttle project elements work with their vendors to 

identify changes before they occur, but suppliers to those vendors 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: NASA

Handheld still image taken by Discovery’s 

crew of the external fuel tank as it was 

jettisoned after launch of STS-114. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 15 

sometimes change their products without notice. It is important 

to have controls in place to flag unexpected product changes. 

Often only limited information is available about the influence 

of regulatory requirements on industry. When changes occur, 

understanding how the new material will perform is essential. 

We must understand specific uses, processes, and controls 

involving any changing material so we can appropriately assess 

the risks. Key questions to ask include, what is the use of a 

particular chemical or material? Is it a critical use? How many 

places is it used? Once we are aware of a material change, we 

must coordinate with the supplier to understand the change and 

review the supplier acceptance testing as well as our in-house 

testing. If that testing is inadequate to determine performance, 

we need to develop and carry out new qualification testing and/ 

or technical analysis to verify that the material will perform to 

the specifications. 

The Shuttle Environmental Assurance Team 

In the late 1990s, some members of the materials technical 

community realized they needed to work together to try to 

solve problems created by the continuing impact of product 

obsolescence on the shuttle program. This early informal 

team, called the Shuttle Replacement Technology Team, began 

identifying potential environmentally driven obsolescence 

issues and shared data and approaches to mitigating those risks. 

In 2000, the Space Shuttle program manager directed that a 

formal Shuttle Environmental Assurance (SEA) initiative be 

established to put a team and processes in place to proactively 

identify, communicate, and mitigate environmental assurance 

risks. The team would communicate with both management 

and the technical community. 

The team is a multidisciplinary, multifunctional group 

made up of representatives from the shuttle program, project 

elements (orbiter, Space Shuttle main engine, reusable solid 

rocket boosters, external tank, flight crew equipment, ground 

support equipment), associated prime contractors, and members 

from supporting organizations, including NASA Headquarters, 

the Space Operations Mission Directorate, the Environmental 

Management Division, NASA centers, International Space 

Station program, Constellation program, and the U.S. Air Force. 

Our first task in developing the SEA team was to create 

a group that covered all shuttle project elements, the prime 

contractors, the centers (mainly environmental offices and 

materials engineering offices), NASA Headquarters, and other 

supporting organizations that focus on shuttle operations. We 

successfully recruited team members who have the information, 

knowledge, and skills to identify, communicate, and help each 

other mitigate issues. Once the team was established, we had to 

answer questions concerning our scope and processes, and how 

to reach our overall environmental assurance objectives. Also, 

determining how we would create requirements and hold such 

a large team responsible without explicit authority (since we 

depend on some organizations outside the shuttle program) was 

a major task. Several individuals from earlier groups helped us 

define requirements that made good sense for all stakeholders. 

Dealing with environmentally driven issues often requires the 

expertise and cooperation of many stakeholders. 

Establishing effective communication has been a major 

team accomplishment, but it has not come easily. Obtaining 

information from stakeholders and understanding their different 

perspectives, integrating risks across shuttle elements, getting 

centers to talk to each other, connecting centers and programs 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16 | ASK MAGAZINE 

DEALING WITh ENvIrONMENTALLy 

DrIvEN ISSUES OFTEN rEqUIrES 

ThE ExPErTISE AND COOPErATION 

OF MANy STAKEhOLDErS. 

and environmental engineering to materials engineering, and 

communicating to the program and project community on 

environmental issues have been major challenges. The sheer 

volume of regulatory reviews and the amount of information we 

need to communicate was initially overwhelming. 

We have developed good communication channels that 

include the SEA Web site, technical interchange face-to-face 

meetings, and regular teleconferences. Our documentation 

and reporting provide clear, concise information about risks 

and concerns. In addition, we developed a regulatory matrix to 

help communicate regulatory changes and identify potential 

risks. We also use technical notices to communicate industry 

changes. Facilitated risk analysis has been an important tool, 

since we often work with multiple risks that have to be integrated 

into programmatic risk. We also use technical papers to 

collect the factual information on a potential issue so the risk 

can be evaluated appropriately. We have established interfaces 

with other government agencies to share information on risk 

and mitigations. 

Broad Benefits 

The work we do has a direct impact on the success of shuttle 

missions. We have been successful in mitigating environmentally 

driven risks because we provide sound technical work and risk 

mitigation, create products the community finds useful, and save 

cost and time. Our team approach has saved resources by sharing 

technical information, coordinating mitigation work, and using 

common risk, technical, and communication tools. Many 

SEA products and processes benefit programs other than the 

shuttle. For instance, the experience gained by the Space Shuttle 

program in understanding regulatory requirements and trying to 

find a replacement for HCFC-141b is helping the Constellation 

program in its replacement and allowance efforts. 

The SEA team has formalized access to technical experts in 

materialsengineering,logistics,andenvironmentalrequirements. 

The SEA team gives NASA a technical connection to data and 

reviews on proposed environmental legislation and regulations, 

executive orders, and Environmental Protection Agency research 

that could affect NASA missions. Our risk management process 

and reporting process also help connect working scientists and 

engineers to the higher-level managers. 

Other NASA programs face or will face environmental 

issues similar to the shuttle’s, so it has made sense to include 

the International Space Station program and the Constellation 

program in SEA activities. Continuing government and industry 

efforts to protect the environment will affect virtually all NASA 

programs. The SEA team will continue to help deal effectively 

with the issues those actions will create for the duration of the 

shuttle program. Working as part of this very professional and 

dedicated SEA team to meet these challenges has been a very 

gratifying experience. ●

STeve Glover is an engineering lead and technical manager 

for the shuttle program and is currently the Shuttle Environmental 

Assurance lead and Shuttle Transition and Retirement Environmental 

Cross-Cutting manager. His background is in environmental and 

chemical engineering and engineering management, and he has 

twenty-eight years’ experience in these areas. 
 

 

’ 

-

Apollo Technology:

Back to the Future 

By PIErS BIzONy 

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 17 

In April 2007, a team of awestruck technicians discovered that the apparently lifeless artifacts on 

display from a long-vanished era of space exploration were not quite so dead after all. They carefully 

removed access panels on an old spaceship, revealing pristine mechanisms within. 

Photo Credit: NASA Kennedy Space Center 

The Apollo command modules on display at Kennedy Space Center s Saturn 

V Complex. The umbilical housing compartment can be seen between the 

service and crew modules in the lower right area of the image. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ’

AT ThE END OF ITS MISSION, AND jUST PrIOr TO rEENTry INTO ThE EArTh’S 

ATMOSPhErE, AN APOLLO CAPSULE hAD TO SEPArATE CLEANLy FrOM ThE rEAr 

SErvICE MODULE ThAT hAD CArrIED MOST OF ITS AIr, WATEr, ELECTrICAL SUPPLIES, 

AND PrOPULSION FUELS. DOZENS OF POWEr WIrES, FLUID CABLES, AND DATA CONDUITS 

hAD TO BE DISCONNECTED IN AN INSTANT. hOW WAS ThIS rELIABLy ACCOMPLIShED? 

18 | ASK MAGAZINE 

The Apollo spacecraft on display at the Kennedy Space Center 

in Florida is the unflown backup for the 1975 Apollo–Soyuz 

docking mission that signaled the end of the Cold War space 

rivalry. All its systems are intact. Dan Catalano and a privileged 

group of mechanical engineers and pyrotechnics experts from 

Glenn Research Center in Ohio were granted permission to strip 

down the one small section of this spacecraft that most interested 

them. They wanted the answer to a problem that continues to 

challenge the best minds in modern space engineering. 

At the end of its mission, and just prior to reentry into 

Earth’s atmosphere, an Apollo capsule had to separate cleanly 

from the rear service module that had carried most of its air, 

water, electrical supplies, and propulsion fuels. Dozens of power 

Artist s concept of the Apollo crew module. 

Image Credit: NASA 

wires, fluid cables, and data conduits had to be disconnected in 

an instant. How was this reliably accomplished? 

Behind the umbilical housing sat a tiny set of explosive 

guillotines, through which all the cables and lines snaked in 

a neat bundle. When the time came for the capsule to drop 

away, the guillotines sliced through metal and plastic as though 

they were butter. A backup set of guillotines, powered by an 

entirely separate electrical system, insured against failure. And 

all this was in a box the size of a car battery. Forty years later, 

Apollo still has lessons to teach as NASA gears up for a return 

to deep-space astronaut missions using capsules. 

Catalano said, “I grew up in the Apollo age and used to 

watch all the launches. I was a product of that era. To be able 

to come and actually touch the hardware is a real thrill for me.” 

Convincing the general public, thronging past this and similar 

museum exhibits, to be equally impressed is a challenge. There 

is something about the superficial appearance of the old Apollo 

equipment that needs to be explained to them. 

In popular culture, spaceships are supposed to look sleek 

and futuristic but, even today, the real-life hardware sometimes 

lacks a certain stylishness. There is a reason for this. Take a 

look, for instance, at how commercial airliners are built. The 

production runs are large enough to justify the initial huge 

costs of purpose-built factory tooling and templates. The cabins 

have molded interior fittings that tuck neatly into the corners 

and meet seamlessly with the window frames, the foldaway 

tables look like they belong on the back of the seats, and so 

on. There will be some decorative flourish, probably featuring 

the airline logo. Inside and out, everything fits together into a 

more or less cohesive whole. 

The same cannot be said of a typical spacecraft. These 

are hand-built machines, with populist styling absolutely 

not on anyone’s priority list. It makes no economic sense for 

aerospace companies or space agencies to create production 

lines for machinery that is only going to be assembled a few 

times. And, given the energy required to lift mass into orbit, 
Photo Credit: NASA

The Apollo lunar module DSKY keypad. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 19 

spacecraft designers do not have the luxury of adding merely 

decorative touches. Consequently, there is a spare, nutsand-bolts feel to most spacecraft that causes inexperienced 

observers to think of them as disappointingly crude, almost 

willfully antique. 

The cultural reference point for what spaceships are 

supposed to look like is almost certainly Stanley Kubrick’s 

1968 science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, itself a product 

of the age of Apollo. Kubrick’s prop designers first sat down 

at their drawing tables in 1964, at the start of what would 

turn out to be a long and complex production, yet the ships 

they invented still look futuristic and still tend to dominate 

everyone’s thinking when it comes to the “archetypes” for 

space machinery. 

Kubrick took advice from the corporate world, and they 

in turn delivered idealized versions of what they expected 

space vehicles to look like. Crucially, they envisaged a world in 

which the commercial marketing of space transportation was 

commonplace. Hence, each cabin and cockpit in 2001 had a 

sleek look designed to appeal as much to the paying customers 

in the passenger seats as to the pilots who flew up front. 

It is fascinating that the new space tourism companies, 

such as Virgin Galactic, have thought along similar lines, 

creating interiors for their suborbital spacecraft that satisfy 

our expectations of how things should be, with digital control 

panels, soft padding on the cabin walls, and space meals you 

can suck through a straw, just like in 2001. This is all an 

illusion, a marketing ploy. In real life, the interiors of space 

shuttles or Apollo capsules do not look at all luxurious. 

Visitors to space museums expect gleaming science-fiction 

props, and the real spacecraft that they encounter often leave 

them slightly shocked. They peer through the hatch of an 

Apollo capsule and see a dimly lit interior encrusted with 

ancient clockwork. There are no touch-sensitive screens or 

plasma displays. The instrument panels are a mechanical maze 

of switches and dials, and the electrical energies that once 

powered them no longer lend them some energy. 

People are struck by how primitive everything looks. In 

particular they often observe that the lunar module seems, 

today, like something lashed together by kids in preschool. 

The styling of technology changes, and people’s expectations 

have evolved with it. If we want to gain an impression of how 

futuristic Apollo seemed four decades ago, we need to make a 

couple of time-travel journeys of the imagination. 

First, picture Louis Blériot in 1909 making what seemed at 

the time an epic journey, a crossing of the English Channel by 

air, in a monoplane of such fragile design it seems unthinkable, 

today, that anyone could have trusted their life to it. Look also 

at Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis. Would you expect 

that machine, with its homemade finish, to have carried a man 

safely across the Atlantic Ocean? Yet these two famous planes 

were heralded as portents of a new world. They were futuristic, 

because no one had seen anything like them at that time. 

To the generation who witnessed Apollo when its hardware 

was factory fresh, the vehicles conveyed a similarly novel and 

futuristic impression. Picture the command module brand 

new, covered in mirror-smooth silver-foil insulation so that it 

looked like a single piece of polished metal. (The foil burns 
 

 

 

 

 

 

20 | ASK MAGAZINE 

With the umbilical housing cover safely detached, 

the intact cord assembly is in full view. 

off during reentry, leaving the capsule a drab, brown color.) 

Now visualize the interior of the spacecraft surgically clean 

and brightly lit so that the astronauts can see what they are 

doing. There is not a single scuff, nor the tiniest flaw, in the 

paintwork. The fans and air-conditioning units are humming, 

and the control panel is a shimmer of lights and trembling 

dials. Apollo seems almost alive. By the standards of the 1960s 

at least, this was the most advanced machine in history—and 

everyone who saw it at the time sensed that truth. 

The same applied to Apollo’s electronics. We often hear 

that the onboard Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) had 

less power than a modern digital watch. But it all depends on 

what we mean by “power.” At the time, it was one of the most 

capable computers ever invented. 

In terms of raw processing capability, our modern home 

PCs may be more “powerful” than an AGC, but they tend to 

be plugged into just a few interfaces with the outside world: a 

printer, a backup disc drive, a screen, and a router. By contrast, 

an AGC was connected to a three-axis inertial navigation 

system allied to an optical star telescope, while its twin 

aboard the lunar module also absorbed data from two radar 

rangefinders: one directed toward the lunar surface, the other 

keeping tabs on the orbiting command module. The AGC also 

mediated between the astronauts and the thrusters and rocket 

engines that drove their ships through space. 

Translating the AGC’s capacity into modern computing 

parlance can be misleading, but its magnetic core ROM stored 

the entire suite of guidance programs in the equivalent of about 

36 kilobytes. Here lies another of the extraordinary “powers” 

that this machine possessed: the power of lines of software 

reduced to their most disciplined fundamentals, so that a small 

amount of code could deliver astonishing results. 

The AGC’s third and most important “power” was 

a reliability that we can only dream of today. Nothing was 

“stored” in ROM when the AGC was switched off, but 

Photo Credit: NASA Kennedy Space Center 

once activated, it booted up in less than a second. It was a 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 21 

IT’S A CLIChé ThAT APOLLO KICK-STArTED ThE MICrOChIP rEvOLUTION, BUT ThErE’S 

SOME TrUTh hErE. NASA BOUGhT UP 60 PErCENT OF AMErICA’S ENTIrE OUTPUT 

OF INTEGrATED CIrCUITS IN ThE EArLy 1960s, DELIBErATELy ALLOWING ThE NEW 

INDUSTry TO ACCLIMATE ITSELF TO MASS PrODUCTION AND rELIABILITy ChECKING 

OF NEW ChIPS, AND TEMPOrArILy ShOrING UP AN INDUSTry FOr WhICh FEW OThEr 

MArKETS yET ExISTED. 

totally hardwired system, because the software was encoded 

as patterns of wiring, snaking in and out of the little ringshaped cores, that could not be overwritten or erased. Even 

when Apollo 12 was struck by lightning soon after launch in 

November 1969, and the interior of the capsule blacked out 

for a moment, its AGC swiftly recovered to fly the rest of the 

mission. It was a reliable piece of equipment because it had to 

be. Lives depended on it. 

The AGC’s fourth “power” was the ability to change 

the broader world around it. The computer processor itself 

depended on a relatively untried device: the integrated circuit. 

The first examples had been invented as recently as 1958 by 

Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. A year later, Robert Noyce 

of Fairchild Semiconductors (and later, the founder of Intel) 

refined the process by putting all the components on a silicon 

chip and connecting them with copper lines. 

It’s a cliché that Apollo kick-started the microchip 

revolution, but there’s some truth here. NASA bought up 

60 percent of America’s entire output of integrated circuits 

in the early 1960s, deliberately allowing the new industry to 

acclimate itself to mass production and reliability checking of 

new chips, and temporarily shoring up an industry for which 

few other markets yet existed. 

Another revolution was in the means by which people 

with little desire to become computer experts (the astronauts) 

could communicate with the AGC via a small display and 

keyboard, known as DSKY. They inputted short numeric 

codes, signifying programs that they wished to initiate. The 

DSKY then “talked” back at them with five lines of numeric 

displays and a small panel of sixteen labeled lights. 

DSKY transformed the relationship between people and 

computers. With our touch-sensitive screens and graphic 

interfaces, we take for granted our ability to operate computers 

without having to understand their internal workings. In the 

early 1960s, the idea of nonspecialists having anything to do 

with them was radical. 

The AGC was the mediator of another new union, 

commonplace today but revolutionary at the time: that 

between computers and airplanes. On May 25, 1972, test pilot 

Gary Krier flew a modified F-8 Crusader jet fighter, knowing 

that for the first time in history, his joystick commands did 

not feed directly to the aircraft’s flight control surfaces but 

were first verified and adjusted by an electronic mind. Sixty 

percent of the software for the world’s first-ever fly-by-wire 

aircraft consisted purely of Apollo code. This success changed 

the future course of aviation. 

The history of AGC and the many other Apollo innovations 

also informs our future. As NASA reaches for new horizons 

in space, it is essential that it pioneer new and inspirational 

technologies whose influences ripple throughout the culture 

and economy at large, just as the machines of Apollo did forty 

years ago. Bold innovation continues to be a key responsibility 

for NASA. When those involved with the current generation 

of space architecture next engage with the public, we must 

hope and expect that they can give as good an account of the 

technological revolutions they are creating as the designers of 

Apollo could. ●

PierS Bizony has written about science, aerospace, and cosmology for a wide variety of 

magazines in the United Kingdom and the United States. 2001: 

Filming the Future, his award-winning book on the making of 

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, has become a standard 

reference work. It was also the basis for a C4 documentary film. 

In 1997, The Rivers of Mars, his critically acclaimed analysis of 

the life on Mars debate, was short-listed for the NASA/Eugene M. 

Emme Award for Astronautical Writing, while Starman, produced 

as an acclaimed book and a BBC film, told the story of Soviet 

cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s life for the first time. 
Title

By 

Intro

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

22 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORy Image Credit: NASA 

Lunar Lander Design Today By JOHN F. CONNOLLy 

A typical NASA project begins with a set of requirements that describe 

all the functions and performance a spacecraft must possess. A vehicle 

is then designed to satisfy those requirements. This process produces 

a design that initially attempts to meet all requirements equally, after 

which it is difficult to reduce capability if the vehicle is found to exceed 

mass or cost limitations. Our risk-informed design approach to Altair, the 

next lunar lander, is different. Our aim has been first to design a vehicle 

that meets a minimum set of requirements and then incrementally add 

functions and performance to that initial design. This approach means 

that the decision to accept each additional requirement will be informed 

by its individual impact on cost, performance, and risk. This process 

was derived in part from NASA Engineering Safety Center Report 

PR-06-108, “Design, Development, Test, and Evaluation (DDT&E) 

Considerations for Safe and Reliable Human-Rated Spacecraft Systems.” 

After defining the “minimum functional” vehicle in the first The Baseline Design 

lander design-analysis cycle, the Altair team identified major The first step of the process was to establish a “minimum 

risks that would affect the safety of the crew and the success functionality” baseline design by scrubbing the vehicle 

of the mission in subsequent design cycles. The project team requirements back to a small number that described the lander’s 

was able to identify the specific performance “cost” of each essential functions and constraints. The core requirements for 

increment of crew safety and mission reliability added to the the Altair lander were to carry a crew of four to the lunar surface 

minimum spacecraft design. Residual spacecraft risks will for seven days with 500 kg of payload, loiter for up to 210 days 

continue to be evaluated as subsequent design cycles assess at a polar outpost, deliver 14,500 kg of dedicated cargo, fit 

the performance, cost, and risk impacts of adding additional within the Ares V shroud, perform the lunar orbit insertion burn 

vehicle functionality and other factors, such as manufacturability with the Orion spacecraft attached, carry an airlock, and work 

and maintainability. within the Constellation architecture. Key constraints were 
 

’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 23 

mass limits of 45,000 kg for crewed missions and 53,600 kg 

for cargo missions. 

The minimum functional design was the baseline from 

which to identify vehicle risks in order to mature the design to 

one that was “safety enhanced.” The team first identified risks 

that contributed most directly to a loss of crew and then studied 

multiple mitigation options for these risks. We developed 

decision processes for both selecting the risks to be studied 

and evaluating the mitigation options that were incorporated 

into the second design-analysis cycle. In this cycle, the primary 

measure of risk reduction was the reduction in loss-of-crew risk, 

Three crewmembers work in the area 

of the lunar lander on the lunar surface 

in this NASA artist s rendering. 

and the primary “cost” measure was added mass. The outcome 

of this risk-reduction design cycle was a reduction in the risk 

of loss of crew from 1:6 to 1:206 by expending 1,300 kg of 

mass for more robust components, selective redundancy, and 

dissimilar system backups. This first cycle of risk-informed 

design brought the lander design within striking distance of the 

target risk requirement of 1:250. 

The third Altair design cycle focused on loss-of-mission risks 

in the same way that loss-of-crew risks were addressed in the 

previous cycle. The team identified lander reliability risk areas and 

studied options that increased reliability at different levels of mass 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne 

24 | ASK MAGAZINE 

The Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine, or CECE, is fueled by a mixture 

of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen chilled to subzero temperatures. 

The goal of the Altair lunar lander descent engine is to slow the vehicle so 

astronauts can land safely. 

expenditure. We also began to incorporate additional capabilities, 

such as the ability to land at any site on the lunar globe. This 

global access capability will be “bought back” in the same way 

that safety and reliability were reintroduced into the minimum 

design—with known impact to risk and performance. 

Risk-informed design provides early, critical insight into 

the overall viability of the end-to-end architecture and provides 

a starting point to make informed cost–risk trades so risks 

can consciously be bought down. The Altair team has used 

the education afforded by risk-informed design to look at 

risk reduction in its many forms rather than blindly applying 

fault-tolerance rules or preconceived risk-reduction solutions. 

The process inherently produces risk metrics for each added 

capability, and cost analysis can easily be added to facilitate 

evaluation of the true cost and risk changes that accompany 

each added capability. Perhaps most importantly, risk-informed 

design creates a “smart buyer” team that understands the balance 

of risk drivers and mass performance within the design. 

Maturing the Design 

Risk-informed design is a time-consuming process that may 

not work for projects with compressed schedules; the first three 

design-analysis cycles took the Altair team approximately twentyfour months to complete. To optimize the risk-based design 

effort, the Altair team chose to hold the vehicle design constant 

so as not to introduce new variables into the design, with a plan 

to revisit vehicle configuration once the first two buyback cycles 

were complete. With the completion of those cycles, the next 

step was to prioritize the configuration and maturation studies 

that would have the greatest impact on the vehicle design. 

Altair considered a list of more than two hundred potential 

configuration–maturation trades, and from that list chose the 

following studies as the basis for a special trade-analysis cycle 

that was inserted into the vehicle’s development schedule: 

• Alternate descent-module configuration

• Alternate ascent-module and airlock configuration

• Alternate ascent- and descent-module separation 

concepts and analyses 

• Structural stiffness design

• Descent-module tank residuals

• Human-piloting capability maturation

• Operations concepts and timeline maturation

• Spacecraft “safe” configuration for critical faults

The trade-analysis cycles will give us a fresh look at the 

lander design to determine if the current configuration is 

optimum for the current architecture. Possible changes may 

include a reduced number of descent tanks, alternative descentstage structure, alternative placement of the ascent module and 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 25 

airlock, change of the ascent-module pressure-vessel shape, and 

alternative methods of packaging cargo. It’s important for a 

design to be revisited on occasion. As engineers, we sometimes 

become so enamored of our designs that we fail to see large 

innovations or subtle alternatives that may improve the design 

solution. Scheduling regular revisits to the design configuration 

offers the team the opportunity to step back and reconsider the 

design choices they have made. 

Design Challenges Abound 

As we’ve worked through the early phases of the Altair design, 

we have a sense that we are walking the trail the Apollo designers 

blazed before us. The physics of lunar landing demand that 

the lander perform velocity changes—about 1,000 m/sec to 

decelerate into lunar orbit, 2,000 m/sec to decelerate to a soft 

landing, and another 2,000 m/sec to accelerate back into lunar 

orbit. Additionally, a lander must include life support for the 

human crewmembers. So much of the lunar lander “design 

space” is determined by physics. Large tanks of propellant 

surrounded by structure, an attenuation system for landing, and 

a pressurized volume for crew habitation all directly address the 

physics of lander design. Those physics and engineering realities 

mean that the Altair lander will bear little resemblance to an 

X-wing fighter or even a homely Star Trek shuttle craft, as much 

as the designers would have liked it to. 

Instead, Altair will look like the big brother of the Apollo lunar 

module because the physics of lunar landing is unchanged and 

technology has improved only incrementally since Apollo. Apollo 

designers not only understood the physics of the problem perfectly, 

they were very smart, especially given that they were inventing 

much of the technology. Our challenge is to apply the lessons 

learned from Apollo and combine them with the incremental 

improvements in technology from the past four decades. 

Still, the design process is full of technical challenges, 

including the timely development of a variable-thrust descent 

main engine, control of propellant levels in a multiple-tank 

system, scavenging of cryogens for fuel-cell use, development 

of a high-reliability ascent main engine, control of lander 

center-of-gravity, and lander stack frequency during launch 

and translunar injection. 

In addition to the technical challenges are management and 

administrative issues encountered during the early conduct of 

the lander project. These include acquiring a skilled workforce, 

competing with other projects for resources, and coordinating 

projects in different points in their project life cycle. 

NASA lacks adequate human spacecraft design and 

development expertise. As an agency, we simply don’t have enough 

large human spaceflight projects to consistently train human 

spacecraft developers. New human spacecraft developments occur 

at NASA approximately once per generation, and those spacecraft 

are typically developed by industry with NASA providing initial 

conceptual work, requirements, and then oversight and insight. 

New projects such as Altair offer an opportunity to take the inhouse phase of the design to system design review (or perhaps 

a bit beyond) to expose a new generation of designers to the 

early design phases beyond writing requirements. Innovative 

partnering between NASA and industry can further extend inhouse experience into the mature design phases of a project. To 

supplement its design teams, NASA is reaching into its robotic 

lander experience, Space Shuttle and International Space Station 

development expertise, and its Apollo lunar module knowledge 

to bring experience to the current design challenge. 

Another challenge is that of ramping up a new project at 

the same time other projects are peaking in their development 

and resource needs. The lander project will be several project 

milestones behind Constellation’s Orion and Ares I and will 

compete for resources with these more mature projects. These 

projects, though started at different times, must eventually 

perform future missions together, which creates challenges in 

defining the interfaces among these elements. This challenge 

is reflected in interface requirements documents: the more 

mature projects will have more fully developed interfaces, and 

the projects that are closer to the beginning of their life cycles 

may be left to accept interface requirements established by their 

more mature siblings. 

In other words, designing a new human lunar lander is a 

multilayer systems challenge. The Altair project must create 

a lander design that reflects the physics of spaceflight and 

limitations of human performance while balancing performance, 

cost, schedule, and risk; works within the integrated architecture 

performance, cost profile, schedule, and integrated risk and 

reliability targets of the Constellation program as a whole; and 

fulfills the policy directives of NASA’s strategic plan, Congress’s 

NASA Authorization Acts, and policy and budget guidance from 

the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget, Office 

of Science and Technology Policy. To pull this off requires a 

team with a true systems perspective—an understanding of how 

a change made to one lander parameter affects other factors, and 

other levels. ●

JoHn F. Connolly leads vehicle design and engineering 

for NASA’s Altair Lunar Lander Project Office at Johnson 

Space Center. Prior to joining the Constellation program, he 

served two years at NASA Headquarters as the deputy of the 

Exploration Systems Architecture Study team, leading the 

definition of the lunar architecture that is now the basis for 

NASA’s exploration planning. 
 ' - 

 

 

 

 

26 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORy 

NASA helicopter bird s eye view of 

Max Launch Abort System flight. 

Photo Credit: NASA/Jim Mason Foley WHAt 

WoULD 

MAX 

Do? 

By DAWN SCHAIBLE 

In 2007, the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate asked the NASA Engineering and Safety 

Center (NESC) to design, develop, build, and test an alternate launch abort system for the new 

Orion crew module. Ralph Roe, director of NESC, became project manager for the Max Launch 

Abort System (MLAS), named after Maxime (Max) Faget, a Mercury-era pioneer who designed the 

Project Mercury capsule and the Aerial Capsule Emergency Separation Device, commonly known 

as the escape tower. What we learned on MLAS could help the primary launch abort system team 

with some of their own technical challenges, and it was an outstanding learning opportunity for 

engineers who took a project through its entire life cycle in less than two years. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 27 

While this was a larger effort than any of its previous assessments, 

NESC was well suited to meet two of the project’s primary 

constraints: do not impede the inline design of the Orion 

launch abort system and be ready to conduct an MLAS pad 

abort demonstration in parallel with the Orion launch abort 

system test. 

Developing the Concept 

In order for us to accomplish our pad abort test in time, we 

needed to keep the design simple and use commercial offthe-shelf hardware and designs whenever we could. We went 

through a number of iterations to establish objectives for the 

MLAS test vehicle and adopted very conservative safety and 

design margins to compensate for our rapid prototype-design 

process. It was Faget’s approach to design and development, and 

his assertion that Project Mercury “would have never been done 

in the time it was done if it had not been simple,” that led us to 

adopt the motto, “What would Max do?” 

We streamlined our processes and added redundancy only 

for those items that were essential to mission success, such as 

collecting flight test data. We prevented requirements creep by 

asking ourselves how it would affect our overall test objectives, 

and only those items that were essential for mission success 

made their way into our requirements. 

Our test vehicle would demonstrate our concept but 

would not physically represent an operational vehicle, so we 

were not constrained by weight requirements. The operational 

vehicle would have multiple solid rocket motors inside a bulletshaped composite fairing, which was different from the single 

solid launch abort motor positioned above the Orion crew 

module in the primary launch abort system. For the pad abort 

demonstration test, we used four solid rocket motors located 

below the crew module. Later in the design process, we added a 

landing parachute demonstrator, based on the Space Shuttle solid 

rocket booster recovery system, to demonstrate an alternative 

landing system configuration for crew module recovery. 

At the time, one of the greatest technical risks for the 

Orion launch abort system was the attitude control motor, 

designed to steer the crew module. The MLAS concept was of 

potential interest because of its relative simplicity, aerodynamic 

performance, and weight savings. Many of these theoretical 

gains would be accomplished by eliminating the attitude control 

motor and the launch abort tower. By developing an alternate, 

passively stable approach in parallel with the Orion design, we 

were able to collect data that could assist the current launch abort 

system designers if they encountered technical challenges. 

Forming the Team 

To form a core team, Roe looked to members of NESC, including 

NASA Technical Fellows, for experience in aerodynamics, 

avionics, propulsion, software, and guidance, navigation, and 

control. He also used NESC’s agencywide infrastructure to 

gain access to expertise and contacts at NASA field centers. The 

MLAS team now includes more than 150 engineers, analysts, 

technicians, and support personnel from almost every NASA 

center, with team members providing matrix support directly to 

the MLAS project. 

We also sought out mentors—including Apollo-era 

engineers, project managers, and astronauts—who readily 

shared their insights and experiences, helped us focus on the 

most important things, and pointed out areas we might be 

overlooking. Having been through similar challenges, they 

served as a terrific sounding board, and their independent 

perspectives were crucial to the team’s success. For example, our 

mentors convinced us to move from a three-point attachment 

design to a single-point attachment harness between the four 

main parachutes and the crew module because of test failures 

they experienced with a similar three-point design early in the 

development of Apollo. 

Partnering with Wallops Flight Facility allowed us to 

leverage their sounding-rocket experience and use their range 

and launch facilities for the pad abort test; the Wallops engineers 

and analysts became integral members of our team. Faget 

conducted similar activities at Wallops in 1959 to develop the 

launch abort system for the Mercury spacecraft. 

One of the more enriching aspects of the MLAS team 

was the interaction between individuals who came from the 

human spaceflight, robotics, research, and aerospace centers. 

We relied heavily on expertise from the research and robotic 

centers during the concept development phase, and as we moved 

through design and into assembly, the individuals with test and 

operations experience shared their knowledge with the team. 

We incorporated best practices from the aeronautics and human 

spaceflight centers into Wallops processes during integration 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: NASA/Sean Smith 

28 | ASK MAGAZINE 28 | ASK MAGAZINE 

The Max Launch Abort System vehicle features a bullet-shaped forward fairing that covers a simulated crew module, not shown. 

and testing. This project also provided a number of engineers 

with their first experience in a control room, on headsets, for 

test, checkout, and launch. They learned from others who work 

in this environment on a regular basis. 

Recognizing the unique opportunity MLAS provided to 

junior engineers to design, develop, and fly a complex system, 

we asked center directors to nominate high-potential engineers 

with five to ten years’ experience for our project. They became 

known as our “resident engineers,” named after the medical 

residency concept. They were a true asset to the team, bringing 

with them energy, expertise, and enthusiasm. 

Our resident engineers never sat on the sidelines, observing 

others; they were integral members of the team. Within two 

days of joining MLAS, we asked them to define the test vehicle’s 

instrumentation. Gathering data was one of our primary 

objectives, so this was no fluff task. They took complete ownership 

of the instrumentation, including its procurement, installation, 

mountingbracketdesign,andcheckout.Inaddition,theydesigned, 

installed, and tested the entire flight camera system for the test 

vehicle. Because the MLAS project was completely independent 

from the Constellation program, team members had the ability to 

try, fail, and fix—an invaluable learning experience. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 29 

“MLAS has given me the unique opportunity to participate 

in a cradle-to-grave project that includes technical experts 

from every NASA center,” said Samantha Manning, a resident 

engineer from Kennedy Space Center. “I’ve gotten hands-on 

experience during all phases of the project. The people I’ve 

worked with and the knowledge I’ve gained have been and will 

continue to be valuable assets to my career.” 

Joseph E. Grady, a resident engineer from Glenn Research 

Center, agreed: “MLAS gave me the opportunity to contribute 

to the landing and recovery task and to see firsthand how a 

systems engineering approach is used to integrate the efforts of 

all the different disciplines involved.” 

The resident engineers have built a cohort of their own peers 

that will last long after the MLAS project is over. In addition to 

the experience gained by doing critical project work, they have 

had the rare privilege to closely interact with our mentor team, 

several NASA Technical Fellows, and other agency experts. “It 

was a rewarding experience to be part of a team that put together 

experts from all NASA centers and the aerospace industry to 

design, build, and test a flight-demonstration vehicle in such a 

short time,” said Grady. 

Project Management and 

Systems Engineering Approach 

Because the team was dispersed across the country, we employed 

several strategies to ensure good communication and integration. 

To build relationships and understanding among the team, we 

conducted co-located meetings almost every month, usually at 

Langley Research Center or Wallops. These weeklong sessions 

allowed us to work through our tougher technical problems and 

complicated topics and facilitated a faster-paced decision-making 

process. In between these meetings, the team relied heavily on 

teleconferences, WebEx, and instant messaging. These virtual 

design sessions allowed team members across the agency to 

review models, designs, and analyses whenever needed. 

Because the MLAS project was separate from the 

Constellation program, we had the ability to tailor an approach 

that was faithful to the spirit of NASA Procedural Requirements 

7123.1A. Given the fast-paced, prototype nature of our 

project, we accepted the risk involved with concurrent design, 

development, and testing. In setting up our processes—and in 

the spirit of our motto, “What would Max do?”—we decided 

to streamline our documentation by eliminating boilerplate 

information and relying on checklists if they provided the same 

information as a formal plan. 

We also instituted a forum for project control: the MLAS 

Configuration Control Board. Project leadership and all subteam 

leads were voting members on the board, which controlled 

everythingfromourflighttesttimeline,projectrisks,requirements, 

and design. We relied heavily on a tiger team approach for tackling 

integrated technical issues quickly, assigning an integration 

lead and having all pertinent subteams provide members. This 

approach allowed us to effectively address such issues as vehicle 

... OUr MENTOrS CONvINCED US 

TO MOvE FrOM A ThrEE-POINT 

ATTAChMENT DESIGN TO A SINGLEPOINT ATTAChMENT hArNESS BETWEEN 

ThE FOUr MAIN PArAChUTES AND 

ThE CrEW MODULE BECAUSE OF TEST 

FAILUrES ThEy ExPErIENCED WITh A 

SIMILAr ThrEE-POINT DESIGN EArLy IN 

ThE DEvELOPMENT OF APOLLO. 

stability, assembly, and alignment. A “product needs” list helped 

us capture, track, and prioritize product deliverables, such as data, 

analyses, detailed designs, trades, or decisions. 

Knowing that we were accepting risk because of our pace and 

concurrent design-and-build approach, we sought independent 

perspectives and reviews. We included our Safety and Mission 

Assurance team members as integral members of the Systems 

Engineering and Integration team, keeping them involved in all 

decisions and actions. We also tailored the standard milestone 

reviews to conduct three Independent Technical Reviews, 

inviting the same reviewers each time. 

To reward and encourage engineering innovation, a cando attitude, and a commitment to the safety and success of the 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

30 | ASK MAGAZINE A prelaunch view, with Dawn Schaible 

in the foreground, of the control room 

at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. 

Photo Credit: NASA/Sean Smith 

project, our project manager instituted the Max Engineering 

Excellence Award. These awards have served to publicly 

recognize the best of our team. 

Successful Test Flight 

On July 8, 2009, the MLAS team was rewarded with a 

fully successful flight demonstration test, including sixteen 

pyrotechnic events and nine parachute deployments. It will take 

several months for all the data to be reviewed and analyzed, 

then a final report and briefing will be shared with the Orion 

project and Constellation program. To see the results of long 

hours and hard work was tremendously gratifying for the entire 

team. We hope this successful flight test will serve as a model for 

future alternative, risk-reduction efforts at NASA. 

Learning by Doing 

Robert Seamans, NASA’s deputy administrator in the Apollo 

years, said, “You cannot have good technical people on standby 

doing nothing and suddenly put them on the job when you have 

a problem. You have to have competent people doing exciting 

work that is not central to the program so they can be thrown 

in to fix the problem even if it takes six months.” Developing 

MLAS as an alternate design to the launch abort tower system 

currently used not only allowed NESC to help gather technical 

information, but also provided valuable hands-on training for a 

team of engineers and analysts. 

Omar Torres, another resident engineer at Langley, said, 

“Working with NESC has exposed me to the difficulties and 

gloriesofdevelopinganintricatesystemsuchastheMLAScapsule. 

Taking part in the discussions of design and troubleshooting where 

subsystems of different engineering disciplines come together has 

been one of the most instructive and engaging developments of my 

career. Participating in the MLAS resident engineering program 

and working with the remarkable team of engineers in the project 

will always be one of my most significant experiences.” ● 

Dawn SCHaiBle is the manager of the Systems Engineering 

Office for the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC). She 

was also the MLAS systems engineer and integration lead. Prior 

to joining the NESC, she worked at the Kennedy Space Center, 

serving in various systems engineering, integration, and ground 

processing roles for the Space Shuttle and International Space 

Station programs. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 31 

INTErvIEW WITH
 

George 


Morrow


 By DON COHEN 

George Morrow is the director of the Flight Projects 

Directorate at Goddard Space Flight Center, a position he 

has held since 2007. He began his career at Goddard in 

1983 as an engineer working on spacecraft battery systems. 

Don Cohen spoke with him in his office at Goddard. 

cOHEN: In your position as director of 

Flight Projects, what do you see as the 

biggest project pitfalls? 

MORROw: A new project, a new area of 

research that opens up for scientists, gets 

people excited and enthusiastic and, a lot 

of times, overly optimistic about what a 

project might be able to accomplish and 

what the cost and schedule might be. We 

raise expectations. Then, as we mature 

the design and the cost estimates and 

schedules, we find that, lo and behold, 

we can’t really do as much as we thought 

for the dollars we have. That tends to 

be disappointing to the customers and 

stakeholders supporting the project. So 

a major pitfall is being overly optimistic 

early in the project life cycle. We’re doing 

things to independently analyze and 

estimate cost and schedule much more 

than we have in the past so we can be 

accountable for meeting commitments at 

a much earlier phase in the project. 

cOHEN: Is that independent analysis done 

by people outside the project team? 

MORROw: Absolutely. Independent analysis 

is being done by people outside the 

project team in NASA and, in most 

cases, by people outside NASA. Goddard 

has its own Resource Analysis Office that 

has the advantage of having a database of 

how Goddard specifically has performed 

on projects dating back several decades. 

cOHEN: Can you think of specific cases 

where outside reviewers said, “You have 

to pull back?” 

MORROw: I don’t know of a specific case 

where that came about as the result of a 

formal review. But there are cases of us 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

32 | ASK MAGAZINE 

WHEN YOu’vE GOT THE PROJECT SCIENTISTS completely 

engaged AS INTEGRAL MEMBERS OF THE MANAGEMENT 

TEAM EARLY—NOT ONLY IN identifying what the science 

objectives ARE AND what measurements are essential, 

BuT IN uNDERSTANDING THE HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE 

IMPLICATIONS—THEN YOu GET A MuCH MORE synergistic 

and innovative TRADE SPACE. 

moving through the process and realizing 

along the way that we’re not going to be 

able to deliver what we thought we could 

for the price. In those cases, we work with 

our customers and stakeholders to descope, 

commit additional resources, or both. 

cOHEN: Am I right in thinking that projects 

have a better idea of what is technically 

feasible and scientifically necessary 

when engineers and scientists work 

together from the beginning? 

MORROw: Absolutely. I’m working with 

Nick White, the director of Exploration 

and Science here at Goddard, trying to 

make sure that the project and program 

scientists are fully engaged as members 

of the project and program senior 

management teams. The situation on 

each project and program is different and 

is sometimes personality driven, based on 

the managers’ and scientists’ background, 

experience, and what they’re interested 

in doing, but you’re absolutely right: 

when you’ve got the project scientists 

completely engaged as integral members 

of the management team early—not only 

in identifying what the science objectives 

are and what measurements are essential, 

but in understanding the hardware and 

software implications—then you get a 

much more synergistic and innovative 

trade space. There are ways to gain 

efficiency and optimize the system that 

may not be apparent if scientists aren’t 

fully integrated in the project team. 

cOHEN: Where have you seen that 

collaboration between scientists and 

engineers working well? 

MORROw: James Webb Space Telescope 

[JWST]. John Mather, our Nobel prize– 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 33 

winning scientist, is the senior project 

scientist on JWST. He is fully engaged 

in the project team and understands 

intimately the design of the observatory, 

the optics, the instruments, and how they 

play together. When trades are done, 

Mather and his associates are in there 

with their sleeves rolled up. 

cOHEN: Are there other project pitfalls 

you want to mention? 

MORROw: Another pitfall is that project 

managers and project teams tend not 

to manage the early phases of a project 

with the same sense of urgency that 

they employ in the endgame of system 

integration and test leading to launch. 

This is exacerbated by the fact that 

customers and stakeholders also don’t 

have the same sense of urgency to make 

hard decisions, finalize requirements, 

and commit consistent resources early in 

a project. When we get to the integration 

and test [I&T] phase, people identify and 

solve problems fast. In the early phase of 

a project, issues are identified and there 

is a lot of conversation, but the sense of 

urgency isn’t the same. If we managed 

the early phase of projects with the same 

sense of urgency as system I&T, we’d be a 

lot more efficient in the overall life cycle. 

That’s something that I’m trying to instill 

in our project teams. 

cOHEN: What are you doing to change 

what seems to be a fairly basic fact of 

human nature? 

MORROw: Our directorate management 

team is proactively tracking open issues 

and asking questions such as, “This issue 

has been here for a month; when are 

you going to get to the endgame and 

figure out how to move forward?” It’s an 

uphill battle. 

cOHEN: Approximately how many projects 

are you supporting and what is your 

responsibility for them? 

MORROw: At any one time Goddard 

has fifteen to twenty missions in the 

implementation phase, another ten or 

so in early concept and study phase, and 

inexcessoftwentyintheoperationsphase. 

All those projects report to me here in 

the Flight Projects Directorate. As you 

might know, the NASA governance model 

states that programmatic responsibility 

flows from the NASA Headquarters Mission 

Directorate Associate Administrator to a 

program manager to a project manager. 

While all Goddard program and project 

managers report to me, I’m not in 

that chain. My job is to ensure from 

a center perspective that projects are 

provided with the resources they need, 

that the center supports the planning 

and in-house development necessary, 

that we apply consistent management 

processes, and we facilitate and develop 

the infrastructure for project management 

at Goddard. I ensure that the technical, 

cost, and schedule decisions are consistent 

with NASA and Goddard processes and 

technical and programmatic standards. 

So, while I’m not in the programmatic 

chain, I work to ensure program and 

project success. My staff and I engage 

weekly and usually more often with each 

of the programs/projects and receive 

weekly status reports and top-ten issue 

reports from every project. We review 

the projects’ budgets and their execution. 

Our job is to facilitate their success 

while not getting in the way of the 

programmatic responsibility chain. 

cOHEN: That sounds like a delicate 

task. I assume it includes apportioning 

limited resources. 

MORROw: In the past few years Goddard 

has probably been the busiest we’ve ever 

been. We’ve had six major launches in 

the past year and have several more to 

come later this year and next. There’s 

also a lot of formulation work going on 

for the next generation of Earth science 

missions. Personnel and facility resources 

have been stressed, so we reprioritize and 

mediate conflicts as we have to. 

cOHEN: How does NASA decide which 

Earth science missions should get those 

limited resources? 

MORROw: An Earth science decadal survey 

was completed about two years ago. That 

serves as the overarching guidance for 

what an Earth science program should 

look like at NASA. Mike Freilich, who’s 

the head of Earth science at NASA 

Headquarters, is using that survey as 

his road map for what priority should 

be given to which missions and which 

should be launched first. 

cOHEN: I sometimes think the public 

forgets how much NASA Earth science 

and planetary science missions have 

taught us. 

MORROw: And continue to teach us. 

LRO [Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter] 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

34 | ASK MAGAZINE 

is the first U.S. mission to the moon 

since Clementine a few years ago, and 

that was not a NASA mission. There are 

boot prints and hardware on the moon, 

but we’ve never had a high-fidelity 

digital map of the moon. We have better 

information about Mars than we do 

of the moon. And the information we 

do have is mostly at the equatorial 

regions of the moon, because that’s 

where Apollo went. Now we want to 

go to the poles. The objective of the 

LRO mission is, among other things, to 

provide that high-fidelity digital 

information to support future lunar 

robotic and human missions. From 

an Earth science perspective, NASA 

currently has the most capable fleet 

of Earth science missions in orbit in 

history. Earth scientists have been able 

to make great strides in understanding 

climate change and identifying the 

measurements that will be imperative 

to have in the future. That said, the 

fleet is aging, and in order to ensure 

continuity of the measurements currently 

being obtained and incorporation of 

future research measurements, we are 

studying and formulating many future 

mission concepts. 

cOHEN: Do you see a tension between 

planning and standards—maybe as 

embodied in NPR 7120.5D—and the 

flexibility that unique projects require? 

MORROw: There is a tension. We try to 

keep it a healthy tension. We are always 

weighing the specificity of the processes 

people have to follow against the latitude 

that a project or program manager needs 

to manage within those processes. In 

recent times—and 7120.5D is a good 

example—the standards have been 

developed completely in the open with 

the participation of all the centers. 

Developing that document was a 

fully open process that experienced 

practitioners at each of the ten NASA 

centers participated in. NPR 7120.5D 

really represents the way we do business. 

And it isn’t so prescriptive that it doesn’t 

allow the latitude program and project 

managers need. 

cOHEN: Do you think project 

management at NASA has changed 

since you joined the agency? 

MORROw: In a lot of ways, a project manager 

twenty-five years ago was the king of 

the castle; he had much more latitude 

to operate than project managers do 

now, and we were much more dependent 

on the person than we are now. We go 

through cycles; the pendulum swings one 

way and back the other. I think we’re at a 

fairly healthy place today. 

cOHEN: Tell me a little about your own 

early experiences. 

MORROw: I spent ten years working 

on Hubble Space Telescope, from 

just before initial launch through the 

second servicing mission. I was able to 

be part of the management team that 

was able to figure out what was wrong 

with the telescope, fix it in the first 

servicing mission, and improve it in the 

second. Working under folks like Joe 

Rothenberg, John Campbell, and Frank 

Cepollina was invaluable because they 

had so much experience and know-how. 

The way they went about identifying and 

solving the problems and communicating 

to the outside world to get advocacy for 

what we were doing enabled us to be 

successful. Joe Rothenberg was a master 

at communicating inside and outside 

the program so that everybody remained 

comfortable and we could actually do 

what we were planning to do in the first 

servicing mission. Frank Cepollina had 

a masterful gut feel for what could be 

accomplished, what the team was capable 

of doing, and then he knew how to drive 

the team to make it happen. 

cOHEN: What you are describing isn’t 

technical expertise. 

MORROw: Often our best technical people 

don’t make the best project managers. 

Project managers have to have a wellbalanced background. They have to 

be people persons, with the ability to 

communicate both orally and in writing. 

They have to have a positive attitude 

and a vision to lead the team. Project 

managers have to be technically sound, 

but they wouldn’t necessarily be called 

technical experts. 

cOHEN: What was your first project at 

NASA? 

MORROw: As an engineer in the Space 

Power Applications Branch working on 

battery systems, I supported a project 

called ERBS, Earth Radiation Budget 

Satellite, which was a small satellite 

launched on the Space Shuttle in 1984. 

Within the first days of arriving at 

Goddard, I was in meetings on the 

project with folks I was working with. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 35 

OuR philosophy AND strategy AT GODDARD IS THAT OuR
 

ENGINEERS HAvE TO HAvE direct, hands-on experience 


IN ORDER TO BE 

OF SYSTEMS. 

I supported ERBS through launch, so 

after being at NASA only a year, I found 

myself at the Cape, in the shuttle bay, 

supporting prelaunch preparations. It 

doesn’t get any better than that! 

cOHEN: Lots of people who came to 

NASA years ago talk about being given 

significant responsibility right away. Is 

the same true today? 

MORROw: Our philosophy and strategy 

at Goddard is that our engineers have to 

have direct, hands-on experience in order 

to be successful buyers and managers of 

systems. We are committed to engineers 

and scientists getting that kind of 

experience in the first few years of their 

careers. That’s why we believe we have 

to have at least two in-house missions 

under development at any one time. We 

just finished up with Solar Dynamics 

Observatory and Lunar Reconnaissance 

Orbiter, and we have the Magnetospheric 

Multiscale and Global Precipitation 

missions starting up. In addition to 

those in-house spacecraft missions, we 

also need instrument and sensor system 

successful BuYERS AND MANAGERS
 

development going on in house. That’s 

why we’re doing things like the Thermal 

Infrared Sensor for LANDSAT and the 

Integrated Science Instrument Module 

for JWST in house. We fight for that inhouse work. 

cOHEN: Did you imagine early in your 

career that you would have a managerial 

position? 

MORROw: Notatfirst,butIthinkoneofthe 

advantages I had was having to multiplex 

across several projects. The person that 

hired me left within a month or two 

after I arrived. We were short staffed, so 

I had to work on many projects. I was 

able to see different project managers and 

teams and how they interacted. I came 

to understand what the jobs of a project 

manager and deputy and observatory 

manager and instrument manager were 

like. Fairly quickly, I determined that I 

wanted to manage projects some day. 

Because I had that exposure, I was able 

to say, “I’m a component engineer now. 

If I want to be a project manager, I need 

to be a systems engineer, I need to be 

an observatory manager, and I need 

to be a deputy project manager.” After 

about five years in the power branch, I 

had the opportunity to work on Hubble 

as a systems engineer. Some in the 

organization said, “No, you ought not to 

do that; you ought to manage subsystems 

first. Take it slow.” I went counter to 

that advice. I was a systems person for a 

few years on Hubble, and then I became 

an observatory manager before the first 

servicing mission and a deputy project 

manager after that. It worked out well! ●
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

36 | ASK MAGAZINE 

Eric Gorman: 

STArTING AT NASA NOW 

After talking to George Morrow about his experience as a new 

NASA employee in the early 1980s, Don Cohen asked Eric 

Gorman about the experience of becoming a NASA employee 

today. When they spoke at the end of May, Gorman was just 

about to take a civil service position at Goddard. 

cOHEN: You’ve been working for NASA 

as a contractor? 

GORMAN: I worked for Orbital in their 

building for a little over a year on the 

Hubble Space Telescope mission. They 

immediately gave me a couple of load 

analyses and stress analyses on brackets 

and structures that they were adding for 

the mission. 

cOHEN: Did you think, “This is really 

great,” or, “I’m new and I don’t know 

what I’m doing?” 

GORMAN: I was very scared at first. I’d 

done schoolwork—the teacher says it’s 

either right or wrong. Now it was, “You’re 

smart enough to figure it out, and we’ll 

make sure you’re not screwing anything 

up, but you’re ultimately responsible for 

this because your signature is on it.” I 

felt a great deal of responsibility. After I 

moved here—I’m coming up on a year 

at Goddard—my responsibility level 

increased more than 100 percent. I’m 

now the mechanical lead for an entire 

subsystem of the Global Precipitation 

mission satellite. I’m in charge of six 

avionics boxes with three unique designs. 

I make sure that the avionics boxes meet 

mechanical and thermal requirements, 

maintain schedules, write procedures 

and reports, and I will be involved with 

testing and delivery to the spacecraft. 

cOHEN: Who’s watching what you do now? 

GORMAN: I’ve got some senior mechanical 

guys that I go to for advice. They look over 

my shoulder once in a while to be sure 

things are going well, they offer advice 

and experience, but day in and day out 

I’m pretty much responsible. Originally a 

senior engineer had the mechanical lead 

position, but he was moved to another 

project and I stepped up and assumed his 

responsibilities. He still checks in once in 

a while, asking if everything’s going well. 

I’ve even gone to the branch head, Chuck 

Clagett. He’s a mechanical guy so I’ve 

asked him questions. 

cOHEN: Have you sometimes gone in the 

wrong direction? 

GORMAN: I’ll typically ask a question if 

I’m unsure. There hasn’t been anything 

where I’ve made a decision without the 

proper guidance. 

cOHEN: How good a job do you think the 

agency does incorporating new people? 

GORMAN: NASA as a whole does a great 

job of immediately putting co-ops and 

interns to work. In my experience, 

everyone who has come here has been 

given good, meaningful work to do 

immediately. If a person feels what 

they’re doing is important, they will be 

a motivated employee. My friends that 

have gone into jobs that are menial or 

meaningless usually leave those jobs. All 

my friends who have careers feel they were 

given responsibility in their companies 

and that their position matters. ●
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STORy | ASK MAGAZINE | 37 

HOPE FOr ThE 

FUTUrE 

In November 2006, then–NASA Chief Engineer Chris Scolese brought together an advisory group 

of aerospace veterans to think about creative ways of giving young NASA employees the skills 

they will need to lead future projects and programs. Gus Guastaferro, an invited guest of this 

Management Operations Working Group, suggested developing a hands-on project that would give 

young engineers and scientists the opportunity to take a small mission from concept to launch to 

post-flight analysis. 

Just over two years later, NASA centers received an invitation 

to submit proposals for the first Hands-On Project Experience 

(HOPE) training opportunity. Five centers responded with project 

ideas. The winning plan, to improve terrain-relative navigation by 

collecting ground imagery during a sounding-rocket flight, came 

from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In the spring of 2009, 

a group of young JPLers led by project manager Don Heyer got 

to work on what they called the Terrain-Relative Navigation and 

Employee Development (TRaiNED) project. 

Creating HOPE 

Guastaferro’s conviction that actual work experience provides 

uniquely valuable learning and his sense of what a hands-on 

learning project would look like came from his early days at 

Langley Research Center in the late fifties and early sixties. 

To develop the skills needed to add space exploration to the 

center’s aeronautical work, Langley had members of its newly 

formed Space Task Group plan and carry out small rocket 

launches from Wallops Island. That experience gave Chris 

Kraft, Robert Gilruth, and other Apollo-era leaders knowledge 

of the technology and management of space programs that 

became the foundation of their achievements at the Manned 

Spacecraft Center in Houston, later renamed Johnson Space 

Center. Guastaferro notes, “In my own career, I pushed hard 

to become the launch director of the small Scout launch vehicle 

at the Western Test Range in 1966 to get my own hands-on 

experience. My decision to do that was based on the early days 

in the Space Task Group at Langley and the experience set the 

stage for my assignment to Viking in 1968.” 

All NASA employees learn from experience, but when 

the learning comes from playing relatively small roles in long, 

complex projects, it can take many years to develop the repertoire 

of skills needed to lead projects and programs. The projects 

in the program that grew out of Scolese’s request would last 

approximately one year, allowing participants to experience all 

phases of a spaceflight project in a concentrated form and much 

sooner than they normally would in the course of their careers. 

The brief missions would give them valuable perspective on how 

project elements and stages meshed into a whole to achieve the 

aims of the mission. 

Early on, the advisory group envisioned the Academy of 

Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL) as the 

sole sponsor of HOPE. It seemed a natural choice, given that 

organization’s responsibility for learning and development. 

Scolese believed, though, that having the Science Mission 

Directorate (SMD) become a co-sponsor would increase the value 

of the initiative. In addition to sharing funding responsibility, 

SMD would give HOPE added legitimacy by ensuring that 

the projects would have a genuine scientific goal and not be 

“merely” training exercises. Brad Perry was designated SMD lead 

and given responsibility to ensure that HOPE projects would 

make a scientific or technical contribution to one of SMD’s 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

38 | ASK MAGAZINE 

Schematic of the Terrain-Relative 

Navigation and Employee 

Development project payload. 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL 

four divisions: planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics, 

or heliophysics. Perry said, “I am excited to be involved with 

HOPE and the opportunity it affords to develop future NASA 

leaders through practical ‘hands-on’ experience.” 

Wallops was recruited to provide launch services for the 

projects. A budget of $800,000 per project was established (with 

the understanding that centers would be free to add funding). 

By the end of 2008, the team developed a training opportunity 

announcement soliciting proposals for the first HOPE project. 

The document specified the two main goals of the program: 

• To provide hands-on experience on an Earth or space 

science flight project to enhance the technical, leadership, 

and project skills for the selected NASA in-house 

project team. 

• To fly a sounding-rocket science payload, which will have 

a useful purpose for the SMD by either providing new 

or complementary science data for one of the four SMD 

science divisions or by developing capabilities in support 

of SMD science objectives. 

Evaluating the Proposals 

The proposals received from five NASA centers offered a wide 

range of investigative ideas. Three separate groups reviewed the 

submissions. One, led by Guastaferro, evaluated their training 

merit. Paul Hertz, SMD’s chief scientist, led the panel judging 

their scientific merit. The group led by Carlos Liceaga assessed 

the quality of their technical management—the likelihood that 

the proposed plans and resources would accomplish the project 

aims on time and on budget. 

Results from the three panels were merged to arrive at a 

final judgment. The JPL terrain-relative navigation proposal was 

the winner. Because the project built on a previous soundingrocket mission, it promised to accomplish its scientific goals 

while limiting its scope by reusing much of the technology from 

that earlier flight. The JPL submission was also strengthened 

by the existence of an early-career-hire development program 

at the center called Phaeton. The two programs were a 

natural fit. Phaeton (which will be the subject of a future ASK 

article) provided the mentoring resources needed to make 

HOPE successful. 

The First HOPE Project Begins 

A Mission Initiation Conference at Wallops Island in May 2009 

officially launched the project. At that meeting, the Wallops 

team presented their plan and Wallops personnel described 

their sounding-rocket services. To give participants the benefit 

of authentic project experience, the TRaiNED initiative will 

follow standard NASA procedural requirements. A Standing 

Review Board assembled for the project will see the team through 

milestones including a system requirements review (held in 

early July), preliminary design and critical design reviews, and 

a mission readiness review. The project launch is scheduled for 

June 2010. Several months into the work, project manager Heyer 

said, “The TRaiNED project is giving a group of early-career 

hires an opportunity to learn firsthand how a flight project is 

implemented, from formulation through flight.” 

The main goals of the project are of course accelerated 

learning from the promising early-career hires at JPL and 

scientific results that can contribute to other NASA programs. 

But APPEL and SMD also hope to learn from the experience. 

They are observing and evaluating the TRaiNED experience 

with an eye to improving future HOPE projects. Whatever 

shape NASA’s future missions take, they will require the highest 

possible level of technical and managerial expertise. So Scolese’s 

call for new and better ways to develop the skills and knowledge 

of young NASA engineers and scientists to carry out future 

programs will remain important. HOPE is one promising 

response to that call. ●
 

 

’

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 39 

Magnetospheric Multiscale: 


An In-House and Contracted Mission
 

By KArEN HALTErMAN 

The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, a scientific satellite–development project 

managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, is both an in-house project and a contracted one. 

The four MMS spacecraft are being developed by Goddard; the 100 MMS instruments are being 

developed under contract to Goddard. MMS offers examples of the advantages and disadvantages 

of both kinds of work, and the challenge of combining the two. 

Artist s concept of the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. 

Image Credit: NASA 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

40 | ASK MAGAZINE 

MMS is a NASA Science Mission 

Directorate heliophysics mission 

intendedtogainanunderstanding 

of the universal process of 

magnetic reconnection, in 

which energy in magnetic 

fields is converted into 

particle kinetic energy and 

heat. The mission consists of 

four identical satellites, each 

with a payload of twenty-five 

instruments, that will circle Earth 

in highly elliptical orbits to measure 

magnetic fields, electrical fields, plasmas, 

and energetic particles. The satellites, flying in a tetrahedron 

formation as close together as 10 km, will take measurements in 

three dimensions with unprecedented resolution. Launch of all 

four satellites on one Atlas V is scheduled for August 2014. 

Contracted and In-House Work 

Most of NASA’s funding is spent on contracts. Large corporations, 

universities, medium-size companies, small businesses, research 

institutes, and consultants work under contract to NASA to 

provide rockets, space hardware and software, aeronautics 

research, scientific analysis, ground-system development, and 

resources for the myriad activities that NASA undertakes. Some 

of NASA’s responsibilities are inherently governmental and 

cannot be contracted, but some development items that could 

be contracted are carried out by NASA employees. 

As explained in the NASA Strategic Plan, the agency needs 

to maintain the institutional capability and core competency of 

its workforce by performing some of the hands-on work itself. 

At Goddard, most satellite projects go to prime contractors, 

but some are developed in house—the spacecraft is designed, 

manufactured, and tested by Goddard civil-servant engineers. 

In-house projects provide the workforce with the personal 

experience necessary to oversee the development of contracted 

work. Support-service contractors augment the civil servants’ 

work, providing business and engineering expertise, including 

configuration management and mechanical engineering. 

In 2006, NASA Headquarters assigned the development of 

the MMS spacecraft as a Goddard in-house development. All 

MMS instruments will be developed under a single contract by 

Southwest Research Institute. 

In-House Development 

Under the management of the MMS project, the Goddard 

Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate (AETD) will 

design, manufacture, and test the four MMS spacecraft and 

integrate them with the four instrument suites. MMS spacecraft 

development involves configuration-controlled documents and 

signed work agreements between the MMS project and AETD, 

but there are no contracts associated with in-house development. 

From the project management perspective, there are pluses and 

minuses to in-house spacecraft development. 

Advantages 

• Being internal to Goddard, the spacecraft team is physically

located at the same place as the project and knows the 

Goddard culture. Communication between the project 

and the spacecraft team is enhanced by this proximity 

and common frame of reference. Misinterpretation of 

technical terminology, which sometimes varies among 

NASA centers, is minimized. For example, the MMS 

spacecraft team knows what “protoflight testing” entails, 

but the members of the MMS instrument team had to 

learn the Goddard definition of this term. Face-to-face 

discussions between the project and the spacecraft team 

happen every day. The project is in daily contact with 

the instrument team through teleconferences and 

e-mail, but in-person meetings occur less often, on 

average once a month. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 41 

BOTh IN-hOUSE AND CONTrACTED APPrOAChES CAN BE SUCCESSFULLy USED TO 

DEvELOP FLIGhT PrOjECTS. AS SUGGESTED hErE, BOTh APPrOAChES hAvE 

SIGNIFICANT STrENGThS AND SIGNIFICANT POTENTIAL WEAKNESSES. 

• Compared with the lengthy process of formal contract 

direction, major technical and programmatic changes 

can be carried out more quickly by an in-house team. 

Once the project’s Configuration Control Board 

has approved a change that affects cost, schedule, or 

technical performance, the Goddard spacecraft team can 

immediately move forward with the new configuration. 

The instrument team, on the other hand, may need to 

wait for the contract modification in order to implement 

the change. 

• Regular meetings with Goddard senior management 

are used to discuss status, address issues, and give the 

project some influence over the in-house work. Goddard 

senior management has helped the MMS project resolve 

facility-usage conflicts with other projects. By contrast, 

contracts can be bumped by higher-priority contracts. A 

Goddard project cannot override a DX classification— 

military programs judged to have the highest national 

priority—which permits military activities, such as 

buying electrical and electronic engineering parts 

needed in satellites, to take precedence over NASA 

civilian work. 

• The Goddard workforce—from senior engineers leading 

subsystems to journeymen engineers developing designs 

to fresh-outs tackling hands-on testing—gains the 

practical experience of spacecraft development from 

concept through launch. Of course, the contractor’s 

workforce also gains experience, but this knowledge may 

not be applied to future Goddard missions. 

Disadvantages 

• As government employees, the Goddard spacecraft 

team tends to be less focused on cost control and 

meeting deadlines than industry counterparts who are 

accustomed to meeting contract requirements. With 

launch several years in the future, some members of the 

team need regular reminders about the importance of 

schedule performance. 

• The NASA accounting system and financial reporting 

requirements are not conducive to large in-house projects. 

For example, NASA budgeting and monthly financial 

reporting require civil servant labor costs to be reported 

separately from other costs, but earned value management 

requires civil servant labor to be included in the appropriate 

work breakdown category. Hence, the MMS project must 

perform financial planning and reporting of the same cost 

data more than one way—a duplication of effort. 

• AETD seeks to advance spaceflight technology, a 

commendable goal, but MMS is cost constrained like all 

projects. Occasionally, the project must temper the zeal of 

spacecraft engineers to experiment with new technology 

when an existing design meets requirements, costs less, 

and is less risky to build. MMS engineers have expressed 

interest in using composite materials, nanotechnology, 

and newer flight computers, for example. The project 

rejected these ideas as being more expensive or not mature 

enough for the mission. 

• Components of the spacecraft that meet mission 

requirements and are commercially available will be 

competitively procured. It does not make sense to reinvent 

flight-proven items such as transponders, batteries, and 

thrusters. This means, though, that in-house development 

includes contracted items prone to the accompanying 

disadvantages of contracted work. 

Contracted Mission 

The MMS instruments are being developed under a Goddard 

contract with Southwest Research Institute, which leads a team 

of subcontractors and international partners that collectively 

will build 100 instruments for the mission. As with all Goddard 

contracts, NASA provides the requirements, funding, and 

oversight. The Southwest Research Institute team designs, 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

42 | ASK MAGAZINE 

manufactures, tests, and delivers the instruments to the 

MMS project. The project reviews the design and contract 

deliverables, provides technical direction and the interfaces to 

the spacecraft, works with the instrument team to resolve issues, 

and monitors technical progress, schedule, and costs. From the 

project management perspective, there are pluses and minuses 

to contracted missions. 

Advantages 

• While the project is ultimately accountable for all project 

activities, the contractor is fully responsible for producing 

the deliverables of the contract. The contractor directly 

manages the work; identifies, hires, and assigns the people 

with the necessary skills for the work; procures the parts 

and materials; and provides facilities to build and test the 

flight hardware. Since the MMS instruments are being 

acquired through a single contract, Southwest Research 

Institute is responsible for all of them, including those 

developed by its numerous subcontractors. 

• Contractors selected to develop entiresatellites or complex 

instruments generally have the people, experience, and 

infrastructureneededforsuchcomplexengineeringefforts. 

As a result, a small NASA team is sufficient to monitor the 

contractor’s progress. Only a handful of the MMS project 

staff is dedicated exclusively to the administration of the 

Southwest Research Institute contract. 

• The contractor, usually following a hard-fought competition 

to win the contract, is motivated to succeed in order to 

maintain a reputation in the aerospace community, pursue 

future government work, and earn profit for stockholders. 

Award fee contracts, which pay costs plus additional 

payments that depend on how well the contractor met 

specified performance goals, are particularly effective in 

providing periodic feedback to contractors and identifying 

areas for improvement. (In this particular case, award 

fee evaluations are not an available MMS management 

tool because Southwest Research Institute is a nonprofit 

organization with a cost plus fixed-fee contract.) As the 

home institution of the MMS principal investigator, 

Southwest Research Institute is committed to the science 

and the mission. 

• Whenthecontractends,NASAdoesnothaveresponsibility 

for placing the contractor’s employees into new jobs or 

keeping the contractor’s facilities in use. 

UNIvErSITIES ON ThE MMS 

INSTrUMENT TEAM ArE ALSO 

AFFECTED By ThE ECONOMy, 

AS LESS STATE MONEy IS AvAILABLE 

DUrING hArD TIMES, WhICh COULD 

rESULT IN hIrING FrEEZES Or LESS 

FUNDING FOr LABS AND EqUIPMENT. 

Disadvantages 

• The procurement of NASA flight hardware–development 

contracts is a lengthy process. Preparing all the documents 

needed to release the request for proposal, conducting the 

source selection, and negotiating the contract typically take 

more than a year. After the contract is in place, it still takes a 

long time to execute contract modifications because changes 

must be approved by the project’s Configuration Control 

Board and the center’s procurement and legal offices. If 

a major modification to the MMS Southwest Research 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 43 

Institute contract were needed, it would take several months 

to execute, possibly affecting the project schedule. 

• Regardlessofthebesteffortstowritecompleteandaccurate 

specifications and statements of work, these documents 

inevitably have ambiguities. Disagreements about what 

is in scope and out of scope can lead to protracted 

arguments, increased costs, and even legal disputes. The 

contractual relationship between the MMS project and 

Southwest Research Institute is a good one, but now and 

then different interpretations arise, such as the extent of 

IT security requirements. 

• At times, NASA may need to help the contractor; for 

instance, by providing specialized expertise. Some 

universities on the MMS instrument team do not have 

the robust quality assurance programs required to 

develop flight hardware. The project will provide mission 

assurance assistance to the MMS instrument contract as 

needed, which must be covered by the project budget. 

• Business cycles and the overall state of the economy can 

adversely affect contractors. Most NASA contractors also 

support the Department of Defense; downturns in defense 

contracting may result in layoffs or closing of plants 

that affect NASA work, relocating it to other locations 

or increasing indirect costs stemming from a smaller 

business base. Takeovers, mergers, and sales of company 

divisions can also negatively affect NASA through 

loss of corporate knowledge, low morale, or changes in 

policies and procedures. The period of performance of 

the MMS instrument contract is long (it started in 2003 

and ends after MMS on-orbit operations have finished 

in 2018). There have been and probably will continue to 

be changes in the corporate make-up of the instrument 

team. Universities on the MMS instrument team are also 

affected by the economy, as less state money is available 

during hard times, which could result in hiring freezes or 

less funding for labs and equipment. 

The Best of Both Worlds 

Both in-house and contracted approaches can be successfully 

used to develop flight projects. As suggested here, both 

approaches have significant strengths and significant potential 

weaknesses. As the MMS mission proceeds toward its scheduled 

2014 launch, management will continue to try to capitalize on 

the advantages of both the in-house and contracted aspects of 

the project and minimize the disadvantages. ●

Karen HalTerman is the MMS project manager. Previously, 

she was the project manager for the Polar Operational 

Environmental Satellites project, a fully contracted mission. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

44 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORy 

Title 

B

Ingenuity and 

By JIM HODGES 

y Improvisation 

It began with $2,000 and a cable hanging from an I beam in “The Hangar” at NASA’s Langley Research 

Center in Hampton, Virginia. From that simple start almost five decades ago grew the Rendezvous 

Docking Simulator, first used to demonstrate linking a Gemini spacecraft with an Agena target in 

space and, later, to gather data and eventually to teach astronauts to link an Apollo lunar excursion 

module, just back from the moon, with a command module. Without that link, there might have been 

no Apollo mission. Certainly, the deadline set by President Kennedy’s May 25, 1961, commitment to 

land on the moon before the end of the decade would not have been met. 

A surplus hydraulic motor from an aircraft drove one end of the 

cable along the roof, and a man hung from the other, wearing an 

air tank and carrying a hose with an air gun that he could fire as 

though it were a thruster. On the floor of the hangar, engineers 

watched and took notes. 

“The idea was to simulate what a guy would have to do if 

he was going to navigate in space from one place to another,” 

said Jim Wise, who communicated with astronauts “flying” the 

Rendezvous Docking Simulator by intercom. 

“These guys were smart enough to bootleg some parts 

and help make it work with that $2,000,” Wise said, adding, 

“To talk about this now seems so juvenile, but you had to start 

somewhere. Some of the aircraft people said, ‘These space guys 

are just playing.’” 

In fact, the space guys were putting in motion a plan 

that one of their own had charted on a blackboard and sold 

to NASA hierarchy over the objections of space pioneers, 

including Wernher von Braun and Max Faget. John Houbolt, 

assistant chief of the Dynamic Loads Division at Langley, ran 

the numbers involved in landing on the moon, then taking off 

again in a 65-foot spacecraft versus one only 14 feet tall, and 

launched a campaign for a concept called lunar orbit rendezvous. 

A primary issue, he said, was lifting from Earth the 82,700-lb. 

moon lander that would be required for Earth-orbit rendezvous 

versus one weighing 19,320 lbs. 

“John Houbolt stuck his damn neck out, is what he did,” 

said Donald Riley, who also worked on the simulator. “Houbolt 

knew we couldn’t take all that weight to the moon.” 

The catch to Houbolt’s idea was literally a catch. If the lunar 

excursion module couldn’t dock with the command module 

that was orbiting the moon at 17,000 mph, 240,000 miles from 

Earth, the result would be two astronauts finally walking on the 

lunar surface but never getting back home to talk about it. 

Langley set out to build a simulator. As with all simulators, 

it began with this premise: “One thing that most people don’t 

grasp right away is that simulators that are tasked to study a 

specific thing do not have to be authentic in detail,” said Wise. 

“You only have to detail the part you are studying. That means 

that some of the simulators appear to be extremely crude, but as 

long as they are faithful to that part you are studying, it’s OK.” 

From the cable, the docking simulator continued to evolve 

in fitful phases. “We used lots of junk,” Wise said, laughing. “I 

remember I got a catalog of government surplus stuff, and we 

used a lot of it on simulators at Langley.” 

Thrusters mounted on a pilot’s helmet to foster a sensory 

aspect to spaceflight bridged the gap between the rope and 

designing and building a simulator that would effectively mimic 

a real docking. One primary idea for the simulator evolved from 

the trial-and-error experimentation: it had to react in many 

ways like an airplane. 
 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 45 

“ONE ThING ThAT MOST PEOPLE DON’T GrASP rIGhT AWAy IS ThAT SIMULATOrS ThAT 

ArE TASKED TO STUDy A SPECIFIC ThING DO NOT hAvE TO BE AUThENTIC IN DETAIL.” 

Photo Credit: NASA 

A profile view of the Agena Docking Target Vehicle as seen 

from the Gemini 8 spacecraft during rendezvous in space. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Multiple exposure of Rendezvous Docking Simulator. 

Photo Credit: NASA/William Salyer 

46 | ASK MAGAZINE 46 | ASK MAGAZINE 

“I DON’T ThINK IT EvEr WAS GOING TO BE A TrAINEr,” yENNI SAID. “WE WANTED ThE 

DATA FOr rESEArCh.” BUT TrAINING EvOLvED. 

“We needed six degrees of freedom for pitch, roll, and 

yaw,” said Dick Yenni, one of several NASA test pilots who 

participated in the development of the Rendezvous Docking 

Simulator by “flying” it and offering feedback to developers 

before the astronauts became involved. 

Another breakthrough came when an analog computer 

showed up at Langley to monitor and record data from tests on 

an F-101. “It was a big computer: 5,000 vacuum tubes, 20 feet 

long, 6 feet high,” Wise said. “Then they canceled out the F-101 

contract when the space thing got going. So what were they 

going to do with this computer?” 

The computer was taught the characteristics of docking in 

space. Said Yenni, chuckling, “You could probably do as much 

with a laptop now.” 

The design group was headed by Arthur W. Vogeley and 

Max Kurbjun of the Space Mechanics Division, along with Roy 

Brissenden, Alfred Meintel, Jack Pennington, and Marvin Waller. 

Finally, the group believed it had the idea they needed, and on 

June 3, 1961, $243,020 was requested for a docking simulator. 

The cockpit was that of Gemini, with a window in front of the 

pilot. The cockpit was inside a gimbal that allowed the required 

six degrees of roll, pitch, and yaw, and it was to run on a 210-foot 

track, 40 feet in the air in the cavernous Langley hangar. 

But once on his back in the simulator, how would an 

astronaut dock with the capsule? 

“When they ‘flew’ this thing, they couldn’t see the capsule 

out of the windshield,” said Sheila Thibeault, then a recent 

college grad. “They had to use a television camera, a closedcircuit camera. My job was to work on the visual acuity and 

Vernier acuity, which translates into accuracy.” Basically, 

Thibeault worked on lining up the dim cross-hairs on a blackand-white 1960s television screen. 

“We would run at night, with all the windows blacked out,” 

said Yenni. “We had an Agena target at the north end of the 

hangar, and we’d start at the south end.” 

The Agena target vehicle was developed to launch into space 

to provide a target for Gemini’s rendezvous. Several different 

lighting patterns were tried to allow the pilots to pick it out from 

the background of stars. 

As Apollo evolved, so did an Apollo cockpit and command 

module target for the simulator. The cabin was fitted out with 

airplane instruments, altered for its space mission. The carriage 

was electrically driven, and so were the pitch and yaw controls. 

The gimbal was hydraulically driven, and so was the roll control. 

All that information was fed into the computer in the corner of 

the hangar. 

That information was Langley’s primary concern. “I don’t 

think it ever was going to be a trainer,” Yenni said. “We wanted 

the data for research.” 

But training evolved. The original seven astronauts were 

stationed at Langley as NASA’s space program began and 

migrated to Houston with the nucleus of the Space Task Group 
-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 47 

Practicing lunar orbit rendezvous with the help of the Rendezvous Docking Simulator. 

Photo Credit: NASA Langley Research Center 

in 1961. They returned to Langley to work on the Rendezvous 

Docking Simulator and the lunar excursion module simulator, 

which was built to train the astronauts to handle the final 150 

feet before landing on the moon. 

“I worked with five of the first seven astronauts,” said Riley, 

who named Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter, 

Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper. 

Wise worked on the intercom with the astronauts as they 

trained on the simulator. 

“Buzz Aldrin spent a lot of time in our facility when he 

wasn’t flying the simulator, just observing how things were going, 

learning things to put into his paper about the rendezvous,” 

Wise said. 

Aldrin’s doctoral thesis at the Massachusetts Institute 

of Technology was entitled “Guidance for Manned Orbital 

Rendezvous.” 

“I remember working with John Glenn,” said Wise. “Alan 

Shepard spent time with us; Grissom; Neil Armstrong came from 

a town about twenty miles from where I was from in Ohio.” 

Training in the simulator that was built to provide data for 

Langley became a requirement for being launched in Apollo. 

“They kept coming back,” Wise offered. “I think that’s the 

sign of a satisfied customer.” 

When they came back, they signed a poster picture of the 

simulator in Vogeley’s office. Only one astronaut who trained on 

the system did not sign: Ed White, who trained twice but died 

in a fire on the launchpad at Cape Kennedy before he could add 

his name to the poster. 

Ultimate proof of success came on July 20, 1969, when 

Aldrin maneuvered the lunar excursion module from Apollo 11 

into place and he and Armstrong docked with the command 

module piloted by Michael Collins. 

With the end of the Apollo program, the simulator was 

adapted to research on open- and closed-loop pilot control 

issues, aircraft landing approaches, simulator validations, and 

passenger ride quality. 

It no longer is used, and in 1985 it was added to the National 

Register of Historic Landmarks. The Rendezvous Docking 

Simulator hangs from the rafters in the hangar, an orange 

reminder of a time when pioneers were everywhere in NASA. 

“It was interesting, following the moon shots on television,” 

Wise said. “You’d work and you’d come home and there it is. 

Sometimes I still can’t believe how lucky I was. I had a very 

small part of something that was extremely big.” 

A part that started with a cable hanging from an I beam at 

the top of the hangar. ●

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Jim HoDGeS is managing 

editor/senior writer of the Researcher News at NASA’s Langley 

Research Center. 
 

 

 

 

48 | ASK MAGAZINE | INSIGHT 

Managing Conversations for 


Performance Breakthroughs 


 By GErry DAELEMANS 

Reorganizations can have unintended and unexpected outcomes. Sometimes they create new 

problems in the process of solving old ones. When the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, 

Maryland, disbanded its Special Payloads Division in 1998 during a centerwide reorganization, 

the Shuttle Small Payloads Project Office (SSPPO) that had been housed there experienced a 

simultaneous shift in management, projects, and goals. Finding the right footing and regaining a 

good working environment in this new terrain took a couple years and an uphill climb. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 49 

Since its inception in 1984 and until its retirement in 2003, the 

SSPPO flew more than seventy-five scientific, technological, and 

student Hitchhiker experiments; 255 Get Away Special (GAS) 

payloads; and more than 120 Space Experiment Module (SEM) 

experiments aboard the Space Shuttle. The SSPPO team was 

well versed in flying payloads on manned spaceflight missions. 

After the reorganization in 1998, GAS and SEM became 

part of the engineering workforce at Wallops Flight Facility, 

which reported to SSPPO management at Goddard’s Greenbelt 

campus. The SSPPO in turn reported to its new management 

located back at Wallops. 

This new office arrangement, a Wallops workforce 

inexperienced with manned spaceflight payloads, and the merging 

of two distinct engineering cultures created new complexity 

within SSPPO. Also around this time, center management began 

to question why the office was located at Goddard instead of at 

one of NASA’s manned spaceflight centers. They began pushing 

for SSPPO to align itself with Goddard’s core business; the office 

would otherwise be moved to a manned spaceflight center. 

Listening and Recognition 

I became chief of SSPPO in 2000 and quickly realized we had 

some challenges to overcome. Our vehicle for payload experiments, 

the Space Shuttle, was slowly being monopolized by International 

Space Station (ISS) assembly cargo. Our attempts to obtain ISS 

payload work were unsuccessful. Center management wanted us 

to move away from manned spaceflight. Wallops and Greenbelt 

cultures were clashing. Even though people enjoyed the work we 

did and were very passionate about continuing it on shuttle and 

ISS, our future looked bleak given the circumstances. 

I found myself asking, how could we gain center support 

for ISS work? How could we align our work with Goddard’s 

core business? How could Wallops and Greenbelt work together 

more productively and cooperatively? How do we boost morale? 

How do we avoid going out of business? 

As I began thinking about answers, I recalled learning 

earlier that people’s actions are correlated to how they perceive 

the world around them, and that their perception of the world 

is formed by the conversations they have—those they speak out 

loud and those unspoken yet communicated, of which they are 

unaware. So I began to listen anew to what people were saying. 

The foreground conversations were easy to hear, as these 

conversations had been present in our office culture for years: 

we love what we do, but we aren’t appreciated by management 

or our colleagues at Greenbelt/Wallops; no one knows the 

great work we’ve contributed; they just don’t listen; I’m always 

so busy. There were many positive conversations, too, but the 

negative ones were of most concern. 

The background conversations took more effort to recognize. 

To understand how background conversations work, think about 

driving a car now versus when you were sixteen. When you first 

began driving, the foreground conversations were likely, “Keep this 

much distance between my car and the one in front of me, signal 

100 feet before turning, and do not pass over a double yellow line.” 

The conversations today might be more like, “How will I get to my 

destination, who am I meeting, do I need to run chores on my way 

home?” But the conversations from when you were sixteen haven’t 

gone away. They’ve been pushed so far into the background you 

don’t hear them anymore, but they still affect your driving. 

The same thing was happening on our team. The “we aren’t 

appreciated” conversations and some background conversations 

we could no longer hear were affecting how we perceived the 

world, which influenced our actions and results. They were 

also affecting how the world around SSPPO perceived us. We 

needed to pull those conversations to the forefront so we could 

recognize them, let them go, and create new ones. 

Communication for Commitment and Results 

To help the team hear the background conversations, I arranged 

a voluntary three-day workshop with an outside expert who 

supports organizations in distinguishing the background 

conversations and creating new, powerful conversations designed 

for maximum performance. 

Forty people from the team participated in the workshop, 

including civil servants and contractors from both Greenbelt 

and Wallops. The first thing we focused on was the importance 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

50 | ASK MAGAZINE 

of listening, and listening with the mind, not only the ears. For 

instance, if I were having a conversation and listened only to 

decide if I agree or disagree with the speaker, I’m going to miss a 

lot of what is actually said. Because I am unaware of this agree/ 

don’t agree filter, I may miss hearing opportunities, requests, 

or warnings in the conversation. Our team had similar filters; 

their default listening mode was oriented to hear only evidence 

that center management didn’t support us or Greenbelt didn’t 

respect Wallops. We were missing opportunities to take new 

actions because our background listening was deafening us. 

For three days our team worked on bringing pervasive 

thoughts and conversations from the background into the 

foreground. The work we did was analogous to Newton 

discovering the three laws of physics. He did not invent inertia, 

acceleration, mass, friction, or resistive forces; he pulled these 

phenomena from the background to the foreground using math. 

Similarly, our workshop pulled forward the three laws of human 

performance: our actions are correlated to how we perceive 

the world; how we perceive the world arises in the language 

(conversations) we use; and generative language, which is futureaction oriented, transforms how the world occurs for us. 

It was clear that just changing our actions and expecting a 

differentoutcomeinperformancewasnotgoingtoelicittheresultswe 

wanted; this is a recipe for history to repeat itself. With the team clear 

of our background and foreground conversations after the workshop, 

we were free to create new conversations: ones that used generative 

language and contained possibilities of an exciting future. 

Evidence that we succeeded began to emerge after the 

workshop ended. Because we had realized we were the authors 

of our “no support from center management” message, we were 

able to rewrite it. By making this change, we also altered how 

others perceived us. The other NASA groups we dealt with 

started to relate to us differently. 

Whereas before we had been denied requests for ISS work, 

we began receiving inquiries from senior management about 

how they might support us in getting this work. For instance, 

our deputy center director established and attended a meeting 

with me at NASA Headquarters to present our ideas for ISS 

AS OUr OLD, DISEMPOWErING 

CONvErSATIONS FELL FrOM DAILy USE, 

OUr PrODUCTIvITy ALSO BEGAN TO rISE 

AS WE LEArNED TO USE GENErATIvE 

LANGUAGE MOrE FrEqUENTLy. 

efforts and to support our funding request for this new work— 

a request Headquarters granted. 

I also received a call from a senior manager who thought 

our office would be a great place for a project fully aligned with 

Goddard’s core business activities. We took over that project, 

and now not only were we aligned per center management’s 

earlier requests, we had also found a way to continue our manned 

spaceflight payload work without moving to a different center. 

As our old, disempowering conversations fell from daily 

use, our productivity also began to rise as we learned to use 

generative language more frequently. Indeed, one employee who 

previously had been reluctant to work with the team emerged 

as a leader, helping improve the relationship between Greenbelt 

and Wallops. When asked about the change in her behavior, 

she said that before the workshop, “The air was so thick with 

negativity and resignation about the future, you could cut it with 

a knife.” After the workshop, those conversations disappeared, 

“making the air clean again,” she said. 

Network of Conversations 

One of the biggest lessons the SSPPO team learned from this 

experience was that all we needed to manage was a network of 

conversations, not the people or the processes. Changing players 

or plans won’t lead to breakthroughs in performance; indeed, it 

often leads to a future that looks just like the past. By continually 

listening to conversations, leaders who understand and apply the 

three laws of human performance can create an environment that 

brings out the best in people, teams, and organizations. People 

are much more powerful and passionate than they themselves 

recognize, and when they understand how they unknowingly 

inhibit their own performance, they are free to change and fully 

realize their potential and creativity. ●

Gerry DaelemanS has been with NASA for twenty years and 

is currently working in the Advanced Concepts and Formulation 

Office at Goddard Space Flight Center. 
Title

By 

Intro

The Airborne Science Program within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate has helped take Earth 

science to suborbital heights. With a fleet of customizable aircraft, the program offers scientists 

unique opportunities to conduct airborne studies all over the globe. Its DC-8 Airborne Science 

Laboratory can house numerous experiments simultaneously, with many scientists aboard operating 

their science instruments and assessing data in close to real time. The actual flight plan rarely looks 

the same as the mission plan at takeoff, requiring project management literally on the fly.

Scientists aboard NASA’s DC-8 airborne 

laboratory and a Gulfstream V aircraft captured 

the breakup and fragmentation of the European 

Space Agency’s Jules Verne Automated Transfer 

Vehicle as it reentered the atmosphere.

Photo Credit: NASA/ESA/Jessie Carpenter/Bill Moede

Science from the

 S

By Kerry Ellis

ky

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 51
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image Credit: NASA/L. Emmons Photo Credit: NASA 

52 | ASK MAGAZINE 52 | ASK MAGAZINE 

The DC-8, managed by NASA and operated cooperatively with 

the University of North Dakota, has been heavily modified 

with a multitude of viewports along its sides, top, and lower 

cargo holds. Each viewport allows scientific instruments to peer 

outside the aircraft through special optical windows or by using 

probes to collect air, moisture, particulate samples, and other 

data. To figure out what will go where, the scientists work closely 

with the DC-8 team to establish the most efficient way to install 

their proposed instruments and accommodate enough people 

to operate the equipment. With dozens of different experiments 

happening concurrently, the installation effort and flight-plan 

creation require coordination among the scientists, engineers, 

mission managers, navigator, and pilots. 

The science teams determine before each flight where 

they want to go to gather data, basing projections on weather 

forecasts, satellite imagery, and other sources of information. 

Then the scientists and mission managers together create a flight 

plan; for example, take off from point A, then fly to points B, 

C, D, and so on. Once airborne, however, the team may realize 

point B is no longer where they thought it would be because the 

phenomenon of interest has moved, requiring new navigation 

points and altitudes. 

“We have a link between the airplane and the iridium 

satellite system that allows us to obtain real-time updates and 

information on what’s most current from ground-based sources,” 

explained Frank Cutler, project manager for the DC-8. “You can 

communicate with these satellites from anywhere on the globe: 

North Pole, South Pole, equator, middle of nowhere. Inevitably, 

we receive new information that changes the entire mission in 

real time,” he said. The navigator on board becomes very busy 

helping re-plan routes with the scientists, mission managers, 

and pilots. During the Arctic Research of the Composition of 

the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites field campaign, or 

ARCTAS, locations for greenhouse gas emissions were based 

on atmospheric modeling. After takeoff, however, the team 

received model updates that required moving to new locations 

for collecting samples. 

This flexibility in mission planning and aircraft 

configurability allows the DC-8 to carry out a variety of 

missions. ARCTAS was one of the largest missions flown aboard 

the aircraft in 2008. The atmospheric research, an international 

collaboration in support of the International Polar Year, collected 

data to help improve current monitoring and future predictions 

of Arctic change. Three of NASA’s Airborne Science Program 

aircraft flew the ARCTAS experiments, with the DC-8 carrying 

twenty-one scientific instruments and flying 184 hours across 

twenty-two sorties, including flights to Alaska and Greenland. 

The entire effort involved more than three hundred people from 

eight NASA centers, twelve universities, three government labs, 

and several other organizations. 

With the airborne laboratory packed with instrumentation 

to study pollutants for ARCTAS, the team realized they had 

a unique opportunity for the California Air Resources Board 

to study the local air as well. Over the course of two weeks, 

the aircraft made several flights over California, measuring 

pollutants inland and offshore. Using both the DC-8 and 

Airborne Science Program’s P-3B, the board was able to broadly 

cover California during a short time and learn more about how 

pollution forms over the state, where it comes from, and what 

its sources are. 

The DC-8 can do more than help study our atmosphere. Its 

capabilities have been used for archaeology, ecology, geography, 

volcanology, soil science, biology, and other Earth sciences. 

The Arctic Mechanisms of Interaction between Surface and 

Atmosphere (AMISA) mission, for example, studied the effects 

of global warming on Arctic ice formation. A collaboration 

between the University of Colorado, the National Oceanic 

and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Leeds, the 

University of Stockholm, Goddard Space Flight Center, and 

the University of North Dakota, AMISA packed the plane 

with instruments to detect sea-ice surface characteristics and 

atmospheric processes. 

The flying laboratory has also been used to aid studies above 

the atmosphere. In November 2008, NASA partnered with the 

European Space Agency (ESA) to track reentry of a space vehicle. 

“ESA’s ATV-1, a cargo ship on the International Space Station for six 

months, had completed its mission and was made to be destroyed 

on reentry, not recovered,” Cutler said. “The European engineers 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Far Left —During the ARCTAS field experiment, scientists 

flew eighty -six research flights to gather data on the 

Arctic atmosphere. This Google Earth image shows the 

flight tracks of the three NASA airplanes that collected 

data on pollutants and atmospheric properties during the 

spring and summer of 2008. 

Left —NASA ’s DC -8 arrives in Thule, Greenland, after its 

first ARCTAS science flight. 

Right —Katrine Gorham of the University of California, 

Irvine, operates the Whole Air Sampler inside NASA ’s 

DC -8 research aircraft during a flight on April 12, 2008. 

Photo Credit: NASA/Eric James 

ASK MAGAZINE | 53 ASK MAGAZINE | 53 

had made predictions on how it would break up when it hit the 

atmosphere, and they wanted us to help them document it.” 

Traveling 1,200 nautical miles south of Tahiti, the DC-8 

team communicated in real time with Europe. “ESA let us 

know where and when ATV-1 was reentering based on its 

deorbit burn,” explained Cutler. As a result, an international 

team of scientists was able to photograph the ship’s breakup 

upon reentry and confirm ESA’s predictions. 

Coordination and cooperation for each of these missions 

is key, not only between scientists, engineers, and pilots, but 

also between international partners and locations. “People from 

all over the world support these science endeavors,” Cutler 

said. Each mission usually contains a mix of U.S. citizens and 

foreign nationals, and campaigns overseas add another level 

of complexity to the planning. “Inevitably, we’re flying into 

someone else’s airspace,” explained Cutler. “We have to make 

arrangements with foreign governments to collect science data 

over their countries, fly in their airspace, and land at their 

airfields. It can take three months to prepare for an international 

deployment,” he said. 

That coordination usually begins with NASA Headquarters’ 

Office of External Relations, which has contacts with embassies 

around the world. “We consult with them whenever we want 

to travel internationally,” Cutler said. “They help us contact 

the embassies, which in turn help us get permission from 

their governments to operate in their airspace and countries.” 

Obtaining that permission often requires explaining the 

mission science, the type of instruments that will be flown, 

and the team that will be aboard the aircraft, including foreign 

nationals and their countries of origin. “After communicating 

that information, the various governments are very cooperative,” 

explained Cutler, adding, “It also helps if our science objectives 

correspond with what their own government agencies and 

universities are studying.” 

Research can also be done right at home with the aircraft. 

Early in 2009, Glenn Research Center and Langley Research 

Center used the DC-8 as a test bed for manmade fuels created 

from coal and natural gas. The plane remained on the ground as 

the collaborating centers tested emissions from the engines and 

compared them with previously recorded measurements they 

had from the aircraft. 

The Earth-science possibilities seem nearly endless, as do the 

educational ones. In July 2009, the National Suborbital Education 

and Research Center orchestrated the Airborne Student Research 

Program. The first of its kind, the program offered advanced 

undergraduates and recent graduates an opportunity to conduct 

airborne science experiments. Students took air samples from 

various locations and altitudes over California to study chemical 

content and learn how large dairy operations affect the local 

atmosphere. They also gathered data about algae in Monterey 

Bay using spectral imaging. Back on the ground, students will 

be learning how to analyze the data they obtained and how the 

information applies to current and future studies. 

The University of North Dakota helps communicate the 

educational and scientific opportunities available with the 

DC-8, and word of mouth from those who have flown helps 

keep the aircraft busy with experiments. Additionally, the 

Science Mission Directorate has an annual proposal process 

outlining various NASA resources, including the DC-8, and 

reviews the proposals for potential future missions. Scientists 

can also submit flight requests online through the Airborne 

Science Program Web site. 

Missions can be long and exhausting, lasting eight to ten 

hours a day for several days, but they are worth it for the science 

and teamwork obtained. “Imagine flying to Europe every other 

day,” Cutler said when describing the experience, “but the time 

goes by quickly because you’re constantly updating the mission 

plan and concentrating on getting the job done.” After many 

missions during the past twenty-two years, the DC-8 team has 

the coordination down to an art. In the next year, they will 

continue their efforts with operation ICE Bridge, which took off 

October12toinitiallystudythechangingconditionsofAntarctic 

glacial and sea ice, and will participate in the Genesis and Rapid 

Intensification Processes mission to study how Atlantic tropical 

storms form and develop into major hurricanes. They are also in 

discussions about helping recover and document reentry of the 

Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft, slated to return June 2010 with 

the world’s first asteroid sample. ●
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ’ 

 

54 | ASK MAGAZINE | INSIGHT 

Nobody’s Perfect: 


The Benefits of Independent review
 

By MArK SAuNDErS AND JAMES OrTIz 

During a 1995 independent review of the development of Mars Pathfinder, Dr. Mike Griffin, a 

member of the review team, asked the project team how the spacecraft’s radar would determine the 

distance of the spacecraft from Mars’s surface while swinging back and forth below the parachute. 

Discussion revealed that the team did not have an adequate test to prove that the radar would 

work as needed. As a result, the project developed a special test program that may have prevented a 

catastrophic failure. 

The Gravity Recovery and Interior 

Laboratory mission relies on twin 

spacecraft flying in formation 

above the lunar surface to 

investigate the moon s gravity 

field in unprecedented detail. 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 55 

ThE NEW rEqUIrEMENTS ELIMINATED ThE EArLIEr MULTIPLE rEvIEW BOArDS 

AND CALLED INSTEAD FOr A SINGLE STANDING rEvIEW BOArD (SrB) ThAT WOULD 

EvALUATE PrOGrAMS AND PrOjECTS AT ALL ThEIr LIFE-CyCLE MILESTONES. 

In other words, the smartest people can miss things. NASA has 

sent men to the moon, built and launched telescopes that can 

see billions of years into the past, discovered water on Mars, and 

sent spacecraft beyond our solar system. Dedication, technical 

excellence, and “can-do” optimism have made these dreams 

come true. We have also unfortunately experienced the agony 

of spacecraft failures and loss of life. 

Dedication and technical excellence can’t overcome the fact 

thatwearejustnotperfect,andsometimesouroptimismthreatens 

mission success. Having a fresh set of eyes look at our work can 

help us see what our own blinders and mental filters may hide. 

This is the essence of the independent life-cycle reviews specified 

in NASA’s procedural policies. As former NASA Administrator 

Mike Griffin said, “You cannot grade your own homework.” 

Independent experts review program and project “homework” 

with team members to find, and help them correct, weaknesses 

that could turn into problems or disasters later on. 

The Evolution of Independent Review 

Independent review has existed at NASA for decades, in many 

different guises. Centers have used it to ensure technical designs 

and products will perform as expected. After the Mars Polar Lander 

and Mars Climate Orbiter failures in 1999, the Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory revamped its internal independent review process to 

improve the chances of catching the types of flaws that led to those 

losses. Mission directorates commissioned their own review teams to 

independently verify what they were hearing from centers working 

on their projects. In the mid-nineties, the NASA Administrator 

directed that the Independent Program Assessment Office be 

established so NASA could confidently promise its stakeholders 

we could deliver our missions on cost and on time. Sometimes 

the membership of these multiple review teams outnumbered the 

project management staff, and the multiplicity and variety of the 

reviews took up an inordinate amount of the project’s attention. 

After the 2003 Columbia tragedy, NASA revised its governance 

structure, improving the checks and balances between organizational 

authorities, and rewrote its program and project management 

policies in part to ensure that technical and managerial concerns 

about potential problems would be heard and adequately evaluated. 

Among the changes incorporated in NASA’s new procedural 

requirement NPR 7120.5D (which we both worked on) was a new 

and, we hoped, more effective independent review process. 

The new requirements eliminated the earlier multiple 

review boards and called instead for a single standing review 

board (SRB) that would evaluate programs and projects at 

all their life-cycle milestones. We also strove to ensure that 

the reviews would be collaborative and constructive, rather 

than adversarial. The fact that program and project teams can 

suggest members whose expertise they respect contributes to 

the collaborative character of the reviews. (They do not have 

approval authority, since the SRB is independent.) Also, the 

core board membership stays the same throughout the mission, 

fostering trust and good communication. Typically, the 

program or project participates in the SRB kickoff meetings 

where the rules of engagement for all life-cycle reviews are 

set—and the project and review teams have an opportunity to 

establish a good working rapport. 

Another change was that the review process, mainly used for 

robotic missions previously, would be applied to human spaceflight 

missions as well. Typically, SRBs for large, category 1 and 2 

spaceflight projects have a chairperson, a NASA review 

manager, and approximately thirteen experts covering the 

basic disciplines required to execute the project (for instance, 

propulsion and systems engineering, as well as cost and schedule 

analysis expertise). Smaller, category 3 projects may not require 

a formal review manager and may be about half the size. 

Once the independence of each member is verified, the 

SRB chair, with support from the review manager, organizes 

the board and submits the names of proposed members to 

the convening authorities, who include NASA’s associate 

administrator, the mission directorate associate administrator, 

the chief engineer, and the Program Analysis and Evaluation 

Office associate administrator. Their approval is based in part 

on a detailed review of the nominees’ qualifications. 

The overall purpose of these independent reviews is to 

accomplish the following: 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This image is a digital combination of 

panoramic pictures taken by Pathfinder on 

Mars and a picture of a lander scale model 

back on Earth. Sojourner itself is visible 

inspecting a rock nicknamed Yogi. 

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL/IMP Team 

56 | ASK MAGAZINE 56 | ASK MAGAZINE 

• Provide the program/project with a credible, objective 

assessment 

• Supply NASA senior management with an independent 

view of program/project performance and identify 

whether externally imposed impediments to the program/ 

project’s success are being removed 

• Present a credible basis for a decision to proceed to the 

next phase 

Benefits to Programs and Projects 

Developing complex systems is iterative and recursive. Teams 

regularly circle back and revisit earlier work as new information 

becomes available. This iterative process happens throughout 

missions, but programs and projects separate design and 

development activities into logical stages punctuated by major 

milestone reviews, such as a preliminary design review, that are 

designed to answer a couple of basic questions: 

• Have we done our work sufficiently well and completely in

the previous stage to justify continuing on our current path? 

• Are our proposed actions, plans, and resources sufficient to

complete the next stage as well as the overall development, 

launch, and operations? 

In preparation for these independent reviews, the program 

or project team conducts its own internal reviews to examine its 

plans, technical approaches, and programmatic commitments. 

The team assesses major technical and programmatic requirements 

along with the system design and other implementation plans 

and compares technical and programmatic performance with 

earlier predictions. This preparation for the milestone review 

gives the team an opportunity to step back from the narrower 

focus of its daily work and examine its progress holistically. The 

development team has a chance to examine the assumptions 

and analyses that support the conclusion that they are, in fact, 

at the required level of maturity and are ready to proceed. 

The SRB’s role is assessment; it does not have authority over 

any program or project. Its review provides expert assessment 

of the technical and programmatic approach, risk, and progress 

against the program or project baseline and readiness against 

criteria in NPR 7120.5D and NPR 7123.1A. The depth of an 

SRB review is the board’s responsibility and must be sufficient 

to permit the board to understand whether the design holds 

together adequately and whether the analyses, development 

work, systems engineering, and programmatic plans support the 

design and key decisions that were made. 

The review objectively assesses the following: 

• Adequacy and credibility of the technical approach 

(requirements, architecture, design) 

• Schedule

• Resources

• Cost

• Risk 

• Management approach 

• Compliance with agency policy (NPR 7120.5D, NPR 7123.1A)

• Readiness to proceed to the next phase

Recently, the agency has begun using more probabilistic 

techniques for budgeting programs and projects, including 

budgeting to a target joint confidence level for cost and 

schedule. Review team programmatic analysts are shifting from 

performing purely independent estimates of cost and schedule to 

working in parallel with the program or project control offices, 

using the same cost- and schedule-estimating methodologies 

and tools. This approach provides a more efficient, and less 

adversarial, evaluation of budget risk. 

Individual SRB members usually offer recommendations to 

improve performance or reduce risk. These recommendations 

and the SRB findings are collected in the board’s report. The 

board chair and the program or project team ensure that all 

the facts are correct by vetting the report with the program or 

project manager. Once that process is complete, the team from 

the program or project under review determines which of the 

board’s findings and recommendations to accept, modify, and 

implement, and presents its response and action plans to senior 

management, up to and including the decision authority, at the 

same time they receive the SRB’s reports. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 57 

ThE FACT ThAT PrOGrAM AND PrOjECT TEAMS CAN SUGGEST MEMBErS WhOSE 

ExPErTISE ThEy rESPECT CONTrIBUTES TO ThE COLLABOrATIvE ChArACTEr 

OF ThE rEvIEWS. 

Experienced project team members know that identifying 

risks and problems early makes it easier and less expensive to deal 

with them. The SRB meetings and reports are key to finding and 

fixing those issues as early as possible. As in the Mars Pathfinder 

case, review boards have caught problems that could have turned 

into major difficulties later. A member of the Gravity Recovery 

and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) SRB, for example, identified 

a range safety launch issue—insufficient “inhibits” between the 

pressurant and the propellant. Although a waiver would have 

been granted in the past, he knew that the standards had gotten 

tougher and the range safety folks would not approve the design. 

The project decided to add a valve to the propulsion system 

to fix the problem. This may have prevented GRAIL from 

having a launch slip or from spending an enormous amount 

of money to fix it. Similarly, the independent review team for 

the Magnetospheric Multiscale science mission at Goddard 

identified the late selection of the launch vehicle (scheduled 

after the critical design review) as a major risk to the spacecraft 

design. As a result, the launch vehicle selection was moved to 

precede the preliminary design review. 

Benefits to Management and Stakeholders 

The independent review process is a collaborative effort between 

agency senior management, center management, technical 

authorities, and program or project management. Each entity 

plays a key role in establishing, conducting, and reporting 

independent life-cycle reviews. The head of each of these 

organizations approves SRB members and the SRB charter 

(called Terms of Reference). This collaboration ensures that the 

needs of each organization will be met. 

The independent life-cycle review process culminates at key 

decision points when the results of the reviews are presented to the 

decision authority and his or her management council. At these 

meetings, the program or project manager presents the findings 

of the SRB and an approach to resolving the issues identified. The 

SRB chair and the various levels of management all participate 

in the open dialogue, offering their views and recommendations 

about the way forward. Success criteria for all life-cycle milestones 

are considered, and the decision authority determines if the 

program or project should proceed, proceed with specific actions 

to resolve outstanding issues, or not proceed until critical actions 

are resolved. In some cases, they may direct the program or 

project team to put additional recommendations into practice. 

This process ensures that all decisions on how the mission is to be 

carried out reside with the appropriate authority. 

A critical part of this process is assuring NASA senior 

management that we have the cost and schedule resources 

required to deliver what we’ve promised. When presenting 

the results to the decision authority, both the project estimates 

and the SRB assessment of the estimates help ensure realistic 

commitments to our stakeholders. Independent estimates now 

typically fall within 5 percent of the final outcome. In the 

long run, more realistic commitments will result in increased 

credibility of the agency with the Office of Management and 

Budget, Congress, and other stakeholders. 

We are using our SRB experiences to continue to improve 

the review process itself. We periodically meet with the mission 

directorates, programs, projects, and centers to discuss what we 

have learned about the process and how to make it better. We 

have, for instance, developed standard terms of reference for 

particular classes of reviews to avoid spending time and effort 

negotiating nearly identical terms for each review. We have also 

reduced reporting time from several months to thirty days. We 

expect to continue to learn how to make the standing review 

board process serve the best interests of NASA missions and all 

those who benefit from their success. ●

marK SaunDerS is the former director of the Independent 

Program Assessment Office, part of NASA’s Office of Program 

Analysis and Evaluation. He was responsible for evaluating the 

agency’s major programs and projects to ensure they were 

on paths for mission success and ready to proceed through 

key decision points. He retired in December 2008 and is now 

consulting part time with NASA. 

JameS orTiz has served as section head for International 

Space Station systems training and chief of the Advanced 

Projects Office in the Mission Operations Directorate, as well 

as manager of the Johnson Space Center Systems Management 

Office. He is the deputy director (and current acting director) of 

the Independent Program Assessment Office within the Office of 

Program Assessment and Evaluation at NASA Headquarters. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

58 | ASK MAGAZINE | INSIGHT 

Gettysburg Addressed: 

Common Ground for NASA 

Engineers and Civil War Generals 

By HALEy STEPHENSON 

Three days before the decisive Battle of Gettysburg, General Joseph Hooker, leader of the Union 

Army, resigned from his post. President Abraham Lincoln asked General John Reynolds to fill the 

position. Reynolds, who disliked the political strings attached to the job and preferred to lead his 

soldiers in battle, turned Lincoln down. A few days later at Gettysburg, while positioning his first 

line of infantry in close proximity to the enemy, Reynolds was shot and killed. 

Fast-forward nearly a century and a half. At eight o’clock on a 

pleasant June morning, the graduates of the inaugural yearlong 

Systems Engineering Leadership Development Program (SELDP) 

stood in the shadow of an enormous statue of General Reynolds 

on horseback and pondered the first of many leadership 

questions for the day: do you lead from the front or the back, 

and how close to the front is too close? 

The engineers listened attentively to Lieutenant Colonel 

Gregory D. Hillebrand of the United States Air Force stationed 

at the U.S. Army War College, their guide for the day. Reynolds’s 

leadership from the front, while noble, explained Hillebrand, 

didn’t work out well. Leaders of the day struggled with this 

question of leadership location: too far back and they were viewed 

as cowards and had less control over their men; too far forward 

and they were seen as brave, but at much greater risk of dying. The 

loss of a good leader threatened a unit’s ability to operate. This 

problem resonated with Deborah Crane, an SELDP graduate 

from Marshall Space Flight Center. “Rather than always being 

up front and directing people and telling people what to do,” 

she said, “you lead from the back and you help people find the 

direction to lead themselves and others as well.” 

The inspiration for this learning experience came from 

SELDP Director Christine Williams, who wanted to give the 

graduates a unique encounter with leadership challenges they had 

wrestled with for the past year in forums, technical training, and 

hands-on developmental assignments at an unfamiliar NASA 

center. “Seeing the consequences of leaders’ decisions and how 

they affect the outcome when life and death are on the line is a 

strong lesson they tend to remember for a long time,” she said. 

Information and Communication 

A lesson about the importance of getting good information came 

from the Confederate side. On the eve of battle, Confederate 

General Robert E. Lee believed the seven Federal Army corps 

were scattered far to the south and east, with the closest located 

in the vicinity of Frederick, Maryland, so he was surprised by 

news from a spy that Federal forces were assembling in the 

little town just below them called Gettysburg. Because J.E.B. 

Stuart, his mischievous but usually reliable cavalry commander, 

had been out of touch longer than usual, Lee was forced to act 

on information he did not fully trust. The spy’s information 

was legitimate, but the lack of certainty put Lee’s army in an 

uncomfortable position from the start. 

The information deficit continued when Lee sent an 

engineer to scout the position of the gathering Federal forces 

near the hill called Little Round Top. The engineer reported 

that the Federal Army line ended well before the little hill. The 

next day, based on the engineer’s report, Lee sent troops to attack 

the Federal flank but found that the Federal line stretched all 

the way down to Little Round Top. Lee’s engineer had missed 

the presence of an entire corps of 10,000 men, Hillebrand said. 

“He was probably too busy looking at his map,” quipped a 

NASA engineer. A knowing laugh spread through the group; 

the engineers were familiar with the problem of missing the big 
Image Credit: NASA

Positions of troops around Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg. 

Image Credit: National Archives and Records Administration 

ASK MAGAZINE | 59 K MAGAZINE | 59
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

60 | ASK MAGAZINE 

“Why DIDN’T LEE PULL OUT OF ThE BATTLE?” SOMEONE ELSE ASKED. ... ABANDONING 

ThEIr FIGhT AT GETTySBUrG WOULD hAvE BEEN A BLOW TO ThE CONFEDErATE TrOOPS’ 

MOrALE, SAID hILLEBrAND. IF yOU LEFT A BATTLEFIELD, ThAT MEANT yOU LOST. 

picture because you were focused on the details. Perhaps, said 

Hillebrand with a smile, but it’s more likely the engineer scouted 

the wrong location or simply passed by at the wrong time. 

Lee had to make a decision based on the information he had. 

“A lot of what we learned through the program involved methods 

to develop our ability and confidence to take information—or 

a lack of information—and make a decision and go with it,” 

said Crane, speaking of her SELDP experience. “Sometimes you 

don’t have all the information you would like to have, but a 

decision needs to be made.” 

Successful communication poses two challenges. The first is 

simply getting a message from one point to another. Commands 

during the Civil War traveled from higher officials like Lee and 

George Meade in the back via men on horseback, runners, or 

a flag-waving system called “wig wag.” Orders trickled down 

to officers at the front who would walk up and down the rows 

of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, not unlike mission 

controllers in an operations room. The Federal Army had a 

communications advantage in that their forces were wrapped 

around the base of the eastern hills, while the Confederates had 

to deliver messages up and down a five-mile-long line of troops. 

Today, we have cell phones, the Internet, and social media 

such as Twitter, but our messages still don’t always get through. 

“Working on Orion here, information changes so fast,” said Jerry 

Garcia, an SELDP graduate from Kennedy Space Center who had 

his hands-on assignment at Glenn Research Center. He described 

constant e-mail blasts conveying updates, information, and requests 

for the project. “I think the technologies we use to communicate 

sometimes hinder the intent of the message,” said Garcia, “I can get 

you an e-mail quickly, but did you really understand the intent?” 

This points to the second challenge of communication: ensuring 

that the recipient understands the message. 

“Know yourself, know your enemy, and you can fight a 

hundred battles without disaster,” said Hillebrand, paraphrasing 

Sun Tzu. “Lee was very good at knowing who the enemy 

commanders were from his army days before the Civil War 

and from reading newspapers,” he continued, “but he wasn’t as 

capable at reading his own guys until bad things happened.” 

Two months before Gettysburg, Lee lost Stonewall Jackson, 

his right-hand man. Jackson needed little instruction to execute a 

task, and Lee came to depend on this trait. Jackson’s replacement, 

General Richard Ewell, needed detailed steps and perhaps a few 

diagrams to accomplish the same task. Lee did not adapt to this 

new relationship. When he instructed Ewell to attack a Unionoccupied hill provided it was practical and he didn’t bring on a 

bigger fight, Ewell decided not to attack because his men were 

tired. Jackson would have understood that Lee considered the 

attack essential; Ewell did not. 

“This is very analogous to working with different NASA 

centers,” remarked Garcia. “All NASA organizations are 

required to follow NPRs [NASA Procedural Requirements], 

but they tailor them to their needs, culture, and center of 

competency. Each organization views the problem differently. 

Our challenge is improving cross-discipline communication,” 

he said. 

In the afternoon, the SELDP group visited the base of 

Devil’s Den, directly in front of Little Round Top. This is where 

the Union Army held its line—the site of a teachable moment 

on the Union’s communication breakdowns. 

Daniel Sickles, a Union Army officer, was positioned 

with his corps just north of Little Round Top on slightly lower 

ground along Cemetery Ridge. He wanted to move his men to 

higher ground in front of him, so he went about navigating the 

hierarchy to request permission to move. He may as well have 

been trying to navigate an automated phone system: he couldn’t 

get the answer he wanted. Not receiving a satisfactory reason not 

to advance, Sickles went ahead and moved all 10,000 of his men 

without explicit permission, causing great confusion among the 

neighboring corps, who worried that they were supposed to be 

advancing. Sickles’ movement onto the high ground caught the 

attention of General Meade, the leader of the Federal Army, who 

actually rode out to explain to Sickles why his original position 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

was, in fact, better. Just as Sickles gave the order to turn back, 

the Confederates attacked. 

Sickles’ challenge in navigating the hierarchy struck a chord 

with Dawn Davis of Stennis Space Center. Davis served her 

SELDP rotational assignment at Marshall, a larger center than 

Stennis, and noted a difference in the way she had to navigate 

the hierarchy to find the right person of authority from whom 

to get permission or approval. 

At the end of the day, Hillebrand and the group retraced 

the steps of the Confederates’ final attack—a half-mile journey 

through thick smoke, a storm of bullets, and cannon fire. 

The engineers reached the top of a hill, the site of another 

miscommunication that threatened the success of the North. 

Here, Union Generals Winfield Hancock and Henry Hunt 

argued over the best use of limited artillery assets. Their men 

were firing into clouds of smoke so thick they were unable to 

see the enemy. Hancock ordered the men to keep firing to boost 

morale, while Hunt ordered them to stop and save ammunition. 

Total confusion ensued, as no one knew whom to obey, and the 

Confederates nearly broke through the Union line. 

The three-day Battle of Gettysburg ended on the eve 

of Independence Day. Of the nearly 200,000 men in battle, 

more than 26,000 were wounded, and more than 7,000 killed. 

NASA’s day at Gettysburg ended at the top of that hill, just as 

the battle had. 

Further Reflection 

The following day, the SELDP class gathered at NASA 

Headquarters to reflect on the experience, ask more questions, 

and discuss lessons they had learned from Gettysburg. “Why 

didn’t Lee question or remark on the performance of leaders like 

Ewell?” one of the engineers asked, noting that Ewell had not 

followed Lee’s orders to take the Union hill. 

“All of these guys were gentlemen,” Hillebrand explained. 

“It would have been inappropriate and perhaps disrespectful, 

dishonorable, to tell someone they were doing a poor job. Lee 

might have been such a gentleman that he thought he ... had to 

step away. And if he stepped back in to provide more guidance, 

that would have been embarrassing. That would have been 

ungentlemanly,” he said. 

At NASA, he continued, “You don’t go up to people and 

tell them how poor their mathematical skills are, because you’re 

all engineers and you’re all expected to have a certain level of 

expertise. You wouldn’t question that level of expertise because 

that would be impolite, but you might address other areas.” 

“Why didn’t Lee pull out of the battle?” someone else asked. 

“Look at your own world,” Hillebrand replied. “You work 

incredibly hard for eight months or a year on a project, and the boss 

comes in and says, ‘We’re not going to do that project anymore.’ 

I think many of us would find that demoralizing to some extent.” 

Photo Credit: National Archives and Records Administration 

Portrait of General Daniel Sickles by Mathew Brady. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 61 

Abandoning their fight at Gettysburg would have been a 

blow to the Confederate troops’ morale, said Hillebrand. If you 

left a battlefield, that meant you lost. You feel bad about your 

performance; you lose faith in your leaders, in your purpose; 

and the enemy seems tougher than before. 

Another reason Lee didn’t pull out was overconfidence. 

Before Gettysburg, explained Hillebrand, Lee had never 

lost a battle. Why should he stop now, especially so close to 

Washington? The belief that “what’s worked in the past will 

work now” is a familiar pitfall at NASA. Success creates a 

false sense of invincibility that must be constantly kept in 

check. “Even though we’re supposed to think about a problem 

differently,” said Garcia, “we still fall back on what’s worked 

best. We’re creatures of habit.” So how do we break that habit? 

“Was there any evidence of sharing lessons learned from all the 

different wars or battles?” he asked. 

“People who learned, advanced. People who didn’t, didn’t,” 

said Hillebrand. There was some evidence of personal reflection 

and learning, but knowledge sharing and “lessons learned” 

didn’t really exist then the way they do today. Stories of past 

successes and failures were not treated in an organized way. 

Formal efforts to learn from successes and failures are a mark 

of progress. It is one of the things this SELDP group will take 

with them as they prepare to lead the next generation of NASA 

programs and projects. ●
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

62 | ASK MAGAZINE 

The Knowledge Notebook
 

Slow Learning 

By LAurENCE PruSAK 

If you have traveled in France or Italy recently, you 

have probably become aware of the “slow food” 

phenomenon. In contrast to the fast-food outlets we 

find everywhere in the world—even in France and 

Italy—the slow-food movement seeks to convince 

people of the value of food that takes time to prepare 

and is eaten slowly and thoughtfully. Although I 

am personally quite sympathetic to the motives of 

these epicurean evangelists and enjoy the kind of 

food they promote, I wouldn’t want to bet on their 

success against the incessant marketing for fast 

food and the potent and addictive combination of 

salt and fat the industry supplies. 

The factor that most likely hampers the slowfood movement is that the ill effects of fast food 

and fast eating are slow to be felt. You can eat 

greasy burgers and fries for quite a while and not 

experience any obvious ill effects—except perhaps 

being forced to buy bigger clothing. 

There is another phenomenon that loves speed 

for its own sake and that I consider as pernicious as 

fast food. It is what I can only call “fast learning.” It 

is true that few people get riled up when they hear 

that the time for their training sessions has been 

reducedby adayor two. But thatprobably saysmore 

about how the whole training experience is valued 

than about any belief that they are likely to learn 

more in less time. What I consider an indisputable 

fact, yet one almost everywhere ignored in our 

organizational lives, is that effective learning takes 

time. Real time. There are no exceptions. There 

are no techniques or technologies that appreciably 

reduce the time it takes to learn without reducing 

the quality of the learning. This has been true for a 

long time. Well over two thousand years ago, when 

King Ptolemy of Egypt asked Euclid for a quick 

and easy way to learn geometry, the creator of that 

branch of mathematics answered, “There is no 

royal road to geometry.” In other words, everyone, 

even the king, has to go through the same rigorous 

and lengthy learning process. 

Nevertheless, the e-learning industry in its many 

forms has tried to promote its various learning tools 

and methods as not just more accessible or more 

convenient but more efficient. There is some truth 

to their claims for convenience and accessibility, 

but efficiency—fast learning—is a myth advanced 

by people who are trying to sell you something. To 

genuinely and thoroughly learn something that 

is useful in your work takes both study time and 

participation in the relevant activity. Neither is 

sufficient without the other and both are intensive, 

extensive, and largely social activities that can’t be 

packaged on a CD-ROM or a Web site for you to 

absorb at 11:30 p.m. after work and family time. 

Think about a subject you know. I don’t mean 

one you just have a lot of information about. You 

may “know” the capitals of many countries, for 

instance, or who won the past ten World Series, but 

that is a kind of knowledge that can be reduced to 

sentences, lists, or propositions and can probably be 

taught electronically and learned fairly quickly— 

as quickly as you can absorb straightforward and 

unambiguous information. No problem. But this 

kind of “quiz show” knowledge is very far removed 

from the type of knowledge that is required for 

effective project management or cosmology or 

materials engineering or a thousand other complex 

and demanding professional activities. 

That professional expertise, which goes to the 

heart of NASA’s work and how it gets done, is much 

more tacit, subtle, and elusive than mere facts about 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 63 

geography or sports. As far as I know, there are only two ways to 

learn it. The first is through social learning, in real rather than 

virtual meetings and classes. Discussing theories, methods, 

cases, and experiences with experts and other practitioners is a 

very credible way to acquire real knowledge in ways that “stick.” 

The other way to learn how to do challenging work is by actually 

doing it and reflecting on what you have done. This creates and 

internalizes lasting learning that includes the real-life expertise 

that can only be acquired through experience and over time. 

These are the learning experiences that create lasting value 

for the practitioner and the organization. Like good food, cooked 

and eaten slowly, this kind of learning always takes time and 

effort. But if you want to increase your skills (rather than your 

waistline) in a meaningful way, you need to resist the empty 

promise of fast learning. There is no royal—or virtual—road to 

engineering or project management excellence either. ●

ThErE ArE NO TEChNIqUES Or 

TEChNOLOGIES ThAT APPrECIABLy 

rEDUCE ThE TIME IT TAKES TO LEArN 

WIThOUT rEDUCING ThE qUALITy OF 

ThE LEArNING. 
 

 

 

 

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 ’ 

 

 “ ” 

 “ 

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64 | ASK MAGAZINE 

ASKinteractive
 

NASA in the News 

NASAs Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCrOSS, created twin impacts on 

the moon s surface in a search for water ice. The satellite launched as a companion mission to 

the Lunar reconnaissance Orbiter and traveled 5.6 million miles before reaching the Cabeus 

crater, a permanently shadowed region near the moon s south pole, where it hit the lunar 

surface and created an impact that instruments aboard LCrOSS observed for approximately 

four minutes. I am very proud of the success of this LCrOSS mission team, said Daniel 

Andrews, LCrOSS project manager at Ames research Center. Whenever this team would hit a roadblock, it 

conceived a clever workaround allowing us to push forward with a successful mission. Other observatories captured 

both impacts, and their data will be shared with the LCrOSS science team for analysis. The team expects several 

weeks of analysis will be needed to make a definitive assessment of the presence or absence of water ice. For more 

information about the LCrOSS mission, including images and video, visit www.nasa.gov/lcross. 

reminder: PM Challenge 2010 

The NASA PM Challenge is the agency’s annual forum for NASA stakeholders 

to learn about and discuss current trends in program/project management 

and related disciplines by sharing their knowledge, lessons learned, and 

new ideas that enhance mission success. PM Challenge 2010 will be held 

February 9–10, 2010, in Galveston, Texas. registration is open October 26, 

2009, through January 8, 2010. For more information, and to register, visit 

pmchallenge.gsfc.nasa.gov. 

Web of Knowledge 

NASA has selected 1,732 high school students from 48 states, the District of 

Columbia, and Puerto rico to participate in its Interdisciplinary National Science 

Program Incorporating research Experience (INSPIrE). The project is part of 

NASA’s efforts to engage students in disciplines critical to the agency’s missions, 

such as science, engineering, and mathematics. The selectees will participate 

in an online community where they can interact with their peers and NASA 

engineers and scientists. The students will also be able to compete for 

workshops and internships at NASA facilities and participating universities. 

To learn more about the program, visit www.nasa.gov/education/INSPIrE. 

For More on 

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Additional information pertaining to 

articles featured in this issue can 

be found by visiting the following 

Web sites: 

• NASA’s DC-8 Helps 

capture ESA ATV-1 

Reentry: a1862.g.akamai. 

net/7/1862/14448/v1/esa. 

download.akamai.com/13452/ 

flash_stream/ATv_reentry.swf 

• Magnetospheric Multiscale 

Mission: stp.gsfc.nasa.gov/
 

missions/mms/mms.htm 


• Max Launch Abort System:

www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/ 

missions/mlas.html 

feedback 

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