Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA Source for Project Management and Engineering Excellence | APPEL WINTER | 2012

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Inside

Learning from Failure

Interview with Bryan O’Connor

Building the Future Spacesuit
ON THE COVER

On August 1, 2010, almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in activity 

from a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, 

radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection, and more. This extreme ultraviolet snapshot 

from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows the sun’s northern hemisphere 

in mid-eruption. Different colors in the image represent different gas temperatures 

ranging from about 1 million to 2 million kelvin. ODS/ASA: Ntidero CtohP
Contents

20

Departments

3

In This Issue 

By Don Cohen

4

From the Academy Director

The Appeal of Space

By eD hoffman

58

The Knowledge Notebook

Networks and Success

By LaurenCe Prusak

60

ASK Interactive

InsIghts

15

The Importance of Human Factors

By aLessanDro erCoLani Moving from 

a technical to a managerial job, the 

author learned to value a healthy working 

environment.

20

Interview with Bryan O’Connor

By matthew kohut NASA’s former

chief of Safety and Mission Assurance 

talks about understanding risk and the 

risk of complacency.

30

Exploring Science with NASA

By PauL hertz Stiff competition ensures that 

missions chosen by the Science Mission 

Directorate will deliver valuable results.

32

Hands-On vs. Hands-Off Project 

Management at ESA

By BoB Chesson Depending on 

circumstances, strict agency oversight 

of projects can be necessary or 

counterproductive.

49

Lessons from Lincoln

By roger forsgren Leaders and managers 

can learn from this story of the great 

president’s pragmatism and openness.

45 37

ASK MAGAZINE | 1
Issue no. 45

Staff

acaDemy DIrector anD publIsher

Dr. Edward Hoffman

ehoffman@nasa.gov

eDItor-In-chIef

Laurence Prusak

larryprusak@gmail.com

managIng eDItor

Don Cohen

doncohen@rcn.com

eDItor

Kerry Ellis

kerry.ellis@inuteqllc.com

contrIbutIng eDItors

Matt Kohut

mattkohut@infactcommunications.com

Haley Stephenson

haley.stephenson@valador.com

senIor KnowleDge sharIng 

consultant

Jon Boyle

jon.boyle@inuteqllc.com

KnowleDge sharIng analysts

Ben Bruneau

ben.bruneau@inuteqllc.com

Ramien Pierre

ramien.pierre@inuteqllc.com

acaDemy program manager

Yvonne Massaquoi

yvonne.massaquoi@inuteqllc.com

DesIgn

Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group, Inc.

www.hzdg.com

prIntIng specIalIst

Hanta Ralay

hanta.ralay-1@nasa.gov

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

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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 

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ASK MAGAZINE | 3 

In This Issue
 

In their frank analysis of the failure of the Wide-field Infrared 

Explorer’s primary mission (“WIRE: Learning from Failure”), 

Bryan Fafaul and Kerry Ellis explain that this project based 

on “insight, not oversight” didn’t have enough of either. 

Poor communication meant that essential testing was

inadequately done. Reflecting on his experience as mission 

manager for WIRE, Fafaul says, “I remind everybody

constantly that we are all systems engineers.” In other words, 

everyone on a project should understand the wider context 

of the work—not only how the technical pieces fit together, 

but the influence of managerial and organizational issues on 

how work gets done. 

The importance of that wider context is a central theme in 

this issue of ASK. Karl Saad’s story of Canada’s contribution 

to the James Webb Space Telescope details some technical 

challenges, including developing a new instrument at a late 

date when the one originally planned ran into problems. But he 

especially emphasizes the importance of understanding and 

communicating the big picture, including political pressures 

on program funding and how his Canadian Space Agency 

team connects to the much larger NASA team. Alessandro 

Ercolani (“The Importance of Human Factors”) talks about 

the value of avoiding overspecialization on the European 

Space Agency projects he has managed. Team members 

with a range of skills can help one another when problems 

arise. (He also notes the importance of keeping other projects 

informed about how these changes will affect them.) 

Roger Forsgren’s recounting of the story of how Abraham 

Lincoln managed a cabinet crisis provides another example 

of focusing on the broader context—in this case, the need 

to win a war and preserve the Union. Lincoln did not let 

personal animosities or the problems caused by “difficult” 

people stand in the way of forming the talented team he 

needed to succeed. 

A corollary of the big-picture approach is that bringing 

together people with different expertise helps projects. Their 

shared work and shared conversations counter the dangers 

of too narrow a focus and are likely to uncover problems 

at system interfaces that can doom missions. So Bryan 

O’Connor, in the interview, talks about the value of having 

skilled safety personnel involved in the earliest stages of 

design and development. And Dava Newman describes the 

benefits of involving engineers, astronauts, scuba-diving 

experts, and designers of motorcycle-racing outfits in the 

creation of a new, more flexible spacesuit. 

There are other extraordinary scientific and technical feats 

described in this issue of ASK: advances in solar science; the 

Juno mission on its way to study the structure and origin of 

Jupiter; the development of a car expected to reach speeds 

above 1,000 mph. We enjoy celebrating those wonders in 

the magazine. But we continue to pay more attention to the 

human and managerial context of these efforts than to their 

technical dimensions. 

Why? Because no amount of technical skill will make up 

for problems in those areas. And because, as Fafaul tells 

us, “management anomalies” are more difficult to address 

than technical ones—harder to recognize and understand, 

and harder to fix. 

Don Cohen 

Managing Editor 
4 | ASK MAGAZINE 

From the Academy Director
 

The Appeal of Space
 

By ED HOFFMAN 

The first International Astronautical Congress 

(IAC) held on the African continent was a 

potent reminder that nations seek the benefits of 

spaceflight for many different reasons. 

At an event commemorating the fortieth 

anniversary of Apollo 8, former mission commander 

Frank Borman said, “The reason we went to the 

moon on Apollo 8 was to beat the Russians.” 

I was reminded of Borman’s words while 

speaking with Dr. Peter Martinez of South Africa 

and Dr. Adigun (Ade) Abiodun of Nigeria during 

a special Masters with Masters event at the IAC. 

Both had to blaze their own career paths in 

aerospace because there were no well-trod paths to 

follow in their respective countries; neither country 

had the capability to put a rocket into orbit. The 

odds were against them, but each persevered. 

They were initially drawn to space by different 

motivations. Peter said he considered himself “one 

of the products of Apollo”—he was inspired by 

our lunar program and astronauts like Borman. 

Ade was an engineer with expertise in hydrology 

whose interest stemmed from the potential of 

space applications to provide critically useful 

information—he was interested in learning what 

role satellites could play in understanding water 

resources in Nigeria. Both went on to work 

extensively with the United Nations Committee 

on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, with Ade 

even serving as its chairman for a time. 

The aspirations they have for their countries 

in space are rooted in their appreciation of its 

practical benefits. In the United States, on the 

other hand, we periodically engage in public 

debate about the merits of space exploration as a 

national priority. Since we’re no longer trying to 

beat the Russians (to use Borman’s phrase), some 

ask if space exploration is still worth the cost when 

there are many competing priorities for public 

expenditures. But Peter and Ade did not talk about 

space exploration as an abstract concept or an 

expensive frill. Each wants his people to reap the 

benefits—including essential knowledge about the 

earth and advanced technological expertise—that 

more mature space-faring nations take for granted. 

A common theme at IAC among individuals 

I met from emerging space-faring nations was the 

need to build local capability in space. Many said 

they do not want to continue relying on existing 

space powers; they want their own engineers and 

their own facilities. They understand that the skills 

developed and aspirations stimulated by a healthy 

space program help build an educated workforce 

that has the capability to improve society in a 

broad range of ways. 

In a time of transition and uncertainty at 

NASA, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. Peter 

and Ade reminded me that space’s power to inspire 

goes hand in hand with its power to improve the 

lives of millions in ways that many of us take for 

granted at this point. We can learn from them. ●
Title

By 

Intro

star

GETT

COZ

ING

with our closest

Y

 )ASAd NnA aSEO (HOS/ASA: Ntidero CtohP

Active region 10486 became the 

largest sunspot seen by SOHO. 

The spot occupied an area equal 

to about 15 Earths.

By Holly R. Gilbert
The enigmatic sun provides scientists with plenty of puzzles to 

solve, including the coronal heating problem, why the elevenyear activity cycle occurs, and why structures on the solar

surface become unstable and release enormous amounts of

energy. Through sophisticated observations and models, solar 

physicists are delving further into these fundamental questions 

and surfacing with some intriguing results. 

New Observations, New Understanding

NASA’s contribution to the progress made in solar physics

is invaluable, both historically and during the past five

years. The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched in 

February 2010, is producing full-disk imaging of the sun in ten 

white-light, ultraviolet, and extreme ultraviolet band passes, 

taking one high-resolution image every second and allowing 

scientists to study the details of the origins of space-weather 

events. The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), 

two nearly identical spacecraft that in effect slowly drift in 

opposite directions away from Earth by about 22 degrees per 

year—one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind—

has provided us with images of the sun from two additional 

vantage points since 2006, allowing 3-D measurements to study 

the nature of coronal mass ejections. For the very first time, we 

are able to see an entire 360 degrees around the sun, ensuring 

we don’t miss a thing. 

Not only does NASA have its eye on the entire sun all the 

time through its SDO, STEREO, and Solar and Heliospheric 

Observatory (SOHO) missions, it has a fleet of missions

dedicated to understanding how the variable sun affects us in 

the near-space environment of Earth, as well as its effects on 

other planets and the edge of the solar system.

These new and better observations are helping us unravel 

some of the sun’s most baffling puzzles.

One of them is why the outermost layer of the solar

atmosphere, the corona, is heated to much higher temperatures 

(millions of degrees) than the underlying layers, even

though it is further from the core, the source of all solar 

energy. This counterintuitive fact has bothered scientists for 

decades. Energy is deposited in the corona by some not-yetestablished mechanism referred to as coronal heating. Recent 

progress toward understanding this enigma offers new and 

exciting possibilities. 

Many theories have been suggested through the years, 

but a couple of provocative recent studies have grabbed 

the spotlight. A group of scientists from Lockheed Martin, 

NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research), and 

the University of Oslo suggest that the chromosphere (the 

cooler, middle layer of the atmosphere) provides the corona 

with a mass supply via small, ubiquitous cool jets of material 

called spicules that are constantly shot up into the corona. 

Although spicules have been observed for decades, this 

newly identified spicule, referred to as “type II,” is shorterlived (by about 100 seconds) and more dynamic (by about 

50 to 100 km/s econd) than its classical counterpart. The 

discovery was enabled by observations from SDO and Hinode, 

a Japanese-led international mission to study solar magnetic 

fields. This recent work emphasizes the importance of the 

chromosphere, a region that has typically been neglected in 

understanding the heating of the solar atmosphere.

Another theory addressing the coronal heating problem 

deals with small-scale flares, or “nanoflares,” which occur 

millions of times every second across the sun. As noted in papers 

in 2010 and 2011, researchers at Goddard Space Flight Center 

present observational and theoretical evidence that suggests 

much of the corona is heated by small bursts of energy, or 

impulsive heating, that occurs within a magnetic flux strand. 

Turbulent motions at the solar surface “stir” the coronal 

magnetic field, causing it to get tangled and stressed until it 

breaks, releasing a small burst of energy called a nanoflare. 

Unlike larger solar flares, which can be viewed by satellites 

and ground-based telescopes and can disrupt electronics 

and communications networks on Earth, nanoflares are so 

We inhabitants of Earth have an intimate and complex relationship with the sun. As we learn 

more about the underlying physics driving the magnetic ball of plasma that is essential for our 

very existence, the complexity of that relationship becomes increasingly apparent. The field of solar 

physics has made incredible strides over the past fifty years. Even so, we find ourselves in a vulnerable 

period of time due to our increasing dependence on technology. What does the sun have to do with 

technology? The sun has a dark side, so to speak—a moody shift in behavior that generates space 

weather with the potential to threaten satellites, power grids, and astronauts. To understand the 

origins and implications of space weather, we must get up close and personal with the sun. 

6 | ASK MAGAZINE
First complete image of the far side of the sun taken on June 1, 2011. OERETS/ASA: Ntidero CtohP

FOr ThE vEry FIrST TIME, WE ArE AbLE TO SEE 

AN ENTIrE 360 DEGrEES ArOuND ThE SuN, 

ENSurING WE DON’T MISS A ThING.

ASK MAGAZINE | 7
 rECENT DISCOvErIES by A TEAM LED OuT OF ThE uNIvErSITy OF COLOrAD

APPrOxIMATELy O

T NINETy MINuTES 

) CAN ExCEED ThE 

O 

hAvE ShOWN ThAT ThE ENErGy IN A LATE-PhASE FLArE ( NE 

IN SEvEN FLArES ExPErIENCES AN AFTErShOCK AbOu

AFTEr ThE FLArE DIES DOWN, CALLED ThE LATE PhASE

ENErGy OF ThE PrIMAry FLArE by AS MuCh AS A FACTOr OF FOur.

SDO captured this image of an X 1.9–class flare that burst out from 

an active region on the sun on November 3, 2011. 

 ODS/ASA: Ntidero CtohP

8 | ASK MAGAZINE
small that they cannot be resolved individually, so no direct 

evidence of nanoflares was seen until recently. The ultra-hot 

plasma cools very quickly, which explains why it is so faint and 

difficult to detect. Modeling of nanoflares and type II spicules 

and the subsequent comparison of simulations to observations 

is ongoing. Scientists hope to discover which mechanism 

dominates, bringing us one step closer to solving the coronal 

heating puzzle. 

The much larger, energetic cousins of nanoflares are the 

flares we’re all used to hearing about—the phenomena that 

produce the most powerful explosions in the solar system. Recent 

discoveries by a team led out of the University of Colorado have 

shown that the energy in a late-phase flare (approximately one 

in seven flares experiences an aftershock about ninety minutes 

after the flare dies down, called the late phase) can exceed the 

energy of the primary flare by as much as a factor of four. That’s 

quite a punch for what is already the most energetic phenomenon 

in the solar system! 

Sunspots are often the birthplace of solar flares, and 

although they are historically the longest-observed solar

phenomena, they are not excluded from recent discoveries. 

Helioseismology, the science of studying wave oscillations in 

the sun using an approach similar to that used in earthquake 

detection, allows a glimpse into the solar interior where sunspots 

are waiting to emerge. Helioseismologists learn what is under 

the surface by studying acoustic waves traveling throughout the 

sun’s interior. Submerged magnetic fields (like those found in 

sunspots) affect the sun’s inner acoustics, allowing detection 

prior to their breaking through the surface. This has Stanford 

researchers excited about the implications for predicting where 

sunspots will appear on the solar surface.

One of the surprises the sun has thrown at solar scientists 

recently is the deep, extended solar minimum that we just 

emerged from, a period of time during which the sun had 

very few sunspots, flares, and big eruptions (or coronal mass 

ejections). In 2008, no sunspots were observed on 266 of the 

year’s 366 days (73 percent of the time). The last time a year 

had more spotless days was 1913, which produced 311 days of a 

blank sun. Solar minima (and subsequent maxima) are expected 

to occur about every eleven years on average. The switch from a 

perfectly “normal” series of activity cycles to an extended solar 

minimum is keeping many scientists busy trying to explain 

why the last cycle was twelve and a half years long, while the 

one before it was ten and a half years long. Out of the twentyfour numbered solar cycles, only four have started more slowly 

than this one. Now that the new cycle has finally begun, solar 

scientists are still being surprised by the sun’s behavior. 

By studying different aspects of the solar interior, the 

surface, and the corona, some scientists from the National Solar 

Observatory and the Air Force Research Laboratory have found 

evidence that the next solar cycle (number 25) may be very 

different from what we’re used to. A missing solar jet stream, 

slower activity near the poles of the sun, and a weakening 

magnetic field (leading to fading sunspots) are raising eyebrows. 

The start of Cycle 25 may be delayed, with an ultra-extreme 

minimum. Or not—as we’ve experienced in the recent past, 

the sun may also show its unpredictable side and surprise us all 

during the next cycle. 

More to Come

Future missions, like Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus, 

will take us closer to the sun than ever before. Solar Orbiter, 

a mission led by the European Space Agency with strong 

NASA participation, will launch in 2017, making it possible to 

study the sun with a full suite of in-situ instruments (to detect 

particles and conditions near the spacecraft) and remote-sensing 

instruments (to observe the sun itself) for the first time from as 

close as 0.28 Astronomical Units, or about 23,000,000 miles, 

and will provide imaging and spectral observations of the sun’s 

polar regions from out of the ecliptic—the plane of Earth’s 

orbit around the sun. Solar Probe Plus will fly into the corona, 

gathering data on the processes that heat this layer of the 

atmosphere and accelerate the solar wind. 

Solar and space-weather missions aside, NASA is also home 

to advanced data centers and the Community Coordinated 

Modeling Center (CCMC). The CCMC provides a mechanism 

to validate, test, and improve research models for eventual use in 

space-weather forecasting.

The sun continues to keep solar physicists very busy. The 

questions we are still struggling to answer are many. For instance, 

in the not-too-distant future, we hope to uncover the source of 

the solar activity cycle; how magnetic energy is created, stored, 

and released from the sun; and how solar wind is accelerated, to 

name just a few. Our capacity to observe the sun more and more 

closely should help us find the answers. ●

Holly R. GilbeRt is chief of the Solar Physics Laboratory at 

Goddard Space Flight Center. She has more than fourteen years 

of experience in solar physics research, with an emphasis on 

the physics of the solar corona and chromosphere, including 

prominences and other phenomena associated with coronal 

mass ejections.

ASK MAGAZINE | 9
Title 

By juno Intro

: 

10 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY 
ASK MAGAZINE | 11 

A Look Back at Successful Development
 

juno’s flawless launch on the first day of its launch period marked one more success for the mission 

after completing its development on budget and on schedule. The spacecraft will arrive at jupiter 

in july 2016 for its yearlong study of the gravity, magnetic field, and atmosphere around our solar 

system’s largest planet. 

By Jan Chodas 

Dr. Scott Bolton, juno’s principal investigator from the 

Southwest Research Institute, and the juno team had been 

working toward this milestone for several years. A mission 

of this length and complexity required careful planning and 

testing to increase its chances of success. Everyone felt a great 

sense of accomplishment when, shortly after separating from 

the Centaur upper stage, the spacecraft deployed its large solar 

arrays as planned and began its journey to jupiter. 

The second mission in nASA’s new Frontiers Program, 

juno experienced an unusually long definition and planning 

phase—described by juno’s first project manager, Rick 

Grammier, in ASK Magazine’s Spring 2008 issue—that gave us 

several advantages, including “more time to talk.” This proved 

beneficial for a distributed team that included members from the 

jet Propulsion Laboratory (jPL), Lockheed Martin, Goddard 

Space Flight Center, Southwest Research Institute, the Applied 

Physics Laboratory, university of Iowa, Malin Space Science 

Systems, the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and others. We were 

able to establish strong working relationships and excellent 

communication by having regular status telecons, workshops, 

and frequent in-person meetings. 

These relationships helped tremendously during our 

risk-mitigation planning efforts, which included integrating 

instruments early on; working through issues such as the impact 

the L’Aquila, Italy, earthquake had on the Ka-band translator 

development; developing fallback options for juno’s system-level 

environmental tests; and using an innovative tool to track our 

schedule margin. 

Integrating Instruments Early 

Early in the implementation phase, the juno team performed 

interface tests at the Lockheed Martin facility between 

the engineering models (early versions of hardware) of 

each instrument’s electronics and the spacecraft’s flightlike hardware. These early integrations helped find and fix 

hardware and software bugs in the interfaces, increasing the 
CoNCErNEd About poSSIblE lAtE dElIvErIES of thE AvIoNICS ANd 

SolAr ArrAyS, wE AlSo prEpArEd A SEt of fAllbACK optIoNS thAt 

GAvE uS SoME flExIbIlIty for CoMplEtING thE tEStS SuCCESSfully. 

12 | ASK MAGAZINE 

likelihood that flight-instrument integrations would proceed 

more smoothly. 

The first set of tests in spring 2009 between the instruments’ 

engineering models and the Data, Telemetry, and Command 

Interface (DTCI) Engineering Development unit (EDu) board 

focused on confirming the compatibility of the commanding, 

engineering telemetry, low-speed science data, and high-speed 

science data hardware interfaces. These tests uncovered some 

issues early—such as the clock polarity coming out of the DTCI 

being inverted—and gave us confidence to move forward with 

the spacecraft and instrument flight builds. A side benefit was 

the establishment of an excellent working relationship between 

the instrument teams and the Lockheed Martin software, 

simulation, and instrument-integration team members, which 

was helpful throughout the implementation phase. 

During the first part of 2010, instrument engineering models 

were sent to the Lockheed Martin facility’s System Test Lab for 

a second round of tests that focused on confirming higher-level 

functionality in the flight-software interface. Greg Bollendonk, 

the flight software lead, accelerated the development of the 

instrument-interface portions of the spacecraft flight software 

in order to deliver beta versions for these tests. Another goal was 

to flow data to each instrument’s ground-support equipment— 

as would be done during the assembly, test, and launch 

operations (ATLo) phase—to enable the instrument teams to 

become familiar with the data formats and ATLo processes. 

At the time, the spacecraft field-programmable gate arrays that 

controlled the instrument interfaces were not yet mature, so 

they benefited from this early testing as well. 

More issues were uncovered and corrected, including 

significant ones in the high-speed data interface that required 

several months to resolve. one issue in this interface involved 

the spacecraft’s memory-management software. This spacecraft 

flight software wasn’t saving the highest-quality data for the 

ultraviolet spectrograph (uVS) instrument. The flight software 

team took advantage of the uVS engineering model in the 

System Test Lab to iterate code changes with remote support 

from the instrument team (located at Southwest Research 

Institute) until the problem was resolved. All in all, this riskmitigation program paid off in smoother flight-instrument 

integrations during ATLo. 

Recovering from a Natural Disaster 

ASI contributed two instruments to juno’s payload: the jovian 

infrared auroral mapper (jIRAM) and the Ka-band translator 

for the gravity science investigation. These contributions, added 

during the definition and planning phase, were not part of 

the original mission proposal. The ASI contribution gave us 

an alternate supplier for the Ka-band translator in the original 

proposal while the jIRAM instrument was completely new. 

one key feature of this arrangement was that neither of these 

contributions were required in order for juno to satisfy its 

mission success criteria. 

This decoupling helped when a magnitude 5.8 earthquake 

in L’Aquila, Italy, in April 2009 severely damaged the Thales 

Alenia Space plant where the Ka-band translator’s engineering 

model was being built. This natural disaster threw its 

development into disarray. Initially, the team had no idea what 

the impact would be on the model’s delivery, scheduled to 

happen by june 2009, or on the flight unit’s delivery scheduled 

for December 2009. 

Rick nybakken, juno’s deputy project manager and the 

prime project interface with ASI, led the development of a 

recovery plan that upgraded the engineering model to a flightquality unit (called the flyable engineering model, or FEM), 

enabling one unit to meet both delivery requirements. This 

higher-risk approach was acceptable because full performance 

from the Ka-band translator was not required for juno to meet 

its success criteria. A flight unit would still be built and tested, 

and if it became available soon enough, we would consider 

it for flight. The FEM was delivered and installed in April 

2010. When the flight unit became available in August 2010, 
70 70 

Days 60 

50 

40 

30 

20 

10 

0 

Remaining ATLO Margin 

20% Margin Erosion 

4/2 5/7 6/11 7/16 8/20 9/24 10/29 12/3 1/7 2/11 3/18 4/22 5/27 7/1 8/5 

Ship 

to KSC 

Actual Performance 

Projected Performance 

Start Sys 

Environments 

Sys Test 

Complete 

Env Test 

Cmplt 

Date 

60 

50 

40 

30 

20 

10 

0 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 13 JUNO Margin Status—Weekly Summary 

we replaced the FEM with the flight unit due to its higher 

reliability and because we could still accommodate a swap at 

that late date. 

Working through this difficult situation was helped by the 

excellent rapport that Scott, Rick, Dorothy Lewis (Ka-band 

translator cognizant engineer), and the project team had with 

ASI and Thales Alenia Space. Quarterly meetings helped foster 

this relationship. Rick had seen this model used successfully 

on the Cassini mission and set up a rotation of a core set of 

juno personnel, both management and technical, that would 

travel to Italy every three months for management and technical 

discussions. The ASI/Thales Alenia team traveled to jPL 

occasionally for the same purpose. 

The relationships established proved to be very useful 

when we worked with ASI and Thales Alenia to recover 

from the earthquake. The team worked closely with Roberto 

Formaro, ASI program manager for juno, to align the project 

and ASI strategies for revised delivery requirements and tactical 

interactions with Thales Alenia. All Thales Alenia customers 

who had been affected by the earthquake were claiming priority 

in the recovery planning, but juno’s only option to receive a 

flyable Ka-band translator in time for launch was to develop and 

implement a coordinated strategy among juno, ASI, and Thales 

Alenia. Establishing a successful path forward might not have 

been possible without the meetings and resulting relationships 

established during the early part of development. 

Having Preapproved Fallback Options 

The system-level environmental test suite is a major test activity 

every spacecraft experiences during the ATLo phase. Its purpose 

is to subject the spacecraft to the environments it will experience 

during its mission. These environments include the vibration of 

launch (simulated by an acoustic test), the shock of separation 

from the launch vehicle, the spacecraft’s electromagnetic selfcompatibility at launch and during science-data gathering, 

and the temperature in the vacuum of deep space that the 

spacecraft will experience on its trajectory to jupiter. The juno 

team planned a traditional set of tests involving the flight 

hardware and flight software and presented that baseline at the 

environmental test readiness review (ETRR). 

Concerned about possible late deliveries of the avionics and 

solar arrays, we also prepared a set of fallback options that gave 

us some flexibility for completing the tests successfully. These 

options outlined the minimum set of hardware required for each 

test, including the required pedigree (flight or non-flight). For 

example, flight-like engineering models could be used for the 

self-compatibility tests if the flight avionics were not available, 

and the solar-array qualification model could be used for the 

shock test if the solar arrays had not yet been delivered. We also 

outlined specific vibration-level and thermal-cycle tests that 

would need to be executed to ensure the complete environmental 

qualification of the spacecraft if a flight-hardware component 

had to be reworked post-test. Preparing these fallback options 

ahead of time helped clarify and align our thinking for these 

anomalous situations. 

These options were also presented at the ETRR and 

discussed openly with the review board. This up-front review 

minimized the management coordination the project needed 

later on when some of the options had to be implemented to 

complete the environmental tests within schedule. 

“Stay in the Corridor” 

Tim Halbrook, the Lockheed Martin ATLo manager, used 

typical schedule tools to track juno’s progress: a sixteen-month 

ATLo flow updated monthly, a thirty-day Gantt chart updated 

weekly, and a seven-day Gantt chart updated daily. To plan and 

track the use of juno’s sixty days of ATLo schedule margin, 

however, Tim also developed a Corridor plot (see figure at top 

of page). on the Corridor plot, the curve of schedule margin 

burndown—the rate at which margin is used up—corresponded 

with the margin days sprinkled strategically throughout the 

ATLo flow. Tim also included a second curve on the plot that 
 

” 

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14 | ASK MAGAZINE 

New FRONTieRS PROgRam OFFice 

iNSighT aNd PaRTiciPaTiON 

By Brian Key 

Juno benefited greatly from an extended definition and 

planning phase that gave the project team “more time to talk. 

This additional time also allowed the new Frontiers Program 

office to become more familiar with the mission definition 

and to independently assess the project s planning activities. 

Understanding schedule and technical risks prior to confirmation 

also allowed the program office to develop a representative 

cost risk that could be carried as an unallocated future expense 

(UFE) by the science Mission directorate (sMd), and could 

be included in the overall life cycle cost for the project at 

confirmation. This cost risk was established not only through 

understanding risks but also by examining previous mission 

performance histories to determine the soundness of the 

mission cost and schedule profiles. 

Upon confirmation, nasa established a principal investigator 

cost cap and an overall project cost cap. Throughout 

implementation, the principal investigator (PI) and project 

manager managed to the tighter PI cost cap. allocations 

from the sMd held UFE were controlled through a process 

established by the program office, which required the project 

to formally request a UFE allocation and provide a rationale for 

the request. The program office would evaluate this request 

and provide the Planetary science division (Psd) new Frontiers 

program executive with an assessment and recommendation. 

Essential to this process was the well established communication 

among the project, program office, and Psd. open and candid 

communication and information flow between the project 

and program office mission manager gave all levels of nasa 

management a good understanding of the project s status. 

This communication and information came in many forms, from 

monthly status meetings to weekly tag ups to daily test status 

e mails, intertwined with frequent, impromptu teleconferences. 

as the project developed and implemented early risk mitigations, 

worked around impacts from natural disasters, and developed 

and executed alternate test flows and configurations due 

to component, instrument, or subsystem delays, these 

developments were communicated effectively and efficiently 

to the program office mission manager and Psd new 

Frontiers program executive. 

was offset by 20 percent below the nominal curve. juno’s actual 

schedule margin use was plotted weekly on the same figure. 

If our actual margin burndown remained between these 

two curves, we did not need to take action. But if it dropped 

below the 20 percent margin erosion curve, Tim would 

schedule second shifts and/or weekend shifts to bring the 

actual burndown back within the corridor. Shortly after ATLo 

started, unplanned troubleshooting and rework with both the 

avionics and telecom hardware dropped the schedule margin 

close to the 20 percent margin erosion curve. We recovered 

schedule margin by using additional shifts once the issues had 

been worked through successfully. 

This graphic became a handy visual tool for the whole team 

to monitor the schedule margin and to make decisions regarding 

resource control. It also enabled juno managers and external 

managers to tell at a glance how ATLo was progressing. 

An Excellent Beginning 

Throughout juno’s implementation phase, management teams 

at all levels looked for ways to help development proceed more 

smoothly and with lower risk, and the team as a whole worked 

through many challenges successfully. This was possible due to 

our strong working relationships and excellent communication, 

enhanced by the close communicative style of our project 

leaders. The result meant completing juno on time and on 

budget, and its excellent flight performance so far shows the 

benefits of our efforts. ●

Note: This work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 

California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the 

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 

© California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship 

acknowledged. 

Jan Chodas is currently the project manager for the Juno 

mission in the New Frontiers Program. Prior to this position, 

she served at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in numerous roles, 

including manager of the Systems and Software Division, 

assistant flight system manager for the Mars Exploration Rover 

project, flight system manager for the Space Interferometry 

Mission, project element manager for the Cassini attitude and 

articulation control subsystem, and technical manager for the 

Galileo attitude and articulation control subsystem. 
InsIght | ASK MAGAZINE | 15 

The Importance of Human Factors
 

By ALESSANDRO ERCOLANI 

Since joining the European Space Agency, ESA, in 2000, I have developed my whole career at 

the Department of Ground Segment Engineering. The main task of my section (HSO-GDS) is 

to provide mission data systems software—mission control systems, simulators, mission planning 

systems—to the ESA science (astronomy, interplanetary, and solar) missions controlled from ESOC, 

the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. 

The HSO-GDS team. 

Photo courtesy of Alessandro Ercolani 
Venus Express controllers in 

ESOC main control room. 

Photo Credit: ESA 

16 | ASK MAGAZINE 

My initial assignment was the mission control system to operate 

the Rosetta spacecraft, an ambitious ESA mission to catch a 

comet in 2014. For three intense years, I participated as software 

coordinator in the launches of three successful ESA missions: 

Mars Express (2003), Rosetta (2004), and Venus Express 

(2005). After later working on the Galileo and Gaia missions, 

I was awarded the post of head of HSO-GDS in 2009, and life 

changed quite a bit. 

From Technical Officer to People Coordinator 

Suddenly the focus of my daily job diverged from classical 

technical matters to a whole new set of tasks. After a while 

I realized that I had to change my attitude in order to avoid 

frustration and be a good support for the people in my section. I 

had to accept the fact that my direct involvement in development 

of technical systems was gone forever (no more launches as 

software coordinator from the main control room, sigh!). And 

I had to start to thinking about what was needed to allow every 

section member to work in the best way. 

After two years in the post, I’m still learning, but there is one 

thing I have no doubts about: having technical skills available in 

the team is no guarantee of success; the quality of the working 

environment is at least as important. 

The Working Environment 

We spend a considerable part of our life at work; we see our 

colleagues for more hours a day than our partners at home. The 

conditions we experience at work have a fundamental influence 

on the quality of our lives, so one of a manager’s most important 

goals is to ensure that people come to work with a good attitude 

and spend their day in a pleasant environment. 

Sounds obvious, right? But it’s easy to lose sight of that fact 

when technical challenges and deadlines clamor for attention. 

What do I mean by a “good working environment?” First 

and most important for me is to realize that colleagues in the 

section are trusted and trusting, open, supportive, and friendly 

people. We are a team of people who work together and try to 

help each other, rather than a collection of individuals who just 

ensure that their own projects are successful. Everyone is aware 

of the others’ tasks: the successes of one project are successes for 

the whole section. If a project has issues, everyone else feels that 

they need to give a hand and solve the problem. 

The “Space Musketeers” 

You may be thinking, “Too good to be true.” Time for a real-life 

example. At the end of last year, the situation became difficult 

for Phil, a new team member, who found himself under pressure 

during his handover period because of multiple demanding tasks. 

He had joined the section a few months earlier and was 

working as the prime data systems manager on the mission 

control systems (MCS) of Rosetta, Mars Express, and Venus 

Express. A former member of the software support team for 

Venus Express at the time of launch, he already had all the 

technical background needed for the job. Suddenly, one of 

our core contractors resigned to accept a staff position at the 

European Meteorological Satellite Organization, and I found 

myself in the unenviable position of losing a key person involved 

in the maintenance of MCS for four flying missions: Integral, 

X-ray Multi-Mirror (XMM), Herschel, and Planck. 

I asked Phil to become “the man in the middle” and 

work with the departing person in order to later transfer the 

knowledge to the newcomer. The rationale for this decision 

was that the MCS of Integral and XMM are all based on the 

same infrastructure version as those of Rosetta, Mars Express, 

and Venus Express, and he was the best choice from a technical 

point of view. He also got Herschel/Planck because I wanted to 

avoid having too many people involved in the handover, and the 

other members of the section were all under pressure, too. 

The causes of the problem were that I assigned too many 

tasks to him, and some unexpected problems consumed more 

effort than foreseen. 

Luckily, Phil understood the philosophy of the section, so 

rather than keeping the problems to himself and struggling until 

the final disaster, he came to me. In case of overload, there is always 

someone else who can help complete some work, while it can take 

dramatically long to recover from a burnout. I called an emergency 

section meeting, explained the situation, and asked for support 

from the rest of the team. I gave some indications of possible work 

redistribution, but invited everyone to suggest alternatives and 

propose ways in which everyone could help with any of the tasks. 
The Herschel telescope. Photo Credit: ESA 

IN CASE OF OvErLOAD, ThErE IS ALWAyS SOMEONE ELSE WhO CAN hELP 

COMPLETE SOME WOrK, WhILE IT CAN TAKE DrAMATICALLy LONG TO rECOvEr 

FrOM A burNOuT. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 17 
 

18 | ASK MAGAZINE 

Considering that each person is typically following many 

projects in parallel, I was particularly pleased by the outcome. 

Most people were already overloaded, but each nevertheless 

found a way to lend a hand. 

One colleague offered to take over all the administrative 

and managerial tasks on Herschel/Planck (she was the backup 

data systems manager for Herschel/Planck and essentially 

switched to a full prime role). Since this would have created 

problems in the testing schedule for a recent delivery of the Lisa 

Pathfinder MCS, another colleague offered to give a hand with 

that, sacrificing a bit of the work on the Gaia MCS, which was 

in a less critical phase. All people involved in this extra effort 

identified a few work items that could be postponed to a later 

date to make room for the new tasks. 

It was important to explain to the various missions the 

phase we were in. I made sure they understood that we had an 

emergency situation; I explained the details of the handover and 

clarified that some tasks would have been delayed and some others 

would have been “degraded” for the next few months. I believe 

that transparency and honesty helped to gain their support. 

When the new core contractor joined our section, the second 

handover period started quite smoothly and, thanks to the 

technical skills and good relations among the persons involved, we 

completed this phase smoothly. Open and frank discussion helped 

us find the best combination of tasks, and after a few months we 

were back to a normal situation. One for all and all for one! 

I was more or less aware of the steps needed to make things 

work, but most of the useful hints came directly from the staff 

during our open discussion. More importantly, I didn’t have to 

impose my thoughts by telling people, “You now do this, you do 

that,” because they identified who could help where. If they had 

not volunteered, I would have had to make a decision myself, of 

course, but that didn’t happen. 

Never Feel Alone 

The way work is structured in the section helps this kind of 

mutual assistance. Everyone has, in principle, the same range 

of skills and performs similar activities, although on different 

missions. This allows one person to quickly become proficient 

in a different mission’s environment once the specific tasks are 

identified. At least two people (prime and backup) are assigned 

to each project in the section, so there is no dependency on a 

single person for any activity. Having all the knowledge on 

a subject in the head of a single person is obviously a danger. 

Everyone should be a valuable asset, but nobody should be 

indispensable. Having the organization to ensure division of 

tasks and responsibilities is a complex exercise that results in 

more effort for people but has obvious benefits. 

Anyone can go on leave without putting all their work on 

hold. The availability of a responsible backup is very important 

also in case of sickness or job change. Even more important for 

me is the case of maternity leave. Luckily, ESA staff rules and 

regulations guarantee exceptionally good conditions for women 

becoming mothers, and I try to ensure that this event is seen as 

a fantastic experience and not as a threat to a woman’s career. 

Holidays 

There is an open goal in the section: everyone should try to use 

all leave days available in the year. I trust that when someone 

requests a period of leave he or she has checked that it would 

not cause problems with the mission, and I approve without 

questions or further checks on my side. This has worked 

smoothly so far, has saved me a lot of time, and has increased 

the sense of responsibility and independence of the individuals. 

I try to be a good example and typically run short of annual 

leave before the Christmas holidays. 

I stress the importance of balance between work and 

private life, and balance means that there can be periods where 

it becomes impossible to use all available leave days. For me, 

working overtime, including weekends, was the norm between 

2002 and 2005. I have supported four launch campaigns in 

three years, and in that period I accumulated seventy-five days 

of compensatory leave! In the following years I have used these 

additional leave days. Overall, our workload follows the phases 

of the missions we support, so there is a time for sweat, blood, 

and tears, and a time for snow, sand, and sea. 

The International Background 

ESA is international by definition, so cultural differences 

are constantly part of the game. In my section, we have two 

Brits, two Portuguese, one German/French, and two Italians; 

two women and five men in total. We are of course different 

from each other, and we try to understand and appreciate our 

different views. Sometimes when you set up an appointment, 

you have to specify whether it is “Spanish time” or “German 

time.” The first means that you are expected to show up at least 

half an hour after the time of the appointment. 

In some cultures, like the Italian one, it is quite normal to 

have heated discussions. Voices may be raised and movement 

of the hands and body language may be a bit extreme, but 

what to outsiders could seem like the beginning of a physical 

confrontation is probably just a “lively” conversation. 

As long as people are aware of these known characteristics 

of cultural groups, there is no problem. The moment you have 

a German waiting half an hour for a Spaniard or an Italian 

shouting at a Brit, the differences are not fun anymore. 

We have an excellent tradition, which started spontaneously, 

of organizing “cultural evenings” at someone’s place, with food and 

drinks of the country of origin and very often board games as well. 

We have, in fact, a board-games tournament spanning the whole 
I TruST ThAT WhEN SOMEONE rEquESTS A P ErIOD OF LEAvE hE Or ShE hAS 

ChECKED ThAT IT WOuLD NOT CAuSE PrObLEMS WITh ThE MISSION, AND I 

APPrOvE WIThOuT quESTIONS Or FurThEr ChECKS ON M y SIDE. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 19 

year, with an overall classification that determines who holds the 

“GDS gamer of the year” trophy for the next twelve months. 

People First 

I believe we live in a kind of small family in our section. Whenever 

there is some change in the composition of the section, I always 

try to think about how to preserve this environment. A new 

candidate is selected not just for technical skills, but also for 

the capability to integrate in the peculiar environment we have 

created. I have always been supported by my line management 

in this approach. I’m convinced that the spirit of the current 

group can continue for years, even with changes in the team. 

One of my global goals is to ensure that current values and 

habits become an integral part of the section’s DNA, and I’m 

sure that it will not be so difficult to convince newcomers (even 

a new head of section) to adopt them. 

Time will tell whether or not this is a sustainable model. So 

far our customers are happy with our support. I’m convinced 

that the quality of our technical output is related to the positive 

environment we work in. I am aware, naturally, that this 

situation is in large part due to the combination of a number 

of lucky factors (size of the section, character, attitude, age of 

individuals, and type of work) and that there is no single “recipe 

for happiness” that applies to all situations. 

An obvious enabler for our nice working environment is the 

favorable conditions offered by ESA. The introduction of flex 

time, part time, and telework have all facilitated the increase in 

balance between work and family life. Moreover, the support for 

sport and social clubs gives people a chance to know each other 

in various external contexts, and then have a better relationship 

on the job. I believe we have good foundations for building a 

socially satisfying and stimulating work environment. ●

alessandRo eRColani began his career at the European 

Space Agency (ESA) in 2000 as a software engineer in the 

department of Ground Segment Engineering in Darmstadt, 

Germany. He is currently leading the Science Mission Data 

Systems section, whose task is to provide mission control 

system and operational simulator software to ESA interplanetary 

and astronomy missions. E-mail: alessandro.ercolani@esa.int 

XMM preparation. 

r ekra. PD/AS: Etidero CtohP
 

20 | ASK MAGAZINE | InsIght 

 INTERvIEW WITH
 

Bryan

 O’Connor

 By MATTHEW KOHUT 

Bryan O’Connor retired as chief of Safety and Mission 

Assurance on August 31, 2011, after serving nearly a 

decade as NASA’s top safety and mission assurance official. 

O’Connor is a former U.S. Marine Corps test pilot and 

aeronautical engineer, with more than five thousand hours 

of flying time in over forty types of aircraft. He joined the 

NASA astronaut program in 1980 and flew two Space 

Shuttle missions, serving as pilot on STS-61B in 1985 and 

commander of STS-40 in 1991. ASK the Academy’s Matthew 

Kohut spoke with him on his last day in the office. 

Kohut: You were a test pilot and a Test Center backgrounds. We learned 

shuttle astronaut before becoming chief there that you have to have a great deal 

of Safety and Mission Assurance, and of respect for the potential and kinetic 

your successor, Terry Wilcutt, followed energy of these things we strap on to 

a similar career trajectory. Can you talk ourselves. We spent an awful lot of time 

about how being a test pilot is good planning for the flights we did. 

preparation for leading in safety and There’s an obvious safety piece that 

mission assurance? was a little different than what we had 

as operational pilots. We learned the 

o’connor: As you mentioned, both of difference between hard rules that you 

us have test-pilot backgrounds, for about just cannot violate and rules that are the 

the same amount of time and from the kind you challenge. An operational pilot 

same place. Different airplanes, but we knows that you’re supposed to stay within 

came from Patuxent River Naval Air the flight envelope of the aircraft: don’t go
 

ASK MAGAZINE | 21 

faster or higher than the aircraft is cleared 

for. But we were creating the envelope 

as test pilots, so we gained a great deal 

of respect for the idea of expanding an 

envelope, and all the test preparation 

and understanding of the aerodynamics 

and the engineering and the systems 

stuff that we had to know in order to 

rewrite, challenge, or change things that 

in the past had been inviolable rules. I 

think it was that learning that helped us 

appreciate the safety aspects of what we 

were doing when we came to NASA. 

Kohut: What changes have you seen in 

the safety culture during your time at 

NASA? 

o’connor: Before the Challenger accident, 

the safety and mission assurance community 

and the safety culture in human spaceflight 

were what we’d inherited from the Apollo 

days. There was a substantial operational 

flavor to it. For those of us in the crew 

office, I remember one of the first lectures 

we heard as brand-newbies down there in 

Houston was the Apollo 13 story. Gene 

Kranz himself gathered us all around and 

spent about three hours talking about 

that flight, and what it meant to the 

human spaceflight community to have 

experienced the failure of the hardware 

and bringing back the crew alive, and 

how Apollo 13 was considered by folks in 

the mission operations world as right up 

there almost at the same level of success 

as Apollo 11 itself. 

Later, I read about the British explorer 

Ernest Shackleton, who failed in his 

mission to explore the South Pole and 

Antarctica, but got all twenty-seven of his 

people back. He spent two years down 

there after his ship got stuck in the ice 

and then was crushed and sunk, and his 

men were standing on ice floes for all 

that time before they could finally get 

them back to England. It’s the fact that 

he saved everybody that makes that story 

very compelling and unusual, and it has 

a special place in the hearts and minds of 

British people when they talk about their 

heroes. The Apollo 13 story has the same 

flavor. It suggested that we like doing highrisk things, but we really like bringing the 

crew back alive afterward. So that was 

what I was introduced to in Houston. 

The developmental aspects of systems 

safety engineering were there, but they 

were not very well founded. They weren’t 

accepted too much by the engineering 

community; even though there were 

safety, reliability, and quality engineers 

involved in the design, development, 

and test flying, it was almost as if they 

were checks in the box: “Did somebody 

remember to call them?” 

It was the learning from both the 

Challenger and Columbia accidents that 

helped solidify the need for a capable 

and credible SR&QA [safety, reliability, 

and quality assurance] workforce to help 

from day one in the development of a 

new system. I hope that’s the legacy of 

those mishaps, because there were strong 

words in both of those mishap reports 

about the safety organization. Where 

is it? What is it doing? Is it relevant? 

Do the things that the safety people do 

mean anything to the developers? I think 

today that as a [SR&QA] community, 

we’re much more appreciated. They’re 

[engineers and designers] actually asking 

us to show up for their meetings because 

they don’t want to start them without 

us. That’s been a big change. 

Kohut: A couple of years ago at an 

event at Goddard on organizational 

silence, you said that there has to be an 

institutional system in place that ensures 

that people speak up and bring relevant 

information forward. Do you think NASA 

has arrived at that point today? 

o’connor: There has been a lot of 

work done since the Columbia accident 
 

 

 

 

22 | ASK MAGAZINE 

WHEN TERRY [WILCUTT] AND I WERE AT PAx [PATUxENT] 

RIvER, WE spent A HECK OF A LOT more time planning and 

participating IN THE DEvELOPMENT OF THE next aircraft OR 

THE next major mod TO AN AIRCRAFT WITH THE DESIGNERS 

AND THE DEvELOPERS THAN WE DID in the cockpit. 

investigation. There was a need to improve 

the standing of both the engineering and 

the SR&QA organization in decision 

making when there’s residual risk. So, 

we explicitly wrote into our policy the 

requirement that all these people have a 

seat at the table, that they have mandatory 

votes where their authority calls for it. 

We’ve also instituted and put in writing 

for the first time the role of the risk taker 

when we’re talking about residual risk, 

and that’s been very important. 

I think of it as the four-legged stool: the 

technical authority owns the requirements, 

the safety and mission assurance authority 

decides whether the risk is acceptable or 

not, the risk taker must volunteer to take 

the risk, and then and only then, when 

those three things have been done, can 

the program or project manager accept 

that risk. Those four roles have been stated 

in the highest documents for governance 

in the agency. It’s flowing down—and 

in some places it was already there— 

for the decision making for the high-risk 

work that we do, especially when there’s 

safety involved. 

Having said that, I keep telling my 

people and the center directors around the 

agency that instituting that governance 

model in a set of words does not make it 

work. The only way it works is if you have 

good, credible, respected people populate 

the various legs of that stool. You shouldn’t 

just hire enough crewmembers to fly 

the space station missions and no more. 

You must have experienced crewmembers 

who are not currently flying available to 

the next development activity as part of 

the development team, so that you can get 

the crew’s look at residual risk areas, and 

have them in tune and involved enough 

so they understand what the risks are and 

can represent “the crew volunteers to take 

the risk” model that I talked about. I say 

this because there are people questioning 

how many crewmembers NASA needs, 

and why you need more than what you’re 

flying. This is an R&D activity; it’s not 

just about flying. 

When Terry [Wilcutt] and I were at 

Pax [Patuxent] River, we spent a heck of a 

lot more time planning and participating 

in the development of the next aircraft or 
ASK MAGAZINE | 23 

the next major mod to an aircraft with the 

designers and the developers than we did 

in the cockpit. We spent a tremendous 

amount of time in simulators and design 

sessions, and looking over hazard analysis 

reports, and giving the crew’s input to the 

development. That same thing applies here 

at NASA. Sometimes people forget that. 

In the past we sometimes were 

criticized for not having capable people 

in our workforce. Folks might show 

up at a meeting and not be prepared 

or not understand the issue. Maybe 

we’d send a propulsion person from the 

safety organization when the subject 

was aerodynamics. They weren’t much 

help, and they didn’t bother to ask for 

help because staffing was very low in 

the home office. These are all problems 

that cannot be fixed by simply saying, 

“You have to have the safety office 

represented in the meeting.” You have 

to have good, capable, credible people 

in those organizations with responsive 

home offices to back them up. This is 

the job of the center directors, by and 

large, and I credit them for putting really 

good people in our safety and mission 

assurance [SMA] organizations over the 

years. In my opinion, NASA SMA is 

populated today with the best group that 

we’ve ever had at NASA. 

Kohut: What do you think is the most 

memorable contribution you’ve made 

in your time? 

o’connor: I don’t know that I’ve personally 

made any contributions, because I tend 

to steal from other (smarter) people. 

[Laughs.] I am not very good at inventing 

things or coming out of nowhere with 

creative ideas, but I know a good one when 

I see it, and I’ll steal it and benchmark it 

and ask my guys to do something like it 

if we think it makes sense. Coaching and 

prodding is the mode that I’ve been using. 

The real work that’s been done is by the 

folks in the trenches. 

The requirements work that it takes to 

do this job at Headquarters is continuous. 

We often are criticized for having too 

many “shall” statements, and then the 

very next day we’re criticized by others 

for not being standardized enough across 

the agency, which begs for more “shall” 

statements. Trying to drive that missionsupport function that we own in SR&QA 

down the middle of that road is tricky. 

We’re not a bunch of Chicken Littles 

waving red flags every five minutes, and 

yet we’re credible enough that when we do 

speak up, people will listen because they 

trust us. That’s the car I’ve been trying to 

drive, but I’m just steering. The folks who 

are in our divisions here and at the Safety 

Center and at the IV&V [Independent 

Verification and Validation] facility, and 

the safety and mission assurance directors 

at the centers with their people, are the 

ones who get the credit for these changes 

over time. 

Kohut: What do you see as the biggest 

challenge on the horizon for safety and 

mission assurance? 

o’connor: Fighting complacency. I 

commonly tell our folks that there are two 

modes of mishap prevention. One mode 

is reacting to the last big accident, and the 

other mode is fighting complacency. Just 

about everything we do in the SR&QA 

world can fit into one of those two 

buckets. For example, the Launch Services 

Program has seen a couple of failures 

with the commercial Taurus XL rockets 

that they buy. They’re reeling right now 

and trying to figure out how to prevent 

that in the future. Complacency is not 

anywhere to be seen in that community. 

Reacting to the last mishap and trying to 

understand what happened and put things 

in place that will prevent similar failures 

in the future basically defines their entire 

workday. In the human spaceflight world, 

we haven’t had any failures in quite a 

while. Right now we’ve got a logistics issue 

with Russian rocket problems, but by and 

large since the Columbia accident there 

hasn’t been a real human-safety failure to 

speak of. 

There’s a tendency—not necessarily 

of the people in the trenches—but we 

Washingtonians sometimes tend to forget 

the lessons because we haven’t thought 

about them in a while. We sometimes 

forget the tremendous amounts of energy 

involved and the challenges posed by the 

environment and the human elements to 

our designs. Those things become a little 

bit past history, and unfortunately that 

sometimes feeds complacency. It shows 

up at all levels, including our stakeholders 

outside the agency. If it’s been a while 

since our last failure, people who are 

looking to us to do great things sometimes 

forget how hard this work is to do. We 

start talking more about affordability 

than safety, and about getting the NASA 

oversight and insight down to very low 

levels because it’s so expensive, without 

mentioning in the same sentence how 

important oversight and insight are to 

preventing mishaps. We even hear our 

astronauts being referred to as simply 
 

 

 

 

24 | ASK MAGAZINE 

IF IT’S been a while SINCE OUR last failure, PEOPLE WHO 

ARE looking to us TO DO GREAT THINGS sometimes forget 

HOW HARD THIS WORK IS TO DO. 

“biological cargo” by people who should 

know better. These are signs that we look 

for that we’re in complacency mode, and 

of course it’s natural for that environment 

to creep up on us. It’s a real challenge for 

our community to fight that. 

Kohut: What are your thoughts about 

the safety and mission assurance 

challenge ahead regarding the transition 

to commercial crew? 

o’connor: The SMA challenge for 

commercial crew is trying to figure out 

where we fit in best, how to support 

the program in ensuring that, when we 

do finally decide to put our people on 

top of these rockets, we’re not taking 

unnecessary risk. These are not NASA 

developments, per se. The concept 

designs are coming from the commercial 

people. We’re experimenting with new 

ways to oversee that work with as few 

people as we can manage in order to 

meet the affordability goals. It’s a big 

management experiment for us, and our 

folks are not comfortable with it, just 

as nobody is comfortable when they’re 

getting into unknown territory. I think 

the big challenge that I hand off to 

Terry is, “Make sure that we’re not doing 

something inappropriate here in pulling 

back or not having the visibility we need, 

or by not setting the table properly for 

our decision makers to accept risk and 

to put our people on these rockets when 

they’re relatively new and haven’t been 

tested yet.” 

Kohut: What advice do you have for young 

professionals entering the aerospace 

profession fresh out of college? 

o’connor: When we hire a fresh-out, 

we do it because we like their technical 

potential, their education, and their 

energy, and we want them to help us go 

to the next levels in the agency. Because 

of that, when they see something they 

don’t understand or that doesn’t pass a 

sanity check, it’s okay for them to raise 

their hand and say something about 

it. This goes back to that concept of 

organizational silence. Sometimes our 

new people are intimidated a little bit and 

don’t speak up, even when something 

doesn’t smell right. We should encourage 

them to go ahead. You don’t want to 

overdo it, of course, and have people 

being disruptive or educating themselves 

at the expense of everyone else who’s 

trying to get something done. I know that 

can be overdone. But when I first showed 

up at the Johnson Space Center, they had 

a plaque over the wall in the mission ops 

control room that said something to the 

effect of, “In God We Trust—All Others 

Bring Data.” That was quite intimidating 

to a new person, because between the lines 

it suggested that, “We’re not interested 

in your opinion on things. If you have 

data, we’ll listen, but your opinion is not 

requested here.” 

A lot of us came to NASA after years 

of flight testing and R&D work and 

so on. After the Challenger accident, I 

really beat myself up for being too silent 

in the first few years that I was there, 

and I said to myself, “This agency isn’t as 

smart as it thinks it is,” to quote Tommy 

Holloway. ●
Title

By 

Intro

mhatobinggi HdivaD/retne Cthgil Fecap SllhasrMa/ASA N:tide CrothoP

M anaging canada’s contribution

to the JaMes webb space telescope

Along with a half dozen NASA centers, the European Space Agency (ESA), and a variety of 

academic and industry partners, the Canadian Space Agency has been working on its contribution 

to the James Webb Space Telescope. JWST, as it is commonly known, is a large infrared telescope 

that will make observations from almost a million miles from Earth after its launch near the end 

of the decade. With a light-collecting area about seven times that of the Hubble telescope and its 

sensitivity to infrared wavelengths, JWST will be able to see the most distant (and earliest) galaxies 

in the universe. It should also provide new insight into the birth of stars and the nature of planets 

outside our solar system.

Ball Aerospace optical technician Scott Murray inspects the 

first gold primary mirror segment, a critical element of NASA’s 

James Webb Space Telescope, prior to cryogenic testing. 

By KARL SAAD 
The fine guidance sensor engineering test unit 

arrives at Goddard on September 8, 2010. 

ynceg Aecpa Snaidnaa C:tide CrothoP

Canada is providing two essential instruments. The fineguidance sensor (or FGS) helps JWST point precisely at its 

targets and maintain that orientation over the time needed 

to gather enough light for high-quality images. The nearinfrared imager and slitless spectrograph (NIRISS) has several 

important science objectives: detecting “first light” (the light 

of the first stars formed in the universe) and finding and 

characterizing exoplanets.

The Challenges

We have faced plenty of technical challenges designing and

building these new instruments. The most challenging aspect

of the FGS is the need to achieve the required pointing accuracy 

while surviving cryogenic temperatures (around -240oC). The 

FGS will measure the position of guide stars with an accuracy 

of one millionth of a degree (3.5 milli-arcseconds). The

harshness of the environment requires precise considerations of 

the thermal effects on materials to ensure proper alignment of 

all optical elements from ambient to cryogenic temperatures.

NIRISS replaces what was originally called the tunable filter

imager (TFI), because unsolved technical difficulties with a

TFI subcomponent threatened the project’s capability to meet

its scheduled delivery to NASA.

As is often true of complex projects, the organizational

challenges of communication and cooperation are at least as

daunting and important as the technical ones. For instance, the 

decision to replace the TFI with NIRISS during Phase D of the 

program—the development phase—was necessarily the product 

of close collaboration among the interested parties. It could not 

have happened without the mutual trust and understanding of 

good working relationships.

Joining the Program

I became project manager for these instruments when the

project was already well under way. Phase B preliminary design 

work had been completed, and we were well into Phase C

design, preparing for our critical design review. So a lot was set, 

but there were still many issues to deal with.

I had previously worked on Herschel, the ESA infrared 

space telescope launched in 2009. For the Herschel mission, the 

Canadian Space Agency (CSA) partnered with the Netherlands 

Institute for Space Research (SRON) for our contribution to the 

heterodyne instrument in the far infrared (HIFI), one of three 

science instruments on board Herschel. Working on this project, 

I gained some experience with issues and technologies relevant 

to JWST and was exposed to all the facets and challenges of 

managing a project in an international context. Prior to being 

assigned to JWST, I had some high-level knowledge of the 

project from monthly project reviews. But I knew that my first 

task would be to learn from the team, to keep my eyes and ears 

open and absorb what was going on rather than try to impose 

my own ideas on the project. You have to respect and depend 

on the team. 

I was fortunate to have a deputy project manager, Luminita 

Ilinca Ignat, who had been on the project for several years. She 

I bELIEvE IT IS IMPOrTANT FOr PEOPLE 

TO uNDErSTAND ThE CONTExT OF ThEIr 

WOrK AT ThE PrOGrAMMATIC LEvEL. 

26 | ASK MAGAZINE
ensured a good transition from the old project manager. Along 

with providing valuable project knowledge, Luminita helped 

me focus on priorities while giving me time to understand 

the project and its challenges. Without her as my right-hand 

person, taking on such a complex project would have been a 

hair-raising experience, with a real risk of my dropping the ball 

on important issues. 

Deputy project managers work outside the spotlight and 

most often do not get the praise they deserve for their vital 

contribution to complex projects. The deputy project manager 

and project manager form a team within the project team. 

The relationship between them is critical for creating team 

cohesion and project success. The challenges of working with a 

deputy project manager cannot be overlooked either. They are 

likely to have similar interests and needs with respect to their 

responsibilities and growth, so it is important to establish clear 

roles and responsibilities agreed to by both. Most importantly, 

one must assess when the role of deputy project manager is no 

longer required on a project and to allow this person to continue 

to grow professionally and apply the experience and knowledge 

gained to another project as a project manager. It is all too easy 

to lose sight of this while managing a complex project. 

Our aim is to produce technology, but a project manager 

deals with people, not machines. You have to get to know them 

and learn their points of view. You have to let them know that 

you trust and respect them and believe they have important 

contributions to make. The project manager needs to bring the 

team together to work like a well-trained orchestra.

So good communication is essential. We have regular weekly 

team meetings that include engineers, scientists, and principal 

investigators—typically a dozen people in the room and another 

eight or ten calling in. These meetings are very much two-way 

or multidirectional conversations, with participants hearing 

from each other.

I believe it is important for people to understand the context of 

their work at the programmatic level. The JWST project has been 

in the news recently as a result of the discussions associated with the 

U.S. government’s appropriation process. This process is not easy 

ASK MAGAZINE | 27
ntre Chcraes Resnatioicnummo C,renber Bnho J:tider CotohP e

for foreigners to follow, and the uncertainty of the project’s future 

reported by the media, in light of concerns about cost increase and 

schedule slip, had the potential to affect our team’s focus on the 

task at hand. The weekly meeting in this case helped the overall 

team understand the situation. Team members were kept up to

date on developments on this front and assured that our project

and its tasks were not directly affected. This was good for morale. 

This was happening at the same time as we were embarking on

NIRISS. It was important for the team not to be distracted by

events in the United States over which we had no control. 

The replacement of the troubled TFI with the NIRISS

was another case when close communication was absolutely

necessary. The decision to make that change was taken in

the final months of the development and testing phase of the

project. Among other things, it meant a change from a fixedprice contract to a cost-reimbursement contract with the prime 

contractor for this portion of the work. To successfully make the 

shift to a new instrument, we brought the scientists, the prime 

contractor, CSA, and NASA together for several one- to twoday workshops. The parties hashed out the new specs together. 

Because NIRISS needed to be implemented quickly, rapid 

decisions were required. To ensure an efficient decision process 

with our prime contractor, we needed everyone to clearly

understand the objectives, the concept for NIRISS, and the

scope of work. It was vital to clearly communicate our principal 

investigator’s vision, concept, and objectives to the entire team: 

scientists, engineers, and project managers. It was also important 

to involve all necessary engineering and science disciplines in

the concept phase. 

The workshops were instrumental in getting everyone in 

one room and capitalizing on the synergy of their participation 

in the discussions. This process enabled us to develop initial 

science and systems engineering requirements in June 2011 and 

hold the NIRISS critical design review by October. In addition 

to the workshops, we continue to hold weekly NIRISS status 

reviews with our scientists, engineers, and project managers to 

provide a clear overview of NIRISS development and keep a 

handle on potential problems. The final result, we believe, is 

an instrument that will most likely support world-class science.

Working with NASA

Before my first visit to the Goddard Space Flight Center, I did 

not fully understand where we fit in the large, complex JWST 

program. I needed to know what technical and interface issues 

still needed to be resolved. And I felt somewhat daunted, a bit 

like a little kid with his big brother. I worried, too, about the 

possibility that our relatively small CSA team could be flooded 

and distracted by constant queries from the much larger 

contingent of NASA engineers.

That first visit—for a technical interchange meeting—was 

reassuring. People at Goddard welcomed me as a colleague, not a 

junior partner. NASA instrument systems engineer Jim Abell and 

instrument systems manager Scott Lambros, who served as the 

primary NASA–CSA contacts, functioned as access control points 

for information from JWST to the Canadian team and vice versa, 

making sure that the Canadian team would not be overwhelmed 

by NASA while keeping us fully informed on the development 

of technical interfaces, and enabling prompt coordination of 

The fine-guidance sensor ready 

for environmental testing. 

A technician prepares the Canadian-built fine-guidance sensor’s 

engineering test unit for cryogenic testing at the Canadian Space 

Agency’s David Florida Lab in Ottawa.

ynceg Aecpa Snaidnaa C:tide CrothoP
resources to address technical issues efficiently. They came to 

Canada for quarterly reviews and attended technical meetings. 

Jim and Scott helped us make the contacts necessary to do our 

work, telling us which NASA people we needed to work with and 

helping to get them together with the appropriate CSA and prime 

contractor team members. More importantly, they were always 

able to put the technical issues being flowed down to the FGS 

project in perspective. We were able to understand the dynamics 

of JWST issues in relation to the FGS and were therefore able 

to communicate our concerns with specific issues and potential 

solutions back to the NASA team.

Scott and Jim have been critical to ensuring good and 

timely communication between the FGS team and NASA’s 

team. They have shown how important the “soft” interfaces 

are to international collaboration. Creating the personal bonds 

that go beyond “business” has been critical for us to see our 

instruments evolve successfully within the complex system of 

JWST. Scott and Jim’s soft approach and dedication to the 

JWST project and to our instruments has made them an 

integral part of the Canadian team, not perceived as outsiders 

with the sole task of overseeing us.

Communication between CSA and NASA has included a 

weekly one-hour teleconference to deal with management issues 

(plus three or four one-on-one phone calls), a weekly systems 

engineering telecon, and a weekly flight software telecon. On 

a biweekly basis, we hold reviews of action items raised at our 

various meetings and reviews. We attended a JWST project 

workshop held twice a year until recently and have one or two 

technical interchange meetings in Canada or at Goddard per 

year. At the management level, the JWST project manager 

has held monthly management council meetings involving 

all partners and industry prime contractors. This level of 

communication is critical to maintain the interface, to adjust to 

the dynamics of this interface, and to maintain an overview of 

the program in such a complex project.

As I write this, our challenge is to get the instrument together, 

tested, and ready for delivery to NASA. We are scheduled to deliver 

our protoflight instruments in the late summer of 2012. If all goes 

well, our success will be due to the technical skills of the team and 

to the openness, transparency, and constant communication that 

have characterized our work. ●

KaRl saad has been at the Canadian Space Agency since 

2001 working as a project manager. He has worked on projects 

involving the Netherlands, European Space Agency, and Jet 

Propulsion Laboratory. Since 2007, he has been the project 

manager for Canada’s contribution to NASA’s James Webb 

Space Telescope.

I WOrrIED, TOO, AbOuT ThE POSSIbILITy 

ThAT Our rELATIvELy SMALL CSA 

TEAM COuLD bE FLOODED AND 

DISTrACTED by CONSTANT quErIES 

FrOM ThE MuCh LArGEr CONTINGENT 

OF NASA ENGINEErS.

The international James Webb Space Telescope team in front of the Parliament 

of Canada building in Ottawa. The photo was taken when all partners met in 

May 2009 for a technical and scientific workshop. ynceg Aecpa Snaidnaa C:tide CrothoP

ASK MAGAZINE | 29
Title

By 

Exploring Science with NASA

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) provides opportunities for scientists outside the agency 

to determine what science NASA should pursue in future missions. Several different programs, such 

as Discovery and Explorer, publish announcements of opportunity so ideas can be proposed, vetted, 

selected, and flown in the pursuit of groundbreaking scientific discovery. And as much as SMD 

loves the missions we choose for further consideration and would like to do all of them, we can only 

do as many as we can afford. To give those missions as high a chance of success as possible, NASA 

provides guidance and processes along the way. 

The NASA science program looks at the big questions: how and 

why are Earth’s environment and climate changing, how and 

why does the sun vary and affect Earth, how do planets and life 

originate, how does the universe work? Just a tiny question, that 

last one: how does the universe work? NASA science questions 

can be clearly articulated. We talk to the public about what we’re 

doing. We can excite them because we have exciting science to 

do. And that’s what makes it so much fun to be part of the 

NASA science program.

Within SMD, we have sixty operational missions and 

twenty-seven more in development. We fund more than 10,000 

U.S. scientists. We’re partnering with a dozen federal agencies 

and sixty other nations. NASA has a huge impact on how people 

think about Earth and the universe. 

How do we do business at SMD? We believe in ruthless 

competition. We can only pick a few of the missions submitted 

in response to each announcement of opportunity, and those 

that make the cut duke it out and then go through peer review 

to assess which are most viable. Scientific merit via peer review, 

that’s the ruthless competition. 

The community is an active participant in directing what 

science we do: advisory committees, decadal surveys, peer 

reviews, science working groups, the whole gamut. None of 

us at NASA Headquarters think we make the decisions about 

science priorities; it all comes from the community. The science 

community is vital to NASA’s science mission. 

Broad education outreach and public communication 

are also important. During Phase A of any selection process, 

downselected missions—those that are chosen for further 

consideration—must demonstrate to us how they can use their 

mission and their science to further the nation’s education 

objectives. These missions also support scientific exploration 

around the world, as the data collected is given to the entire 

international science community.

But just being able to do great science isn’t enough. NASA 

promises the government and the American public to spend 

only what it’s given. So that great science has do be done 

within budget and within a specific time—as schedule also 

plays into budget.

There’s a lot of attention inside Washington on all federal 

programs to determine whether they are delivering the 

benefits for the costs that were promised to Congress, to the 

administration, to the American people. We at NASA think 

these are perfectly reasonable expectations to be held to—once 

 By P H z 

30 | ASK MAGAZINE | InsIght
we agree with Congress on what the cost is. We don’t mind 

being held to high standards.

So how do you become a successful NASA science mission?

Any leader of a science mission needs to establish the 

team’s working relationships and coordination, a management 

control board, and whatever processes the team needs for 

implementation. When NASA reviews these missions to

determine if they have reasonable technical, management, 

and cost proposals, we also look to see if the leaders of those 

missions are capable of doing all the hard work, making the 

hard decisions, and pulling together the prickly personalities in 

order to get the missions done successfully. 

A leader who disengages is not going to be successful. 

Leaders have to be the glue that holds the team together. Being 

fully engaged means great communication within the team, 

using the formal and informal lines of communication that it 

takes to be successful. 

NASA has learned through failures about the importance 

of minority points of view—the importance of being able to 

raise your hand and say you’re uncomfortable with the way 

something is going. Every project needs to ensure it has learned 

that lesson so that the qualified and capable people within any 

team have the authority to speak up when they think something 

is going south, to have their concern brought up and considered. 

The longer a problem festers, the more unsolvable it gets. Being 

able to listen and ask questions is just as important as being able 

to give direction.

The scientists who lead many of these missions are called 

principal investigators. They’re in charge, but they’re responsible 

to NASA. If something goes wrong, NASA takes the hit. That’s 

why we want to work closely with these science missions and 

their principal investigators—to ensure they are successful. And 

to make sure we fulfill the promises that we, together as a team, 

have made to the American people and to Congress. In effect, 

these principal investigators are asking to be put in charge of 

missions that cost from the tens of millions to hundreds of 

millions of dollars. That’s a privilege, not a right, and it comes 

with responsibilities. ● 

Paul HeRtz is chief scientist for the Science Mission Directorate 

(SMD). He manages Directorate-level science activities, including 

the solicitation, evaluation, and selection process for SMD; the 

SMD Science Management Council; and SMD’s research policies 

and procedures. He is the Directorate lead for agencywide science 

activities, including grants activities, peer-review services, and 

postdoctoral and graduate student fellowship programs.

A LEADEr WhO DISENGAGES IS NOT 

GOING TO bE SuCCESSFuL. LEADErS 

hAvE TO bE ThE GLuE ThAT hOLDS ThE 

TEAM TOGEThEr. bEING FuLLy ENGAGED 

MEANS GrEAT COMMuNICATION WIThIN 

ThE TEAM, uSING ThE FOrMAL AND 

INFOrMAL LINES OF COMMuNICATION 

ThAT IT TAKES TO bE SuCCESSFuL. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 31
Title

By 

Most European Space Agency (ESA) projects are contracted to European industry on a firm 

fixed-price (FFP) basis. These FFP contracts and their statements of work transfer most of the 

project risks to the prime contractor, who then transfers as much risk as he can to subcontractors 

and equipment suppliers. 

Fisheye view inside the

European Columbus laboratory.

ASA: Ntidero CtohP

Hands-On vs. Hands-Off 

Project Management at ESA

 By Bob Chesson

32 | ASK MAGAZINE | InsIght
The prime contractor has a high probability of completing the 

project successfully within cost and schedule, provided the ESA 

project manager does not change the requirements, and provided 

that the industrial organization is sound, with a competent 

and experienced prime contractor who has good oversight and 

direction of his subcontractors and suppliers. This outcome also 

presupposes that the lower-level contractors are competent and 

will provide early indications to the prime when things start to 

go wrong. In practice, requirements will probably change due 

largely to external influences beyond the ESA project manager’s 

control, and he will have set aside a realistic risk reserve to cope 

with the changes. 

Even if these conditions are not met, the ESA project 

manager should not in theory be liable for the effects of poor 

performance in the industrial camp. Theory and practice are 

often different, though.

A weak prime contractor with little oversight and control 

of his subcontractors and suppliers may not detect a problem 

in, for example, an equipment supplier’s design or development 

program. The supplier may choose to keep quiet, especially 

if he is aware of the possibility of future customer- or primecontractor-imposed changes to his area, which he can use to 

financially cover additional work needed to fix the problem. So 

basic problems can remain undetected until relatively late in the 

integration and test phase, when their impact is sometimes so 

enormous that the prime is unable to cover the costs within the 

FFP contract. In those cases, ESA is left with the options of 

financing the overruns or terminating the project.

To avoid this, many project managers, especially when 

they have reservations about the competence of the prime 

or important subcontractors, use a “hands-on” approach to 

managing the industrial contract, closely monitoring the areas 

of major risk at all levels. Provisions are made in the contract for 

oversight, which allows the ESA project manager to get an early 

warning of potential problems and to alert the prime to take 

action before the consequences are too serious. 

Although the hands-on approach is popular in some ESA 

directorates, it is by no means universally applied. Some ESA 

project managers, who have a well-defined set of requirements 

and plans at the systems requirement review, a well-understood 

risk register with sufficient provisions for risk mitigation, and a 

competent and trusted industrial organization, are comfortable 

with a “hands-off” approach. In such cases, the project is 

managed via regular (for example, quarterly) progress meetings, 

ESA independent reviews, joint management boards, and 

contract change boards. In addition, ESA technical specialists 

and product assurance managers are called in to participate in 

management review boards and ad hoc working groups to help 

solve major problems.

Two very different projects within the Human Spaceflight 

Directorate show how ESA has applied these different 

management styles. The Columbus Laboratory is an example 

of hands-off project management that was delivered within 

budget despite a number of launch delays. The Automated 

Transfer Vehicle (ATV) started life as a hands-off project 

under FFP contract, became very much hands-on under costreimbursement conditions, and eventually reverted back to an 

FFP contract with hands-on project management.

The Columbus Laboratory

The Columbus Laboratory was the only surviving element of 

the Columbus program started in response to the 1984 U.S. 

invitation to join the International Space Station (ISS) program. 

It was derived from the Spacelab module first launched in 1983; 

the work was largely distributed among the same contractors 

that designed and built Spacelab with ERNO, later to become 

DASA (Daimler Chrysler), and finally Astrium, as the prime 

contractor. Columbus went through ten years of Phase A and B 

studies, the unusual length of time due to the Challenger

accident in 1986 and then the space station redesign in 1993. 

ESA’s ISS program, including both Columbus and the 

ATV, was approved at the ESA Council at Ministerial Level in 

Photo Credit: NASA

Astronauts work outside Columbus 

to remove experiments from the 

external platform.

ASK MAGAZINE | 33
1995. Before approval could take place, however, the price for 

Columbus had to be reduced from €1.3 billion to €650 million. 

The savings were achieved by a “design-to-cost” approach 

by Astrium that reduced the module from four to two segments 

and arranged for the structure to be provided by the Italian 

Space Agency (ASI) in return for an environmental control and 

life-support system supplied by the Columbus program for the 

ASI multipurpose logistics models. The size reduction allowed 

the module outfitted with systems and payload facilities to be 

launched in one Space Shuttle flight. 

Astrium also insisted that the only way the company could 

deliver Columbus for the reduced price was to conduct the program 

in a strictly hands-off FFP mode, with minimal interference from 

ESA. This was the opposite approach to that taken for the Spacelab 

development, but ESA program management felt confident with 

a hands-off approach to Columbus because of the following:

1. C ompetent and experienced prime contractor and major 

subcontractors. The industrial consortium had learned a 

lot from NASA and U.S. industry during the Spacelab 

program.

2. C ompetent and experienced customer. The core of ESA’s 

Columbus project management team had been key 

players in the Spacelab program; the relationship with 

the industrial team was excellent.

3. Little new technology development. Only the condensing 

heat exchanger and the fan designs involved new 

technology.

4. Mature specifications. Ten years of Phase A and B 

ensured that the system requirements document and 

external interface specifications were at an excellent state 

of definition.

5. The price included adequate margins to cover risks.

Not everyone in the small ESA Columbus team of fewer 

than twenty people was happy with the lack of visibility provided 

by the contractor, who did not allow ESA any interference with 

subcontractors. The quarterly progress meetings were conducted at 

a fairly superficial level, and it was difficult for the ESA subsystem 

specialists to get information from subcontractors. This lack of 

visibility did prevent some issues from being identified at an early 

stage, notably problems in the data management software design.

Astrium did ask for an ESA specialist to help solve 

technical problems and for the technology developments. 

ESA also approved the system specification and some systemsupport specifications that answered requirements in the 

software requirements definition. Furthermore, the ESA team 

had a major role in the qualification and acceptance process, 

approving all test procedures related to verification of system 

requirements and witnessing the entire test program.

In the end, Columbus was delivered on time and within 

cost despite various delays in the shuttle and ISS programs. 

Furthermore, an external platform, not foreseen in the original 

design, was provided within the €650 million price.

The Automated Transfer vehicle

The ATV project was a different story.

ATV was introduced at the time of station redesign as a way 

of paying for ESA’s ISS common costs. A high-level agreement 

was negotiated with NASA limiting ESA’s common system 

operations cost obligation to fewer than six ATVs for ten years 

of Columbus operations.

The definition of ATV up to the end of Phase B1 was done by 

Astrium Bremen (then DASA). Then, in order to provide French 

interest in the ISS program and to ensure an adequate return to 

French industry, prime contractorship for phases B2/C/D was 

transferred to Astrium Les Mureaux (formerly Aerospatiale). 

This was a difficult transition, aggravated by German–French 

rivalry within EADS, and resulted in significant demotivation 

of staff in Astrium Bremen.

The cost target at that stage was set at around €400 million, 

which was unrealistic for such a complex vehicle. Hard 

34 | ASK MAGAZINE
negotiations with participating member states and industrial 

companies followed to achieve a viable industrial setup. 

The requirements baseline at system requirement review 

was sketchy to say the least, particularly in the requirements for 

the ISS interface. This applied especially to the Russian segment 

to which the ATV would dock. At that time, the Russians 

were not very cooperative, as they saw ATV as a competitor to 

Progress. Also, NASA requirements on visiting vehicles to the 

ISS were in their early stages of development.

Nevertheless, a fixed-price contract based on the

requirements baseline from the system requirement review

was placed with Astrium Les Mureaux in 1998. It would be 

continuously updated due to maturing requirements on the 

U.S. and Russian segments.

The fixed-price contract implied a hands-off approach

and Astrium Les Mureaux provided minimal visibility

to the ESA ATV team in the early stages of the project. 

Furthermore, the ATV prime contractor was weak and

had little experience as a system prime since Astrium Les 

Mureaux was accustomed to having CNES, the French space 

agency, in such a role, particularly for launcher developments.

Consequently, problems emerged in configuration management, 

management of subcontractors, and the design process itself. 

The complexity of a vehicle that was required to

automatically and safely rendezvous and dock to the ISS began 

to emerge, and the preliminary design review showed that the 

contractor was far from mastering several issues.

In 2000, the preliminary design review demonstrated

that the current design of the ATV could not satisfy many 

requirements, particularly in the domain of rendezvous and 

docking. The review was declared unsuccessful, the ESA project 

manager was replaced, and a new preliminary design review was 

scheduled for six months later.

During this time, the overall concept of guidance and 

navigation was rethought, some specifications were rewritten, and 

some hardware changes were made—for instance, videometer 

optical sensors for rendezvous and docking were introduced.

The subsequent preliminary design review was a success 

and detailed design began, but costs of the project were clearly 

getting out of control as a result of a considerable number of 

Class A changes. Furthermore, given the inexperience of the 

prime contractor management team, the new ESA project 

manager was concerned about the prime’s ability to implement 

the complex ATV design across the consortium without handson guidance from ESA.

ESA therefore decided to change the overall approach by 

doing the following:

• S uspending the fixed-price contract.

• I ntroducing a cost-reimbursement scheme with ceiling, 

cost sharing, and incentives.

• Collocating the ESA project team with the Aerospatiale 

team in Les Mureaux and instigating hands-on 

management by ESA.

Following their relocation to Les Mureaux, ESA’s ATV 

project team had complete access to all design decisions and, in 

many cases, directed the design process. They also had access to 

subcontractors and could verify the compatibility of the design 

at system, subsystem, and equipment levels. 

Despite problems in the propulsion system and the software, 

the technical side of the ATV project was back on track by 

the time of the critical design review. Financially, though, the 

project was spiralling out of control in the cost-reimbursement 

environment. Something had to be done to regain control.

After critical design review, negotiations were started with 

the ATV prime with a view to re-establishing a fixed-price 

contract for the remaining work. Agreement was eventually 

reached on a price and the new contract was put in place. 

Despite being back in the fixed-price contractual realm, ESA 

retained a hands-on approach throughout the qualification and 

acceptance phase. 

The International Space Station docked with 

Europe’s ATV Johannes Kepler and Space Shuttle 

Endeavour as seen by Expedition 27 crewmember 

Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20.

ASAN/AS: Etidero CtohP

ASK MAGAZINE | 35
Due to a variety of problems in the latter stages, costs 

continued to grow to a final total of around €1.2 billion, about 

three times the original target price.

Some Lessons

What can be learned from these two very different experiences 

of large-project management?

• First, it is essential to perform a thorough definition phase 

before entering into a fixed-price design and development 

contract. 

 – A stable, mature set of requirements must be 

established during Phase B1 and verified at system 

requirement review.

 – Based on requirements, a realistic cost must be 

established for use as a cost target for the fixedprice offer. 

• Hands-off fixed-price contracts are usually only successful if

 – There is a strong, competent, and experienced prime 

contractor.

 – The customer team is strong, competent, and has 

experience working with the prime.

 – T he requirements baseline is sound, stable, and complete.

 – There are no major technology developments required.

 – T here is adequate funding to cover the project costs 

and credible risks.

• Fixed-price contracts are not a universal panacea.

 – I f Class B losses are too heavy, primes may find it 

more expedient to terminate the project and pay 

penalties than to finish it with massive losses.

 – Customer project management must prevent the 

prime from taking on risks that it cannot cover.

• The hands-on cost-reimbursement approach is effective 

for solving complex technical/technology problems and 

should be considered for some phases of a complex project. 

Costs are difficult to control in this regime, though, 

and the customer project manager should work toward 

establishing a fixed-price regime as soon as appropriate. ●

Photo Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Photo Optique du CSG/S. Martin

ATV-3 case integration.

ThE hANDS-ON COST-rEIMburSEMENT 

APPrOACh IS EFFECTIvE FOr SOLvING 

COMPLEx TEChNICAL/TEChNOLOGy 

PrObLEMS AND ShOuLD bE 

CONSIDErED FOr SOME PhASES 

OF A COMPLEx PrOJECT.

36 | ASK MAGAZINE
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The BioSuit is a “second -skin” spacesuit that would allow 

for greater degrees of freedom in movement. 

For the past dozen years, I have been working 

with colleagues and students here at the 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 

and with collaborators in various disciplines 

from around the world to develop a new kind 

of spacesuit. My hope is that the astronauts 

who some day walk on the surface of Mars will 

be protected by a future version of what we are 

calling the “BioSuitTM.” 

By DAvA NEWMAN 

story | ASK MAGAZINE | 37 
38 | ASK MAGAZINE 

Beyond the Balloon 

The suits that kept NASA astronauts alive on the moon and 

those worn by Space Shuttle and International Space Station 

crewmembers for extravehicular activities (EVAs), including 

the Hubble repair missions, are technological marvels; in effect, 

they are miniature spacecraft that provide the pressure, oxygen, 

and thermal control that humans need to survive in the vacuum 

of space. 

The greatest problem with these suits is their rigidity. The 

air that supplies the necessary pressure to the bodies of wearers 

turns them into stiff balloons that make movement difficult 

and tiring. These suits are officially known as EMUs— 

extravehicular mobility units—but they allow only limited 

mobility. Astronauts who perform repair work in space find 

the stiffness of spacesuit gloves especially challenging: imagine 

manipulating tools and small parts for hours wearing gas-filled 

gloves that fight against the flexing of your fingers. 

The suppleness of these gloves is improving. Aerospace 

engineer Peter Homer has won two NASA Centennial 

Challenge competitions with designs that add an X-shaped bit 

of fabric to finger joints, creating a kind of hinge that increases 

dexterity. But that improvement, though significant, has been 

made within the context of the fundamental limitations of a 

glove that remains a gas-filled bladder. 

Future space exploration will 

be expensive. If we send humans 

to Mars, we will want to maximize 

the work effort and science return. 

One contributor to that efficiency 

will need to be a new kind of 

spacesuit that allows our explorerastronauts to move freely and 

quickly on the Martian surface. 

That could be the BioSuit. 

MIT student Kristen Bethke works on the BioSuit knee joint. 

Photo Credit: Professor Dava Newman, MIT: Inventor, Science and Engineering; Guillermo Trotti, A.I.A., 

Trotti and Associates, Inc. (Cambridge, MA): Design; Dainese (Vincenca, Italy): Fabrication 

A New (and Old) Approach 

The BioSuit is based on the idea that there is another way to 

apply the necessary pressure to an astronaut’s body. In theory 

at least, a form-fitting suit that presses directly on the skin 

can accomplish the job. What is needed is an elastic fabric 

and a structure that can provide about one-third of sea-level 

atmospheric pressure, or 4.3 psi (approximately the pressure at 

the top of Mt. Everest). The skintight suit would allow for a 

degree of mobility impossible in a gas-filled suit. It also would 

be potentially safer. While an abrasion or micrometeor puncture 

in a traditional suit would threaten sudden decompression— 

puncturing the balloon and causing a major emergency and 

immediate termination of the EVA—a small breach in the 

BioSuit could be readily repaired with a kind of high-tech Ace 

bandage to cover a small tear. 

The mechanical counter-pressure spacesuit is not a new idea. 

Physiologist Dr. Paul Webb introduced the concept in the late 

sixties and developed a prototype in the early seventies. It was 

a great idea that came before its time, in my opinion; advanced 

materials that could exert the necessary pressure on the skin were 

not available then. In addition, the wearer needed help getting 

Webb’s prototype suit on and off (as do astronauts donning and 

doffing existing spacesuits), which results in expensive downtime 

for astronauts. A really practical BioSuit would be one the wearer 

could don and doff herself in, say, less than ten minutes. 

In the late nineties, colleagues and I revived Webb’s 

innovation and began work on second-skin spacesuit designs. 

Our hypothesis was that new developments in materials 

(for instance, Spandex and its more sophisticated polymer 

descendants) plus supportive patterning of the material could 

make a successful counter-pressure suit feasible. 

Learning Together 

Thanks to some funding from the NASA Institute for Advanced 

Concepts, we were able to gather a team to begin the practical 

work that would test our hypothesis. Students have been part of 

the core team from the beginning. Like most research at MIT, 

the spacesuit work is about teaching as well as practical results. 

MIT engineers and biomedical engineers are part of the team, 

as is Jeff Hoffman, a professor who has flown on five shuttle 

missions, including a Hubble repair. As someone who has worn 

and worked in current operational spacesuits, he can use his 

experience to tell us where we may be going wrong in our design. 

Collaborators outside the MIT community include Trotti 

and Associates, an architectural and industrial design firm 

in Cambridge, Mass.; engineers from Draper Laboratories; 

and Dainese, an Italian manufacturer of motorcycle racing 

“leathers”—leather and carbon-fiber suits designed to protect 

racers traveling at up to 200 mph. 

Bringing together designers from Trotti and Associates 

and students from the Rhode Island School of Design and my 

MIT engineering students has greatly influenced the way our 

groups work. In our early sessions together to realize a secondskin spacesuit, my engineering students spent much of their 

time hunched over their laptops, calculating and analyzing the 

governing equations, while the designers—visual thinkers— 

took out sketchbooks and immediately started drawing to attack 

the problem. After working together for weeks, the engineers got 

more comfortable with the idea of sketching solutions and some 

of the designers added Matlab and its more analytical approach 

to their repertoires. We all ended up better off. 
Photo Credit: Professor Dava Newman, MIT: Inventor, Science and Engineering;

Guillermo Trotti, A.I.A., Trotti and Associates, Inc. (Cambridge, MA): Design;

Dainese (Vincenca, Italy): Fabrication; Douglas Sonders: Photography 

ASK MAGAZINE | 39
 

Dava models the BioSuit. 
 

 

40 | ASK MAGAZINE 

We have “collaborated” with researchers from earlier 

eras, too. Not only Paul Webb (still active, he is an advisor 

to our team), but also Dr. Arthur Iberall, a physicist who did 

important work on mobile spacesuits. He died in 2002, but his 

daughters—happy to see his work continued—gave me access 

to his papers. We have expanded his great idea of a pattern 

of three-dimensional lines on the body that do not extend by 

deriving the mathematical representation and visualization of 

what I call a soft exoskeleton and structure for the BioSuit. 

There is also Dr. Karl Langer, the nineteenth-century Austrian 

anatomist who experimentally studied and mapped the tension 

lines in human skin. 

Iberall’s and Langer’s work informed our thinking about 

possible patterning designs for our suit, and we’ve patented our 

innovations. Elastic fabrics alone cannot provide the essential 

combination of sufficient pressure and flexibility we need, 

especially at knees, elbows, and finger joints. (The flexible parts 

of the body are the biggest challenge, of course.) Laminating 

our mathematically derived web of less-flexible lines, or the soft 

exoskeleton pattern, to our elastic compression suit has gotten 

us closer to the necessary pressure production goals, and we’ve 

exceeded our mobility and flexibility performance goals. 

Tremendous challenges remain before we can vacuum test 

a complete BioSuit, and that will be only one step on the road 

to an operational system that astronauts could wear in space. So 

far, we have been testing leg prototypes in a vacuum chamber 

at MIT. We are within striking distance of our pressure goal. 

Adding wearable sensors to the suit is another challenge that 

we are working on currently, and we’ve designed a new gaspressured helmet, one that is closer fitting than current globeshaped helmets. We would like to give astronauts the ability to 

turn their heads and look over their shoulders, which means 

designing a new kind of airtight joint between the helmet and 

the rest of the BioSuit. 

There is also the question of how to package life support 

for the suit. The large backpack that supplies oxygen, thermal 

control, and other necessities to current spacesuits tends to 

unbalance astronauts working in partial-gravity environments. 

We have tapped into the professional diving community for 

help designing a new life-support system for the BioSuit, 

perhaps a modular one to allow astronauts to carry only what 

they need and provide quick bottle changes for their extreme 

exploration assignments. 

Given a full core team of about a dozen people (which 

we do not have presently because of lack of funding), I think 

we could have a complete suit ready for testing within three 

years. But, as with any research and development project, it is 

important to keep an open mind in this process. We even need 

to be willing to accept evidence that our idea won’t work. (So 

far, fortunately, we haven’t found any deal breakers; our results 

suggest that the BioSuit is technically feasible and could become 

a practical reality.) And we have to consider alternatives that may 

prove more practical than our original concept, though not as 

elegant—for instance, a hybrid suit that combines mechanical 

counter-pressure arms and legs with a gas-pressurized trunk. 

The Potential 

We started this work with a vision of bio-suited explorers on 

the surface of Mars. That is still our goal, but for the past five 

years we have received National Science Foundation funding for 

applications on Earth that are also exciting. 

We have been working with colleagues at Children’s 

Hospital in Boston, Harvard’s Wyss Institute, Boston 

University, and Draper Laboratory to see if we can use our 

technology and engineering designs to help infants with brain 

damage that affects motor skills, children with cerebral palsy, 

and stroke victims, who typically lose motor skills on one side of 

their bodies. The idea is first to use BioSuit “sleeves” with builtin sensors on the legs to measure movements—to understand, 

for instance, how much motion and kicking by infants is typical 

and compare that with the limited kicking and motions of 

children with cerebral palsy. The next step—a big one—is to 

add actuators that can enhance and direct movement. In the 

case of cerebral palsy and stroke victims, that would be a way of 

giving back some of the lost motion. People with cerebral palsy 

expend a lot of energy moving and have stiffened muscles; our 

BioSuit technology and know-how could guide movement and 

enhance mobility to make it more efficient. And because the 

brains of newborns are still so plastic, enhancing the natural 

kicking of infants with potential motor problems from brain 

damage might actually reshape the motor programs and partly 

“heal” their brains. 

Like an operational bio-spacesuit, the biomedical applications 

are in the future, but we are making encouraging progress. 

In the process, we are learning about materials science and 

biomechanics; creating diverse cooperative communities of 

engineers, designers, scientists, and artists; and training a new 

generation of creative engineers. The possibilities are endless. 

How about putting actuators on a skintight spacesuit to give 

astronauts more-than-normal speed and agility? No one knows 

how far we can go. Stay tuned. ● 

dava newman is professor of aeronautics and astronautics 

and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of 

Technology (MIT). She is also the director of the Technology 

and Policy Program and a Margaret MacVicar faculty fellow. 

Her expertise is in multidisciplinary research that combines 

aerospace biomedical engineering, human-in-the-loop modeling, 

biomechanics, human-interface technology, life sciences, 

systems analysis, design, and policy. 
By MAUREEN MADDEN

I love to learn about all the cool things 

we work on here at NASA, but I don’t 

have time to read all the press releases or 

go to all the workshops and conferences. 

So in 2005, I started my public service 

activity of taking coworkers out to 

lunch. I am a senior systems engineer 

who has worked on everything from 

particle detectors that study the sun to 

ground systems that will capture data 

from weather satellites. When I am 

working on a project, I see the same 

group of coworkers, and we talk about 

our project. I feel that I am missing 

out on what other projects are doing. 

The lunches help me catch up with old 

colleagues and get energized by their 

passion for their projects.
Listening to colleagues’ success stories is a great way to learn 

from and build on what worked for them. Why reinvent a 

solution to a problem when you can improve or adapt what 

someone else has already discovered? No one at NASA knows 

all there is to know about everything. 

I am one of the rare extroverts at Goddard Space Flight 

Center, and I have no problem inviting scientists, engineers, 

technicians, attorneys, managers, and directors out of the office 

for a friendly lunch. What I like about the lunches is that I learn 

something new at every event, as does the person I invite. They 

also appreciate my effort to get them out of their routines and 

their offices. It is like giving them a gift. Over the past six years 

I have taken hundreds of coworkers to lunch—Dutch treat, of 

course. This year I decided to step up my lunches by bringing 

my network of friends from around Goddard together to share 

their success stories with others who may need their knowledge, 

or who might hear about a solution to a problem that can be 

adapted to another challenge in another part of the organization 

to make improvements. 

It is not hard to locate an open conference room and send 

out an e-mail to my friends inviting them to talk about what is 

working here at Goddard. I hold the lunches monthly and rotate 

the days of the week so that no one will be left out because they 

have a standing meeting at lunchtime on a particular day. Then 

I collect the RSVPs and see who is free to meet this month. 

The turnouts have been a diverse group of about ten to twenty 

people from most of the organizations on center.

When firsthand knowledge and experiences are exchanged 

in story form, we connect to that expertise on an emotional 

level. Also, we can immediately ask questions to get a better 

understanding of the situations and actions taken. And we 

connect with the storytellers, building relationships that expand 

our network of subject-matter experts.

Everyone needs a break to improve his or her productivity. 

These monthly lunches offer a break from routine, from the 

back-to-back meetings, endless e-mail, and quick lunches in the 

office. Everyone is welcome, whether or not they have a story to 

tell. Sometimes people just want to listen and learn from others; 

sometimes they don’t have a new success story they are ready to 

share. That’s okay. Just by coming, people see a positive outcome 

and have new energy to take back to their offices.

Stories have included a variety of topics: How did you 

find the funding for that needed test? How did you promote 

your employee? Why are your meetings so productive? How 

42 | ASK MAGAZINE
did you solve that high-priority issue? How did your team solve 

that anomaly? How did you develop trust with Headquarters 

or your contractor? How did you solve that technical challenge 

or develop that new technology? How did you move that plan 

to implementation? How did you move the funding around so 

fast? How did you win that proposal or secure that contract? 

How did you save the project money? How did you support a 

colleague’s success? How do you get through all your e-mail?

Participants have offered stories on turning a “no” into a 

“yes,” solving an “impossible” problem, turning an almost 

cancellation into a success story, and having a successful

promotion. There are also stories about how two diverse

proposal teams affected morale and motivation, creative and

collaborative ways to present at a project monthly review, and 

how the Information Technology (IT) and Communications 

Directorate can help in ways we didn’t know about.

The successful promotion story was about getting the facts 

right and resolving misunderstandings. A couple of listeners were 

also advocating for a promotion but didn’t understand the process 

or requirements. This story helped answer some of their questions 

and encouraged them to have conversations with their supervisors 

to get to an understanding about their particular requirements.

Eric Newman, from the Management Operation Directorate, 

shared a story about fixing an “impossible” problem. In

procurement, where Eric works, everyone uses the same web site 

to research past procurement precedents before they develop new 

procurement documents. Over time, the procurement policy page 

had grown larger and larger; there was never really a “master plan” 

for its layout and development. The result was a page that was 

inefficient and not user friendly. The user had to know 

where things were or had to look through long lists 

of information, often in multiple places. 

This process was extremely inefficient 

and caused important guidance to be 

overlooked because it was so hard to sift 

through all the information to find what 

was relevant. Everyone knew this was a 

major problem, but no one had the time 

or knowledge needed to redesign such a 

complicated search tool. 

Eric stepped up and started to gather a 

team of friends and coworkers who he thought 

understood the details of the problem, had ideas to 

make improvements, and were motivated to get to a solution. 

I hOLD ThE LuNChES MONThLy AND rOTATE 

ThE DAyS OF ThE WEEK SO ThAT NO ONE 

WILL bE LEFT OuT bECAuSE ThEy hAvE A 

STANDING MEETING AT LuNChTIME ON A 

PArTICuLAr DAy.

ASK MAGAZINE | 43
It took a lot of effort just to get everyone to meetings but, once 

they saw that success was possible, people became committed to 

the project. He also used his network to find an IT person who 

could work on the web site. He found out that procurement fell 

within the center’s overhead budget and specific funds would 

not need to be found to cover the cost of the Information 

Technology and Communications Directorate to 

provide a web designer.

The response to the new web site has been 

overwhelmingly positive. Since it went live, Eric 

has received numerous phone calls from coworkers 

who were excited about how quickly and easily they 

were able to find what they needed. The web-site 

redesign team recently won an award for innovation. 

The award write-up said, “The results of this work benefit 

an entire operational community who use this information daily 

to award and administer contract instruments. We couldn’t be 

more excited about the new look and feel. It is user friendly 

and will save contract specialists time and energy in finding 

the information that they need.” So, thanks to leadership, 

persistence, and networking, this team developed an efficient 

new user-friendly tool that benefits the whole office and entire 

center. A lunch participant who heard Eric’s story also needed 

a new web site but did not have the funds. His story moved her 

to contact the Information Technology and Communications 

Directorate to see if they could help.

You don’t know what you don’t know, and you never know 

what may be useful. At the lunches, people hear about creative 

new ways of solving old problems. We learn from and support 

each other at no cost for the knowledge transfer. That is why 

I have named the lunch group the “Collaborative Collective.” 

The group is stimulating innovation by creating a culture more 

open to change and willing to leave behind old habits that no 

longer serve us, like eating in our offices instead of talking to 

each other over lunch. 

Even this article is an example of how the Collaborative 

Collective works. Steve Scott, the Goddard chief engineer, 

suggested at one of our lunches that I write it. Now maybe 

reading it has given you ideas about a new way to share your 

knowledge. What success story do you have? Who can benefit 

from hearing it and help move NASA forward? ●

44 | ASK MAGAZINE
Title

By 

Intro

intr MadehekcoL/ASA N:tide CrothoP

Closeup of the cryostat 

during hydrogen testing at 

Lockheed-Martin's Santa 

Cruz facility in July 1997.

By BRyAN FAFAUL AND KERRy ELLIS 

In 1999, the Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) lost its primary mission thirty-six hours after 

launch. Those who worked on WIRE, which was the fifth of the Explorer Program’s Small 

Explorer–class missions, thought they had done what they needed to achieve success. But a mishap 

investigation and a 2002 Government Accountability Office report on NASA’s lessons learned 

highlighted poor communication and incomplete testing as contributors to this and other NASA 

failures. The team’s informal motto, “insight, not oversight,” also helped WIRE’s issues stay hidden.
The motto was meant to respect the professionalism and

expertise of each organization involved in the mission.

WIRE had a complex organizational structure, with mission

management at Goddard Space Flight Center, instrument

development at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and

instrument implementation at a contractor’s location with

supervision by JPL. This arrangement was meant to capitalize

on the strengths of each organization. By guiding team

interactions with “insight, not oversight,” the goal was to avoid

perceptions of distrust or micromanagement and facilitate a

smooth working arrangement that could proceed without the

hang-ups of too much oversight. This approach, however, had

unintended consequences.

WIRE’s sensitive infrared telescope was the most visibly

affected by the limited oversight. Meant to study how galaxies

formed and evolved, the telescope’s infrared detectors required

an extremely cold, 7 kelvin environment in order to operate with 

precision and without interference from the heat of the telescope 

itself. To achieve this, the telescope was protected inside a frozenhydrogen-filled dewar, or cryostat. The plan was to keep the

telescope safely covered inside the cryostat until WIRE made it

into the deep cold of space. Then the cryostat cover would be

ejected and the telescope would begin operations.

“We spent three years ensuring that cover would come

off, and probably only a handful of hours making sure that

it would stay on,” said Bryan Fafaul, who was the mission

manager for WIRE.

Soon after launch—too soon—the cover ejected. 

Communication Breakdown

During development, delivery of the pyro box that would eject

the cover had been delayed. As a result, the box wasn’t adequately 

included in a scheduled peer review of WIRE’s electronics. A

change of management, and the failure to communicate to the

new management that the peer review was inadequate, resulted

in no additional review of the design.

“We as engineers and scientists do a very good job

addressing technical anomalies. We do a great job diagnosing

the problem, making the appropriate corrections, and

performing the necessary regression testing to ensure success,”

said Fafaul. “Management anomalies are just as important but

are more difficult to address. They take a long time to recognize, 

aftereffects are unclear, and regression testing is difficult. For

WIRE, we had an issue: we weren’t communicating anymore.

Ultimately, we had some personnel change out, and that made

a significant difference in our communication. But the thing

we didn’t know how to do was analyze what damage had been

done as a result. We made a change, but we didn’t know how to

go back and verify [regression test] what we caught and what we 

missed. We just didn’t know how to do that.”

The result was a chain reaction of miscommunication that 

led to a lack of insight. 

Jim Watzin, who was the Small Explorer project manager 

at the time, described the communication difficulties as a 

matter of misconceived ownership and distrust of outside 

opinions. “These folks feared oversight and criticism and hid 

behind the organizational boundaries in order to ensure their 

privacy,” he wrote in response to a case study on the mission. 

“They lost the opportunity for thorough peer review (the first 

opportunity to catch the design defect) and in doing so they 

lost the entire mission.”

“Everyone was being told to back off and let the 

implementing organization do its thing with only minimal 

interference,” added Bill Townsend, who was Goddard’s deputy 

director at the time, in his own response. “... This guidance was 

sometimes interpreted in a way that ignored many of the tenets 

of good management. Sometimes the interpretation of this was 

to do nothing .... Secondly, WIRE had two NASA centers 

working on it, one [JPL] reporting to the other [Goddard]. 

Given that either center could have adequately done any of the 

jobs, professional courtesy dictated neither get in the way of the 

other. While this was a noble gesture, it did create considerable 

confusion as to who was in charge of what.”

As a result, the contractor was able to proceed with the pyro box 

development without the peer review oversight needed to ensure 

success. Crucial details about the box design were not complete, 

others had little documentation, some were included in notes but 

left off data sheets. No one had a complete view of all the circuitry 

involved in the pyro box, and an indication that something might 

be amiss wasn’t fully analyzed during integration testing.

Test as You Fly, Fly as You Test

One of the undocumented pieces of information was the 

startup characteristics of the pyro box—namely how long the 

instrument took to power up and the effects other current signals 

would have on the box’s field-programmable gate array (FPGA) 

during its startup. This detail was overlooked due to delays in 

the box’s design delivery that prevented it from being included 

in subsystem peer review and the mission system design review.

Testing of the pyro box was challenging because of the 

cryostat. “It was a hydrogen dewar. You can’t just load it up with 

hydrogen and take it into any building and test it,” explained 

Fafaul. “So we had to adapt and make provisions to do things a 

little bit differently.”

Since the cryostat itself could not be tested with the 

actual pyro box while filled with frozen hydrogen—otherwise 

known as being in its nominal, or ideal, state—the team used 

a pyrotechnic test unit to simulate the pyro event. The test 

unit had been successfully used in testing for previous Small 

Explorer–class missions, and was well known for being a bit 

46 | ASK MAGAZINE
wide field

infrared 

explorer

ASA: Ntidero Cto

The Wide-field Infrared Explorer.

hP

ASK MAGAZINE | 47
finicky about false triggers. This knowledge, and a contractor’s 

documented explanation of a similar event, would be the 

foundation for dismissing a valid early-trigger event that made 

itself evident during spacecraft testing.

Before WIRE launched, the pyro box on the cryostat had 

been powered off for nearly two weeks, allowing any residual 

charge in the circuitry to bleed off. Residual charge turned out 

to be the key to maintaining a valid test configuration for the 

pyro box during spacecraft testing, which was occurring almost 

daily. When the team sent a signal to power up the system after 

launch, the pyro box powered on in an indeterminate state and 

the spacecraft immediately fired all pyro devices. The cryostat 

cover blew off, exposing the frozen hydrogen to the heat of the 

sun. It boiled off violently, sending the spacecraft into a 60-rpm 

spin. Without the cryostat’s protection, the infrared detectors 

would misinterpret the telescope’s own heat as signal noise, 

which effectively ended WIRE’s primary mission.

Taking Tough Lessons to Heart

“For every shortcoming we had on WIRE, you’ll find nearly an 

identical shortcoming in every successful mission. Like it or not, 

you’re close to failure all the time,” said Fafaul.

“I’ve had seven or eight different offices since my WIRE days, 

and directly across from my desk you will always find my picture 

of WIRE,” he continued. “There are important lessons there that 

I want to be reminded of every day as I move through life.”

Among the tough lessons learned during WIRE, Fafaul 

took six especially to heart: 

• Test and re-test to ensure proper application of FPGAs.

• Peer reviews are a vital part of mission design and development.

• Effective closed-loop tracking of actions helps keep 

everyone informed of progress or delays.

• Managing across organizational boundaries is always 

challenging. Don’t let respect for partnering institutions 

prevent insight. 

• Extra vigilance is required when deviating from full-system, 

end-to-end testing. 

• System design must consider both nominal and offnominal scenarios—and must take the time to understand 

and communicate anything that doesn’t look right. 

“I remind everybody constantly that we are all systems 

engineers,” explained Fafaul. “I expect everybody, down to 

the administrative staff, to say something if they see or hear 

anything that doesn’t seem right. Remember, you need to be a 

team to be an A team.”

Despite the loss of its primary mission, the team managed to 

recover WIRE from its high-speed spin and a scientist developed 

a very successful secondary mission using the spacecraft’s star 

tracker. WIRE began to study the oscillations in stars, releasing 

data that led to new scientific discoveries. WIRE continued to 

operate until the summer of 2011, when it returned to Earth. ●

The WIRE telescope inside the 

cryostat assembly.ASA: Ntidero CtohP

WIThOuT ThE CryOSTAT’S PrOTECTION, 

ThE INFrArED DETECTOrS WOuLD 

MISINTErPrET ThE TELESCOPE’S OWN 

hEAT AS SIGNAL NOISE, WhICh EFFECTIvELy 

ENDED WIrE’S PrIMAry MISSION.

48 | ASK MAGAZINE
Intro 

InsIght | ASK MAGAZINE | 49 

Lessons from Lincoln
 

By ROGER FORSGREN 

Like most people, project managers and engineers may have an interest in history without realizing
 

that understanding the past can help them better understand and manage the present. Studying the
 

past can be an opportunity to see how leaders overcame daunting obstacles to achieve their goals.
 

We use recent history to guide our work. A doctor relies on a 

patient’s history to chart future care, a lawyer reviews precedent 

to make a solid case, and an engineer studies a failure report or 

participates in a mishap review to improve a design. 

Although economic, political, and cultural landscapes 

evolve over time, human nature remains the same. So history 

can shed light on how people act and react, how they win 

and lose, and how they lead others to do great things. As 

Niccolo Machiavelli noted, “Whoever wishes to foresee the 

future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble 

those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they 

are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, 

animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have 

the same results.” 

Even though he lived one hundred and fifty years ago, 

we can still learn from the actions of an extraordinary leader: 

Abraham Lincoln. 

Lincoln lived in a fragile new nation that struggled with 

the dichotomy of its revolutionary pronouncement that “all men 

are created equal” while millions of men and women remained 

in bondage. He fought to sustain the democratic dream by 

preserving the Union and eventually freeing the slaves. His 

actions completed the American Revolution and finally fulfilled 

the promise of the Founding Fathers. 

Lincoln had little political experience before becoming 

president, serving only one term as a congressman from Illinois, 

then losing the race for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois to 

Stephen Douglas. His remarkable performance in debates with 

Douglas brought him national attention and paved the way 

to his nomination for the presidency from the newly formed 

Republican Party. Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in nine of 

the southern states and won the presidency in 1860 with barely 

40 percent of the popular vote. Before he was inaugurated, seven 

southern states seceded from the Union. 

To the political professionals of both the Democratic and 

Republican parties, Lincoln appeared to be a country bumpkin 

woefully unprepared to tackle the question of slavery. He found 

himself dealing with the essential question inherent in the idea 

of a republic: can democracy survive partisanship and regional 

interests? The rebellion of the southern states seemed to confirm 

what the repressive monarchies of Europe had thought all along: 

that America’s democratic experiment was naïve and destined 

for failure. Human nature was meant to be contained and 

controlled, not set free. 

Lincoln understood human nature better than the career 

politicians who were dismissing him before he made the train 

journey to Washington for his inauguration. He knew he had 

to form a unified government to deal with the national crisis 

and selected cabinet members who would not only represent 

the interests of various states whose support he considered 

essential, but who were also in his opinion the most qualified 

to help him succeed. In doing so, he reached out to several 

former political opponents that had run against him for the 

Republican nomination. 

William Henry Seward, the eminent senator from New 

York, had been considered the front-runner for the nomination 

but couldn’t gather sufficient support from the most radical 

wing of the Republican Party to gain the nomination. Seward 

was the career politician who understood how Washington 

worked. He considered the new president inexperienced and 

ill prepared for the job that confronted him; furthermore, 

he assumed his appointment as secretary of state meant that 
noisivis Dhpargotohd Pns atnirs Psergnof Cy orarbiL/rendrar Gednaxel: Atidero CtohP

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln. 

50 | ASK MAGAZINE 
Lincoln would cede presidential authority to him. A few 

months into the new administration, Seward realized he was 

mistaken. He learned to enjoy the president’s down-home, 

straightforward style and admired the president’s keen mind. 

In February of 1862, Seward watched his president and now 

friend remain steadfast to the cause and his work even as his son, 

Willie, died of tuberculosis in the White House. Rather than 

feeling animosity toward Lincoln for winning the nomination, 

he felt a kinship to this man who suffered so much in order to 

keep the Union together. 

Salmon P. Chase had served as governor of Ohio and had 

recently been elected to the Senate. Lincoln needed the support 

of Ohio and also knew that Chase had a brilliant mind and was 

an accomplished administrator. Lincoln appointed Chase his 

secretary of the Treasury. The politically ambitious Chase was 

dumbfounded that he had lost to the backwater candidate from 

Illinois. Chase disdained Lincoln’s unrefined and unpretentious 

style and never fully respected Lincoln’s leadership. 

By December 1862, the Civil War had dragged on for 

nearly two bloody years. The Union Army took a crushing blow 

from Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle 

of Fredericksburg. As the endless procession of Union casualties 

were being carried back to Washington, Lincoln said, “If there 

is a place worse than hell, I am in it.” 

Not only was the Union split, but the North itself was 

fracturing into two irreconcilable camps: the Democratic 

Copperheads, who wanted to make peace with the South and 

allow them to secede, and the Radical Republicans, who wanted 

immediate emancipation of the slaves and were in open revolt 

against what they saw as Lincoln’s mismanagement of the 

war effort. As the Copperheads began demanding an end to 

the killing, the Radical Republicans, furious over the Union 

defeat at Fredericksburg, began congressional hearings over the 

conduct of the war. 

A lifelong abolitionist, Chase held close ties to the Radical 

Republicans and had been telling them for months that 

the North’s misfortune was due to Seward’s influence over 

Lincoln. He reinforced the idea that Lincoln was in over his 

head. Seward, he claimed, was not only leading the Union to 

defeat but was also responsible for Lincoln’s protracted inaction 

in freeing the slaves. 

The Radical Republicans began to demand Seward’s 

resignation. In reality, Lincoln’s primary concern was saving 

the democratic ideals of the nation by preserving the Union. 

To achieve that end, he was even willing to allow slavery to 

remain in the South as long as the southern states stayed in 

the Union and agreed not to let slavery spread. Lincoln hated 

slavery but believed it would naturally decline as economic 

forces made it unprofitable. He also found himself walking a 

political tightrope over the issue of emancipation because many 

of his own northern troops enlisted not to free the slaves but to 

keep the Union intact. Furthermore, Lincoln had to consider 

the crucial role played by the border states of Kentucky and 

Maryland. Either state might easily side with the South if they 

concluded that Lincoln was waging a war only to free the slaves. 

dns atnirs Psergnof Cy orarbiL/sevr & Ieirruy Cd beh

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 Ds

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President Lincoln and his cabinet in council, September 22, 1862, adopting the 

Emancipation Proclamation. 

by uSING A S TrAIGhTFOrWArD AND hONEST APPrOACh, LINCOLN 

rEPuLSED AN ATTACK uPON hIS CONSTITuTIONAL POWErS by ThE 

rADICAL rEPubLICANS WIThOuT ANTAGONIZING hIS ACCuSErS 

AND WIThOuT FurThEr FrAGMENTING hIS DELICATE POLITICAL 

POSITION AS PrESIDENT. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 51 
n oisivis Dhpargotohd Pns atnirs Psergnof Cy orarbiL/rendrar Gednaxel: Atidero CtohP

Had Maryland sided with the South, Washington, D.C., would 

have been surrounded by hostile territory. 

With Chase’s scheming and intrigue egging them on, a 

majority of Republican senators demanded Seward’s removal 

and a reorganization of Lincoln’s cabinet. Rumors soon swept 

the capital that the cabinet was going to resign and that the 

president himself had decided to resign. Lincoln understood 

that the Radical Republicans were attempting to usurp his 

executive powers and were determined to take control of the 

war effort away from the duly elected commander in chief. He 

also knew that the political intrigue aimed at him was fostered 

by his own Treasury secretary. 

The president, who had faced turmoil and derision since 

his election and had watched helplessly as his generals, through 

incompetence or refusing his orders, allowed the northern 

armies to be humiliated by smaller rebel forces, now faced the 

biggest test of his political power. As he revealed to a friend, 

“What do these men want? They wish to get rid of me, and I am 

sometimes half disposed to gratify them.” Lincoln continued, 

“Since I heard last night of the proceedings of the caucus, I 

have been more distressed than by any event in my life ... We 

are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to me that the 

Almighty is against us, and I can hardly see any ray of hope.” 

Seward offered Lincoln his resignation, hoping that might 

defuse the situation. 

When a group of Republican senators arrived at the White 

House, Lincoln heard their complaints against Seward and their 

insistence that the war was being lost because of the secretary’s 

influence on the president’s decisions. Lincoln listened politely 

and then told the senators that he would take their advice under 

consideration. He invited them back to the White House for a 

second meeting the next day. 

When they arrived the following day, they were surprised 

to be ushered into the room where the entire cabinet was seated. 

The cabinet members, including both Seward and Chase, were 

shocked to see the senators enter the room. Lincoln asked the 

senators to state their grievances in front of his cabinet. They Abraham Lincoln on the battlefield at Antietam, Maryland, October 3, 1862. 

52 | ASK MAGAZINE 
boldly repeated that the war was being mismanaged because 

Lincoln had failed to listen to the advice of his entire cabinet 

and was being manipulated and controlled by Seward. 

Lincoln responded to the charges by stating that he listened 

to and thought carefully about any recommendation given to him 

by his cabinet ministers and, although he relied on their opinions, 

it was he alone who made the final decision. Lincoln then turned 

to his cabinet and asked each one of them to state publicly if they 

agreed with his statement. All eyes were fixed on Chase. The 

secretary of the Treasury squirmed in his chair before admitting 

that he agreed with the president’s statement but added, in a 

feeble attempt to save face, that he wished major decisions could 

be more thoroughly discussed in the cabinet. The senators angrily 

left the White House, thoroughly disgusted with Chase’s inability 

to stand up in public to those he accused in private. 

The next morning a humiliated and chagrined Chase 

arrived at the White House with his letter of resignation. He 

told the president that the previous day’s meeting had been a 

“total surprise” to him and that he “had been painfully affected 

by the meeting.” Lincoln anxiously grabbed the document 

from Chase, who seemed surprised at the president’s apparent 

eagerness to accept it. 

The following day Lincoln informed both Seward and 

Chase that he would not accept their resignations. Lincoln 

never had any intention of accepting Seward’s resignation. As 

for Chase, Lincoln hoped his lesson in humility would chasten 

his secretary of the Treasury because the president recognized 

Chase’s ability and skill to keep the war effort funded. Lincoln 

wrote in his response to Chase that it was in the “public interest” 

that he remain at his post at Treasury and that he would not 

accept his resignation. 

By using a straightforward and honest approach, Lincoln 

repulsed an attack upon his constitutional powers by the Radical 

Republicans without antagonizing his accusers and without 

further fragmenting his delicate political position as president. 

Trying to lead in such desperate times meant that Lincoln 

had to gain the support and help of factions that he may not 

have agreed with. Lincoln needed the support of the Radical 

Republicans in Congress and also needed the expertise of his 

scheming secretary of the Treasury to hold the Union together. He 

was willing to take abuse and criticism as long as he controlled the 

situation and could move people and events toward a successful 

conclusion of the war and the preservation of the Union. 

Lincoln’s pragmatic approach to an insubordinate cabinet 

minister and the Radical Republicans managed to defuse a 

potential constitutional crisis concerning presidential authority, 

which would have subordinated his powers as president and 

commander in chief to a congressional caucus. Lincoln certainly 

faced bigger and more trying circumstances in his presidency, 

but this episode shows his brilliance in manipulating a dangerous 

situation to his advantage. 

What lessons does this story offer to today’s leaders and 

project managers? Here are a few of the important ones: 

• Keep your eye on the ultimate goal and make decisions

that will help you achieve it. Don’t let your personal 

feelings or those of your team stand in the way. 

• Favor open communication. Openness about what has

been happening behind the scenes is a powerful tool. 

• Don’t be in a hurry to eliminate talented but difficult

people. There may be ways to win their cooperation. ●

Note: The story of Lincoln’s cabinet crisis comes from Doris Kearns 

Goodwin’s excellent book, Team of Rivals. 

RoGeR FoRsGRen is the deputy director of the NASA Academy 

of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership. He is responsible 

for the contractual and financial management of the entire Academy 

program, and has recently been responsible for developing new 

engineering courses that focus on foundational learning of NASAspecific engineering and space sciences; creative thinking and 

innovative engineering methodologies; and leveraging of invaluable 

knowledge from historical NASA lessons learned. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 53 
Title

By 

Intro

Something to

t

t

u

ou

ho

b

S

A

Bloodhound

Supersonic Car

By HALEy STEPHENSON

The full-size, full-length Bloodhound SSC show 

car unveiled at Farnborough in July 2010.

od wo sel i

P t hoto Credi : N ck Ha

54 | ASK MAGAZINE | story
The Bloodhound Supersonic Car aims to set a new land-speed record and a new standard for 

openness in projects.

Project Director Richard Noble and his team are building a car 

that will go from 0 to 1,050 mph in 40 seconds. Named after 

Britain’s 1950s Bloodhound Missile Project, the Bloodhound 

Supersonic Car (SSC) car is 12.8 meters long, weighs 6.4 tons, 

and cruises on high-grade aluminum wheels, which will 

experience radial stresses of up to 50,000 times the force of 

gravity at full speed.

The project is risky, dangerous, and unprecedented.

Focused on building the safest car possible, Noble’s Bloodhound 

team intends to overthrow the current FIA World Land-Speed 

Record by 30 percent. “It’s such a huge leap, of course we’re 

going to get into trouble,” said Noble. “We’re going to learn an 

awful lot as we develop it.”

World records aside, the team wants to capture the attention 

of students and inspire a new generation of engineers.

Genesis

In 1898, French driver Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the 

world land-speed record at 39 mph. Fast-forward to 1970 when, 

after decades of battle between the Americans and British, 

an American-built car called Blue Flame set a new record of 

630 mph. “We in Britain were very keen to get it back again,” 

said Noble. “Or, at least, I was,” he laughed.

Noble assembled a team to build a new car, Thrust2. With 

Noble literally in the driver’s seat, Thrust2 set a new record of 

634 mph in 1983, sparking a race for the sound barrier.

Building and modeling cars intended to travel upward of 

600 mph was difficult, dangerous, and nearly impossible. Noble 

had pushed the limits with Thrust2. “The [aerodynamic] 

data was varied and not reliable,” said Noble. 

What designers needed was a transonic 

wind tunnel with a sort of car 

treadmill capable of speeds up to 900 mph, he explained. It 

didn’t exist.

With competitors already at work, Noble decided to throw 

his hat into the Mach 1 race with Thrust SSC. This time around, 

Chief Aerodynamicist Ron Ayers insisted on modeling the car. 

Software programs in the early 1990s facilitated new ways of 

using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to model Thrust 

SSC, but Ayers wanted to confirm their results. The team went to 

a long rocket test track, normally used for accelerating warheads 

up to Mach 3 and slamming them into slabs of concrete, and 

used a modified rocket sled to test their CFD data. They ran 

thirteen tests of their car. “Amazingly, we found there was just 

a 4 percent variation in the data,” said Noble. This proved that 

the car was safe and viable.

In 1997, Thrust SSC went supersonic five times in the 

Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Fifteen miles away in the town 

of Gerlach, the sonic boom knocked the covers off a classroom 

sprinkler system. “We all said that we would never, ever do this 

again,” said Noble. Little did they know they weren’t done—with 

building supersonic cars or rattling educational establishments.

Meeting with the Minister

After Thrust SSC’s run, the late Steve Fossett, a world-renowned 

aviator and sailor, expressed an interest in overtaking the new 

speed record. If they waited, Noble and his team would spend 

five years studying how Fossett bested them, and then another 

six years building a defender. “We all looked at each other, got 

slightly grey-haired, and decided eleven years was too long,” said 

Noble. “We’d better do it now.”

The new car, the Bloodhound SSC, would shoot for

1,000 mph. Two jet engines on the car entailed too many 

design difficulties. A combination of one jet engine and one 

rocket motor was more feasible. Lightweight, small, and fuel 

efficient, the Eurofighter-Typhoon EJ200 jet engine would be a 

perfect fit. However, there was only one place to get the engine: 

Britain’s Ministry of Defence.

Driver Andy Green arranged a meeting with then-UK 

Science Minister Lord Paul Drayson, who formerly 

held a post in the Ministry of Defence. 

Drayson also happened to race cars. 

“The meeting remained 

very friendly until 

ASK MAGAZINE | 55
I asked him for the jet engine,” Noble chuckled. Sensing they 

had failed dismally, they started to retreat from the room.

“Then Drayson said something that changed all of our 

lives,” said Noble. “He said, ‘Look, there’s something you could 

do for us.’ I said, ‘Of course, Minister, what can we do for you?’” 

Drayson explained that the Ministry of Defence was having a 

problem recruiting engineers. There didn’t seem to be any in 

Britain anymore. During the 1960s, there had been a new 

airplane every year, which got kids excited and motivated them 

to become engineers. Drayson told Noble and Green that was 

the goal: they could have their engine if they agreed to start an 

education program with their project.

Noble agreed and shook Drayson’s hand. “We walked out of 

his office intent on setting up an enormous education program, 

which we knew nothing about,” Noble said.

Engineering: A Dead Subject?

Noble’s team went to work researching the state of education in 

Britain. “We found all sorts of terrible things were happening,” 

he said. Britain’s skilled workforce was on the decline, its 

students were sliding in international rankings, and the

country’s information technology sector was dismal. They 

needed to create an Apollo effect—to inspire people to change 

their lives because of this project.

With their posters and a model of the car, the Bloodhound 

team attended education exhibitions across the country, talking 

to as many STEM (science, technology, engineering, and 

mathematics) teachers as they could. Their conversations went 

something like this:

“What’s it like teaching STEM?”

“Absolutely awful. It’s an absolute nightmare. The 

kids aren’t interested. They are very arrogant. All they 

think they need to know how to do is add, subtract, 

and work percentages.”

“Sounds pretty bad.”

“It’s like teaching ancient Latin or Greek. You know, 

dead subjects.”

Their conversations proved enlightening. “We needed to do 

something exciting,” said Noble, “but above all, we had to be able 

to share the information.” If they were going to educate Britain, 

teachers needed to be able to understand the charts, models, and 

drawings so they could make new lesson plans and explain it to 

their students. Every aspect of the project had to be accessible.

This lack of secrecy initially worried the Bloodhound team. 

Then they realized that their fears were unnecessary. The only 

rules for the land-speed record are that the car must have at 

least four wheels and be controlled by the driver. “All of the cars 

and all of the challengers are completely different,” said Noble. 

“The technology simply won’t transfer from one competitor to 

another. We realized that we could make all of the data available. 

Absolutely everything.”

Nitrous Oxide: Not So Funny

The Bloodhound team is blazing a new trail. They still have 

many challenges to overcome but have learned a great deal so 

far. One particular lesson came from choosing the oxidizer for 

their hybrid rocket motor. The team thought it had an easy 

answer: nitrous oxide (N2

O). Safe, reliable, and easily accessible, 

N2

O seemed a sensible choice. Not so, warned one of Noble’s 

peers—N2

O is not to be trifled with.

Noble investigated the claim. After scouring the web, his 

team found a paper from 1936 that explained how pressurizing 

N2

O beyond 13 bar (or about 190 psi) could cause an explosion. 

“Whole plants had been taken out by nitrous oxide explosions,” 

explained Noble. Nitrous was also the culprit in a 2007 Scaled 

Composites explosion that killed three people. The Bloodhound 

team was shocked.

They selected high-test peroxide (HTP) as an alternative 

that is less likely to set off an explosion. Testing with smaller 

rockets has been successful, with the rocket motor running 

DurING ThE 1960s, ThErE hAD bEEN A NEW AIrPLANE EvEry yEAr, WhICh GOT 

KIDS ExCITED AND MOTIvATED ThEM TO bECOME ENGINEErS. DrAySON TOLD 

The full-size, full-length Bloodhound SSC show NObLE AND GrEEN ThAT WAS ThE GOAL: ThEy COuLD hAvE ThEIr ENGINE IF car

unveiled at Farnborough in July 2010.

ThEy AGrEED TO STArT AN EDuCATION PrOGrAM WITh ThEIr PrOJECT.

56 | ASK MAGAZINE
at 98 percent catalyst efficiency. The team is currently doing 

testing on the full-scale motor.

The Team: Grey to Green

Chief Rocket Engineer Daniel Jubb worked the N2O problem. 

He joined the Bloodhound team in 2005 when he got a call 

from Noble for a meeting. Highly recommended by several 

seasoned rocket engineers, Noble drove out to Manchester to 

meet Jubb. “I discovered that I was face to face with a guy who 

was twenty-three,” said Noble.

From Jubb to Ayers (who is in his eighties), Noble respects the 

importance of having a generationally diverse team. Typically, young 

engineers only see one part of a project. Rarely do they see the whole 

life cycle. “Getting the overview perspective is very, very important,” 

said Noble. The project is demanding but offers young engineers 

(the youngest is eighteen) the opportunity to gain tremendous 

experience and acts as a stepping stone to a future career.

“It’s very important from our point of view to use as 

many young people as we possibly can,” said Noble. He finds 

the younger generation’s rapport with technology enormously 

useful. “But, of course, they’ve got to be able to contribute to 

the project,” he said. The flat structure of the Bloodhound 

organization facilitates this. Everyone has his or her own set 

of responsibilities and authorizations, and everyone in the 

organization is empowered. “Anyone can go fail the project if 

they wanted to,” said Noble. “One would think this is some sort 

of undisciplined rabble, but it’s certainly not.

“You end up with a very, very fast-moving, highly motivated 

organization and, therefore, can do [great things] on very small 

sums of money,” he continued. (Thrust SSC was completed for 

£2.4 million, 12 percent of what their competitors budgeted.)

Something Incredibly Wonderful Will Happen

Partway through the project, Noble and his team realized there 

was a flaw in their openness plan. “If we were going to put up 

all of the operational data after each run on the web, we’d have 

to be very clever about the way we actually presented it,” said 

Noble. “Unless people were given the appropriate education, they 

wouldn’t understand the data. It would just be numbers to them, 

and they wouldn’t really be able to take part in the program.”

Taking the lead from the highly successful Khan Academy, 

Noble partnered with Southampton University to develop 

educational tools the public will need to engage with the 

Bloodhound SSC data flow. Today there are 4,600 schools 

in Britain and 207 countries worldwide participating in the 

Bloodhound engineering adventure, as the team preps for their 

2013 run in South Africa. Via the Bloodhound SSC web site, 

anyone can be a part of the project through games, videos, 

pictures, explanations of the car elements, drawings, and blog 

posts from Noble. Just months ago, the team posted a suite of 

forty computer-aided design drawings online to help people 

understand how the car was designed and built. There have 

been approximately 2,500 downloads of the drawings.

“It might well be that someone makes a [copy], which 

would be brilliant,” chuckled Noble. “We could race!” ●

Project Director Richard Noble

stands with the Bloodhound

SSC show car outside

Coutts Bank in The

Strand, London.

The Bloodhound

SSC show car at the

Bloodhound Technical Center. 

e t Pho o Cr dit: Flow Images

Photo Credit: Sarah Haselwood

Richard Noble and Andy 

Green with a model of 

Bloodhound SSC.

CSS dnuohdo lo B:t di e Cr o ot hP

ASK MAGAZINE | 57
 

58 | ASK MAGAZINE 

The Knowledge Notebook
 

Networks and Success
 

By LAURENCE PRUSAK 

Every once in a while, some U.S. or other government 

agency or a nongovernmental organization issues a 

report that is actually very useful and—dare I say 

it—even startling in its implications. 

This happened recently with the release 

of Networks for Prosperity, a report by UNIDO, 

the United Nations Industrial Development 

Organization, which is a division of the 

United Nations that focuses on more commercial 

issues than the larger organization. This report 

is far more interesting and important than the 

usual sort of statistical or analytical presentations 

that emerge from the consensus-style development 

discussions that are usually the norm for 

such organizations. 

For one thing, it actually ranks countries by the 

degree of their connectedness through knowledge 

networks. Using three indices of international, 

interorganizational, and intraorganizational networks, 

the report aggregates these numbers to produce a 

general index that ranks Switzerland as the most 

highly connected country. Sweden and Holland are 

next. The United States comes in fourth. These top 

four are followed by the “usual suspects” of Europe 

and Asia. African and Central Asian countries are 

the laggards. These rankings are then correlated 

with the general economic success of the nations 

as shown by per-capita gross domestic product. 

Not surprisingly, the results are highly correlated. 

Prosperity and connectedness go together. 

The report is not just a collection of measures 

and graphs but has many stories and short cases 

demonstrating just how this network–wealth 

equation works in practice. Real-life examples like 

these are also rare in such reports and add to the 

value of this one. They help make the point that 

purposeful connections actually contribute to (and 

don’t just accompany) prosperity. 

If this is true for nations, it is just as true, as I 

see it, for organizations and individuals. 

I would like to stress the word “purposeful” 

here. Just being connected to anyone for any 

reason (or no particular reason) has little value 

beyond feeding narcissism. The huge focus on 

social media, and especially on the quantity 

of connections (the hundreds or thousands of 

“friends” one has, the number of views of a video or 

blog), is far less important than subtler questions 

of what is being shared with whom, and to what 

end. As the UNIDO report states, “Successful 

knowledge sharing depends less on specific IT 

[information technology] platforms and more on 

interests and incentives.” I would have added the 

word “identity” to that sentence, but its meaning 

is still pretty apparent. It’s not the technology but 

the “what” and “why” and “who” of connections 

that matter. 

Imagine for a moment such a report about 

particular government agencies and corporations. 

How do you think your organization would rank? 

Do many government workers seek to join or build 

knowledge networks in their spheres of interest? 

Do executives in commercial organizations spend 

a lot of time and effort creating networks of peers 

and advisors?

 And if not, why not? 

I believe that far less of this sort of thing happens 

than should because, for all our talk of teamwork 

and knowledge sharing, many of us—at least in 

the Anglo-American culture—still adhere to an 

individualistic form of knowledge development. 

We tend to think of ourselves as self-sufficient 
 

 

 

 

 

 

ASK MAGAZINE | 59 

knowledge engines who can reach our goals without much help 

from anyone and with no more additional information and 

knowledge than what we can find through Google. There has 

long been a sort of intellectual “machismo” to going it alone. 

The Westinghouse Corporation had this idea embedded in their 

culture. They rarely asked consultants or professors to bring 

them new ideas because they thought they knew all they needed 

to know. They had a very early lead in many technologies, but 

they ran out of steam because they never went outside to “refuel” 

with external knowledge. General Electric, founded the same 

year, has always looked for new theories, thoughts, models, and 

patents wherever they could find them. General Electric is of 

course still sitting high atop the Fortune 500 list. 

In our own time, because of the astounding ubiquity and 

cheapness of information technologies, networks clearly have 

become the most important source of new ideas for countries, 

organizations, and individuals. To be isolated from the 

networks in one’s own interest area is a self-defeating strategy. 

And these networks are not only sources of new knowledge. As 

the UNIDO report so well puts it, “Knowledge networking is 

about building trust, dialogue, and collaboration across sectors 

and borders.” In other words, these networks provide valuable 

help and support of many kinds. 

So spend some time, effort, money, and energy building, 

joining, and taking part in networks that are sustaining and 

valuable to you. There is no better way for you to thrive in our 

new, vastly interconnected world. ● 

ThE huGE FOCuS ON SOCIAL MEDIA, 

AND ESPECIALLy ON ThE quANTITy OF 

CONNECTIONS (ThE huNDrEDS Or 

ThOuSANDS OF “FrIENDS” ONE hAS, ThE 

NuMbEr OF vIEWS OF A vIDEO Or bLOG), 

IS FAr LESS IMPOrTANT ThAN SubTLEr 

quESTIONS OF WhAT IS bEING ShArED 

WITh WhOM, AND TO WhAT END. 
ASKinteractive

For More on 

Our Stories

Additional information 

pertaining to articles 

featured in this issue can 

be found by visiting the 

following web sites:

• Juno: www.nasa.gov/

mission_pages/juno

• James Webb Space 

telescope: www.jwst.

nasa.gov

• B loodhound Supersonic 

car: www.bloodhoundssc.

com

NASA Radio

NASA’s new custom-produced Internet radio station, Third Rock – America’s Space 

Station, seeks to reach tech-savvy young adults. “NASA constantly is looking for 

new and innovative ways to engage the public and inspire the next generation of 

scientists and engineers,” said David Weaver, associate administrator for the Office of 

Communications at NASA Headquarters. Third Rock will also help partner companies 

fill job openings in the engineering, science, and information technology fields. In 

addition to the NASA web site, the station will be available in the future at the radio 

tab of Apple’s iTunes and on other sites as well as through NASA iPhone and Droid 

mobile apps. Listen now at www.rfcmedia.com/thirdrockradio.

Next-Generation Spacesuits

PBS’s NOVA scienceNOW investigates what it takes to make spacesuits less 

bulky for future space travel. Featuring an introduction by Neil deGrasse Tyson 

and interviews with NASA astronaut Mike Massimino and Dava Newman from 

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the episode explores what today’s 

spacesuits are like and how they could evolve to make space exploration more 

manageable. Watch the episode online at video.pbs.org/video/1741682176.

NASA in the News

NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first discovery of a 

planet in the “habitable zone,” the region where liquid water 

could exist on a planet’s surface. The newly confirmed planet, 

Kepler-22b, is located 600 light-years away and, at about 2.4 

times Earth’s radius, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the 

habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. Scientists don’t yet 

know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous, or 

liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding 

Earth-like planets. Learn more about this discovery and 

Kepler’s mission at www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler.

feedback

We welcome your comments on what you’ve read in this issue of ASK and your suggestions for articles you 

would like to see in future issues. Share your thoughts with us here: askmagazine.nasa.gov/about/write.html.

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