Academy Sharing Knowledge

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Inside

MANAGING A FAST-TURNAROUND PROJECT

MITRE: THE COLLABORATIVE LANDSCAPE

LEARNING TO DRIVE THE MARS ROVERS
O N T H E C O V ER

NASA’s Great Observatories—Spitzer, Hubble, and Chandra—teamed up to create this 

multi-wavelength, false-colored view of the M82 galaxy. The Spitzer Space Telescope 

contributes to the search for new worlds by studying discs of dust and gas found 

around nearby stars, which are thought to eventually form “extrasolar” planetary 

systems. Chandra allows scientists from around the world to obtain X-ray images of 

exotic environments to help understand the structure and evolution of the universe. Photo Credit: NASA/ ESA/STScI/J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)
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D E PA RT M E N T S

3 

In This Issue 

4 

From the Director

52

Knowledge in Brief

53

ASK Bookshelf

54

The Knowledge Notebook

56

ASK Interactive

I N S I G H T S

10

MITRE: The Collaborative 

Landscape

BY JULIE GRAVALLESE, REN RESCH, JEAN 

TATALIAS, AND DON COHEN How practice, 

culture, and technology combine to support 

knowledge sharing.

13

Interview with Eileen Collins

BY DON COHEN The shuttle commander 

reflects on learning, teamwork, and viewing 

Earth from space.

17

Growing Space Systems 

Engineers: The Key to Realizing 

the Vision for Space Exploration

BY ROBERT D. BRAUN Developing highcaliber space systems engineers depends 

on providing the right kind of hands-on 

experience.

25

Imagination, Motivation, and 

Leadership Make Visions Real

BY EUGENE S. MEIERAN AND HARRISON H. 

SCHMITT Great ideas and great leaders can 

motivate inspired work.

29

How Do You Make Good 

Managers Better?

BY MICHAEL A. SPATOLA To improve project 

manager training, SAIC defined project 

management excellence as a blend of 

education and experience, and the steps 

needed to acquire them.

35

Seven Key Principles of Program 

and Project Success

BY VINCENT J. BILARDO, JR. NASA’s 

Organization Design Team says clear 

vision, good communication, and systems 

engineering expertise are among the 

essential ingredients of project success.

43

Everything I Needed to Know 

About Project Management I 

Learned in a Cockpit

BY RAY W. STRATTON Project managers 

can learn important lessons from 

experienced pilots.

S T O R I E S

5

Managing a Critical, 

Fast-Turnaround Project

BY KIM ESS Clarity about the task and open 

communication helped speed development 

of a system required for the shuttle’s return 

to flight.

20

Finding a Way: The Spitzer Space 

Telescope Story

BY JOHNNY KWOK Openness to new ideas 

made it possible to launch the Spitzer 

telescope for a fraction of the original 

estimated cost.

27

Featured Invention: Emulsified 

Zero-Valent Iron

BY JOHANNA SCHULTZ Nanotechnology is 

the key to a better way of leaching toxic 

chemicals from the environment. 

32

Communicating Science

BY DR. RICHARD E. SHOPE III Communicating 

across scientific disciplines involves more 

than words.

39

Performance as Promised: 

Chandra X-Ray Observatory

BY KEITH HEFNER Proactive risk 

management and including the whole 

project team in design and development 

produce high performance and cost 

savings. 

46

Learning to Drive the Mars Rovers

BY BRIAN COOPER 3-D simulations and a 

months-long apprenticeship teach trainees 

to drive the Mars exploration rovers.

49

Imagining the Future

BY W. SCOTT CAMERON Both organizations 

and the individuals in them need to think 

about how to manage their futures.

Contents

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

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

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

providing performance enhancement services and tools, supporting career development 

programs, and creating opportunities for project management and engineering 

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

government agencies.

ASK Magazine grew out of the previous academy, Academy of Program/Project 

Leadership, and its Knowledge Sharing Initiative, designed for program/project 

managers to share best practices and lessons learned with fellow practitioners across 

the Agency. Reflecting APPEL’s new responsibility for engineering development and 

the challenges of NASA’s new mission, ASK includes articles that explore engineering 

achievements as well as insight into broader issues of organizational knowledge, 

learning, and collaboration. We at APPEL Knowledge Sharing believe that stories 

recounting the real-life experiences of practitioners communicate important practical 

wisdom. By telling their stories, managers, scientists, and engineers share valuable 

experience-based knowledge and foster a community of reflective practitioners. The 

stories that appear in ASK are written by the “best of the best” project managers and 

engineers, primarily from NASA, but also from other government agencies, academia, 

and industry. Who better than a project manager or engineer to help a colleague address 

a critical issue on a project? Big projects, small projects—they’re all here in ASK.

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

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

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

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

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

the Knowledge Sharing Project Manager, Tina Chindgren, ASRC Management Services, 

6303 Ivy Lane, Suite 800, Greenbelt, MD 20770; tina.chindgren@asrcms.com; 

301-837-9069. 

Staff

APPEL DIRECTOR AND PUBLISHER

Dr. Edward Hoffman

ehoffman@nasa.gov

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Laurence Prusak

lprusak@msn.com

MANAGING EDITOR

Don Cohen

doncohen@rcn.com

TECHNICAL EDITOR

Kerry Ellis

kerry.ellis@asrcms.com

KNOWLEDGE SHARING MANAGER

Tina Chindgren

tina.chindgren@asrcms.com

KNOWLEDGE SHARING ANALYSTS

Ben Bruneau

ben.bruneau@asrcms.com

Johanna Schultz

johanna.schultz@asrcms.com

DESIGN

Hirshorn Zuckerman 

Design Group, Inc.

www.hzdg.com

SENIOR PRINTING SPECIALIST

Jeffrey McLean

jmclean@hq.nasa.gov

PRINTING

GraphTec

Issue No. 25
A few years ago, I spent a couple of days driving from 

meeting to meeting with a woman responsible for 

coordinating critical activities of a large organization. She 

spent a lot of the travel time talking on her cell phone and 

wondered aloud how her predecessors managed the job 

before that technology was available. But then she added, 

“The problem with cell phones is they make you think 

you’ve had a conversation.”

That remark comes to mind now because so many of the 

articles in this issue of ASK make the point that successful 

communication involves much more than sending messages 

by phone or e-mail and assuming you’ve been heard and 

understood. What needs to be communicated is often more 

varied, complex, and subtle than the exchange of words 

those media allow. In “Managing a Critical, Fast-Turnaround 

Project,” Kim Ess discusses the importance of full and 

honest communication with management and within the 

team and emphasizes the importance of meeting in person 

and traveling to the NASA and contractor sites where the 

work is being done. Given the availability of intranets, email, and videoconferencing, leaders of some organizations 

think traveling to talk to someone is a waste of time and 

money, but Ess understands that being there is the only way 

to fully know what’s going on (including the things people 

are afraid to mention) and to create the trust and mutuality 

that teamwork depends on. All of that supposedly inefficient 

travel made it possible to build the Orbital Boom Sensor 

System quickly and well.

Richard Shope (“Communicating Science”) says that 

communication between scientists includes not only words 

and images but body language and vocal qualities that 

help express ideas and the emotions connected with them. 

(Eugene Meieran and Harrison Schmitt’s “Imagination, 

Motivation, and Leadership Make Visions Real” implies 

that communicating passion and commitment is essential 

to great accomplishment.) Shope also notes that asking 

the right questions is key to understanding. That raises an 

essential point: good communication involves talking and

listening. In this issue’s interview, Eileen Collins emphasizes 

the importance of genuine listening—that is, really hearing 

and considering what people say (as opposed to just letting 

them talk when your mind is already made up). Listening 

means openness to new ideas from new sources. That kind 

of openness allowed the Space Infrared Telescope Facility 

project team to develop a new, dramatically less expensive 

plan for getting their instrument far enough from the earth 

(“Finding a Way: The Spitzer Space Telescope Story”).

Brian Cooper’s description in “Learning to Drive the Mars 

Rovers” of what trainees go through before they are allowed 

to direct Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars exploration rovers, 

shows that communicating complex skills goes far beyond 

conversation, though conversation with veteran “planners” 

(as they are called) is part of how they learn. In this case, 

the communication process includes the experience of 

analyzing transmissions from the rovers, practicing by way 

of simulations, and observing and then being observed by 

people who do the job.

Vincent Bilardo reports in “Seven Key Principles of 

Program and Project Success” that NASA’s Organization 

Design Team identifies facilitating “wide-open communication” as one requirement for successful projects. This 

issue of ASK makes clear that communication involves 

observation, attention, and openness as well as talking 

or writing, and it includes conversation in the way my 

colleague with the cell phone meant the word: a social act 

of speaking and listening that, through the sharing of ideas, 

fosters trust, understanding, and cooperation.

Don Cohen

Managing Editor

In This Issue

ASK MAGAZINE | 3
It’s amazing how you can examine an object 

or issue ten, twenty, or hundreds of times and 

manage to still find nuances or a different view 

of the whole picture if you step away from it long 

enough and come back to it later—or even bring 

in an outside perspective you never had before. So 

it is with one of my favorite spots on the left bank 

of Paris, which my daughter, Amanda, was able 

to experience with me this visit: Notre Dame.

The gothic cathedral stands proud and 

overwhelming, looking over the city as the 

ultimate sentry. It assumes its place as the center 

of a civilization and provides color and warmth to 

everything around it. We approached it together 

slowly, looking up and around, getting close and 

stepping back. There is so much to notice: the truly 

towering towers, sculptures, rose windows, bells, 

organ, and reliefs that tell stories. Each of these 

elements represents a work of art and engineering 

excellence. As a system, Notre Dame is an inspiring 

engineering and project achievement that mixes 

technology, art, science, and religion.

I notice something unique every time I visit. 

On this occasion I was struck by the duration of 

the construction. Almost 200 years from concept 

to completion. This was a project that took close to 

ten generations to finish. It required an incredible 

commitment, motivation, and focus as well as a 

constant supply of talent, resources, and materials 

to carry the mission forward. Those involved 

needed a way to provide continuity in learning 

and sharing knowledge. And it had to span two 

centuries. How did they do it? More importantly, 

how can we emulate it?

A large part of our challenge at NASA is the 

length of our mission for exploration—moon, 

Mars, and beyond. There are myriad issues—

technology, management, finance, collaboration, 

communication, integration, talent, learning, 

political support—that will reach across our years 

of effort, and we need to carry forward what we 

learn as we address them. It seems hard these days 

to imagine missions that span decades let alone 

centuries, but we need to imagine it and prepare 

for our successors, our future collaborators. We 

need to communicate, record, and share lessons in 

the moment to ensure we’re all—those of us today 

and those of us joining us in the future—building 

with the same vision in mind.

Like Notre Dame, space exploration has 

the power to inspire and create a sense of world 

community and commitment toward a bold vision. 

What we are building today will be expanded 

upon by others in the future, and it will continue 

to affect those who look up in awe at these great 

structures and the space beyond, even 200 years 

from our beginning. This issue of ASK continues 

the tradition of reexamining what we know and 

finding the nuances needed for NASA program 

management and engineering excellence. ●

From the Director

Passing Forward Centuries of Knowledge

BY ED HOFFMAN 

4 | ASK MAGAZINE
As seen from Discovery’s cabin, the STS-114 Remote Manipulator System robot 

arm for the Orbiter Boom Sensor System flexes above Earth. 

Photo Credit: NASA

MANAGING A CRITICAL,

FASTTURNAROUND 

PROJECT

BY KIM ESS

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 5
Managing such a project has special challenges and pressures 

and a few advantages, too. The clearest benefit of such highprofile, critical work is the ability it gave us to recruit top people 

to what, at one point, was a 500-member team. (And having 

high-quality team leads was one essential source of success.) 

We didn’t have to convince anyone that the work mattered 

to the space program and to the safety of our astronauts. And 

the importance of returning to flight and preventing future 

catastrophes gave us a defining and unifying goal that inspired 

hard work and cooperation, although, as with any project, it was 

important to help team members keep the goal in view as they 

dealt with the details, complexities, and inevitable frustrations 

of their parts of the work.

Successfully meeting the technical and organizational 

challenges of the project required not only team dedication but 

outstanding communication and openness, constant vigilance 

to detect and correct problems that could delay development, 

and clarity about what we needed to accomplish. 

Reality Check

The feasibility assessment of inspection options that began 

weeks after the Columbia accident concluded that a boom sensor 

system to examine the shuttle’s thermal protection system in 

orbit could be developed using previously flown hardware and 

existing NASA spares in six months for under $40 million. The 

system requirements review we held within a month of forming 

the project management team clearly showed how unrealistic 

that assessment was. The available hardware was not “criticality1” rated and therefore not acceptable to use on a system judged 

essential for astronaut safety. Also, required structural supports 

and vehicle modifications were not included in the initial 

assessment. The plans called for two sensor packages to meet 

the requirement for redundancy, but our initial timetable 

limited us to one because of the vehicle and boom modifications 

needed to provide enough power for two sensor packages. Many 

components—especially electronics—that worked properly in 

the relatively protected environment of the payload bay would 

need to be tested for survivability in the harsher conditions 

they would face at the end of a boom. We would likely have to 

develop new shielding and heaters to protect them. 

One of my first jobs as project manager was to report to the 

Program Requirements Control Board that we could not meet 

their proposed cost or schedule. I said that the requirements the 

program had set for the project would cost $100 million and 

that we had less than a 10 percent chance of completing the 

project in the next ten months. Assuming no serious technical 

problems—a risky assumption—we estimated that the project 

would take about twice that long. This was not an easy message 

to deliver, but clarity and honesty were important to our success. 

I wanted management to support our actual cost and schedule, 

to recognize the risks, and know the project’s real needs. I’ve 

sometimes said, jokingly, “We were working so hard we didn’t 

Developing the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) was a prime example of a highly critical, 

highly visible, fast-turnaround project. When the work was authorized in September 2003, we 

were asked to complete it in six months, in time for a projected March 2004 shuttle Discovery

launch date. After the Columbia accident, no shuttle was going to fly until we had the capability 

to examine it for damage after launch, so any significant delay in building the boom would 

keep the shuttle program and the work that depended on it—notably the completion of the 

International Space Station—on hold.

6 | ASK MAGAZINE
In the Orbiter Processing Facility bay 3, workers oversee the lowering of the 

Orbiter Boom Sensor System on the starboard side of Discovery’s payload bay.

Photo Credit: NASA

AS PEOPLE GOT TO KNOW AND TRUST EACH OTHER AND RECOGNIZE 

THAT WE WERE ALL WORKING TOWARD THE SAME GOAL, INFORMATION 

ABOUT PROBLEMS BECAME JUST DATA FOR THE TEAM TO WORK WITH, 

NOT INDICATIONS OF FAILURE.

ASK MAGAZINE | 7
have time to do anything but tell the truth.” But the truth in 

that joke is that telling the Board anything less would have 

made the project much harder—depleting time, energy, and 

good will—when we inevitably would have had to go back to 

management to ask for more time and resources. As it happened, 

the development cost came within 5 percent of our estimate.

Communication and Being There

Full and honest communication, with management and especially 

within the team, was a hallmark of the project and a major factor 

in our success. Weekly project meetings with core team leaders to 

share information and solve problems were not enough. Frequent 

teleconferences helped keep information flowing, but they were 

no substitute for meeting face to face. Travel, travel, travel 

was the most important part of our communication strategy. 

Groups in California, Texas, Florida, New Mexico, and Canada 

worked on the OBSS. Regular travel to those sites was absolutely 

essential to the work. Only actually being there makes it possible 

to understand issues fully and provide the necessary support 

and encouragement. Having the customer on site helps focus 

the work of even the best contractors. One important lesson 

we learned was that we should have spent more time earlier in 

the project with all our contractors. We had assumed it would 

not be necessary to track or visit experienced contractors that 

had been reliable in the past, but that turned out not to be true. 

Most critically, being there is sometimes the only way to identify 

problems before they threaten project cost and schedule.

In one instance, one of our main partners did not report a 

manufacturing problem it thought it could handle alone until 

weeks before a major delivery milestone, leaving no time to 

adjust the schedule in other parts of the project to compensate 

for the resulting delay. A lead team member went to their 

facility and stayed until he was sure they were back on track. 

Their reluctance to report the problem as soon as it arose is not 

surprising. NASA engineers and contractors usually try to solve 

problems before they elevate them to the next level. “Never show 

up without a potential solution” is part of the culture. But we 

needed to change that behavior, to encourage people to bring up 

every concern to the project level as soon as it occurred so the 

best resources from the whole team could be applied to solve it. 

Over time, we established a we-have-a-problem attitude rather 

than a they-have-a-problem attitude. Having people travel from 

site to site contributed to this change. As people got to know 

and trust each other and recognize that we were all working 

toward the same goal, information about problems became just 

data for the team to work with, not indications of failure.

Having a single repository for all project documents was 

another valuable contributor to collaboration. The systems 

engineer assigned to OBSS was our “documents guru.” Even 

though International Traffic and Arms Regulations meant there 

was some information our Canadian partners could not see and 

therefore added a management chore, that central repository 

saved time and effort by organizing documents and making 

them easily accessible.

Another aspect of our communication strategy dealt with 

communicating with outside assessment groups. The OBSS 

project was subject to a lot of scrutiny. Independent assessments 

were conducted by the Inspector General’s Office, by numerous 

safety and financial organizations, and by the Stafford Covey 

Task Group. Some assessments were helpful and some were 

not. We found it essential to have people specifically assigned 

to handle these outside requests for information, to act as a 

buffer for a technical team that was already stressed by the 

demanding work and could not afford to be distracted from 

their project tasks. The central repository also helped with 

assessments. As requests for information rolled in, we could 

send the link and let the requesting organizations pull the data 

they needed themselves.

Managing Risk

Open communication and our emphasis on identifying and 

dealing with potential problems as soon as possible were 

ONE OF THE TOUGHEST TASKS OF A PROJECT MANAGER IS 

TO DECIDE WHEN GOOD IS GOOD ENOUGH AND CALL A HALT 

TO FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS.

8 | ASK MAGAZINE
important parts of our efforts to reduce risks that could 

threaten our schedule or the successful performance of the 

boom. I initially resisted devoting time and resources to a 

formal risk-management system, but it proved well worth the 

investment and our top-level risk matrix became a valuable tool 

when providing updates on the project’s status. Because our 

schedule was so critical, we used multiple vendors for long-lead 

components and multiple shops for critical-path manufactured 

parts to ensure that a serious problem with one item would not 

delay the project. And we worked serially on three units—two 

flight units and a “spare” to give us some additional insurance 

against unforeseen manufacturing problems.

Fully integrated testing of the system on the flight vehicle 

revealed problems that would otherwise not have been discovered 

until the boom was in orbit. The risk of technical failure is high in 

a fast-turnaround project given that requirements development, 

design, and build phases come in rapid succession, so integrated 

testing is all the more important.

Moving Deadline, Changing Requirements

The return-to-flight launch date changed several times during 

our project, for reasons unrelated to progress on the boom. Early 

in our work, the original six-month target became nine months 

and then a year. Ultimately, Discovery launched in July 2005, 

sixteen months after we began work. At first glance, this sounds 

like good news for us—who can object to having more time to 

complete their project?

But the repeatedly changing date created its own problems; 

the postponements created an expectation that we would 

increase the quality, performance, and safety of the product 

without, of course, adding to the budget. The biggest example 

of changing requirements increasing cost was the decision to 

use some of that “extra” time to develop the originally specified 

two-sensor packages instead of the one that earlier deadlines 

seemed to require. In effect, we had multiple release dates for 

the OBSS, having the single-sensor version certified, tested, 

and ready to fly while we worked on the two-sensor boom. We 

followed that same pattern with software development, making 

sure one version was ready to fly while the team worked on 

enhancements that might or might not be tested, certified, and 

ready to go by the launch date.

As anyone who has managed a NASA development project 

knows, even without launch delays, it is hard to get team 

members to stop improving the product. They will want to fill 

any additional available time with tweaks and enhancements. 

One of the toughest tasks of a project manager is to decide when 

good is good enough and call a halt to further improvements.

Success

The Space Shuttle Discovery took off July 26, 2005, 

approximately two and a half years after the Columbia

accident. On the 27th, the hard work of the OBSS project team 

paid off when the Orbiter Boom Sensor System successfully 

deployed and examined Discovery’s thermal protection system. 

While we were confident the sensor would work and believed 

the mechanical elements of the system would work well, 

we breathed a collective sigh of relief when the boom was 

successfully re-stowed in the shuttle’s payload bay. ●

KIM ESS joined NASA in 1987 and has been a project manager 

in the Orbiter Project Office at Johnson Space Center since July 

2001. She has been the project manager for the Space Shuttle 

Orbiter Boom Sensor System since September 2003.

ASK MAGAZINE | 9
MITRE: The Collaborative 

Landscape

BY JULIE GRAVALLESE, REN RESCH, JEAN TATALIAS, AND DON COHEN

The MITRE Corporation’s goal is to “bring the corporation to bear” on critical national problems—

to apply all its relevant knowledge and experience to each of the complex projects it takes on for 

the U.S. government. Making valuable knowledge available when and where it is needed has 

always been a primary aim of knowledge management and the goal of many knowledge-intensive 

organizations. MITRE has succeeded far better than many organizations at supporting the learning 

and knowledge sharing that bringing the corporation to bear requires. The practices, technologies, 

values, and environments behind this success offer a useful model of how knowledge sharing works. 

MITRE’s experience shows that there is no single source of effective collaboration and certainly no 

technology “solution” that makes it happen. Collaboration and effective knowledge management rest 

on a foundation of mutually supportive elements—a broad and varied collaborative landscape.

NASA and MITRE were both established in 1958, NASA 

in response to concerns over Soviet technological dominance 

represented by the launch of Sputnik and MITRE to support 

efforts to strengthen our nation’s air defense systems, a major cold 

war concern. MITRE is a private, not-for-profit organization 

that applies its expertise to U.S. government defense and 

security issues and other issues of national importance. Its 5,750 

employees are divided between principal offices in Bedford, 

Massachusetts, and McLean, Virginia, and located at more 

than sixty sites around the world, mainly at facilities of its 

government clients. It takes on complex projects that demand 

effective knowledge sharing—no one person or isolated 

team can know everything required to do the work well, and 

MITRE’s accumulated experience is an expected and essential 

part of what it offers its clients.

The MITRE Information Infrastructure

MITRE’s corporate intranet and portal—the MITRE 

Information Infrastructure, or MII—is part of the company’s 

response to its knowledge and collaboration needs. It is an 

unusually sophisticated and successful example of this kind 

of technology—and one of the earliest, first used in 1995. It 

is telling, though, that as MITRE developed its collaborative 

technology, it continued to connect its campus buildings with 

enclosed walkways. MITRE’s leadership understands that 

meeting in person is an essential element of collaboration and 

knowledge sharing and that shaping the physical environment 

to encourage conversation is an important investment. Like 

other knowledge strategies we describe later, talking face to face 

is a medium of rich and subtle learning that documents in a 

repository cannot match, and it is an opportunity to strengthen 

the social ties and trust that make people more likely to use a 

system to which they and their colleagues contribute.

At MITRE, successful collaboration, and more specifically 

expertise location, relies on both the social networks the 

corporate culture encourages and fosters and the technology, 

primarily the MII. MII users seeking information on a particular 

subject—say enterprise systems engineering—can find relevant 

documents including reports, briefings, discussions, blogs, 

and community of interest Web sites, ranked by relevance to 

the topic. Users can also search the expertise locator to identify 

fellow employees or departments that have posted documents 

on the subject, ranked according to the likely depth of their 

expertise. The system bases the rankings on documents 

10 | ASK MAGAZINE | INSIGHT
submitted to the MII and participation in community 

discussions. This approach to expertise location works better 

than self-reporting expertise locators—that is, systems based 

on profiles employees construct themselves to indicate their 

areas of competence and interest. Many organizations that 

try self-reporting expertise locators are disappointed by them. 

Some serious flaws undermine these systems: profiles quickly 

become outdated and few employees can be bothered to revise 

them every time they do new work or change focus; people are 

not necessarily good judges of their own expertise; and they 

seldom provide the level of detail that many knowledge seekers 

require. MITRE has successfully avoided these flaws, and 

internal experience shows that the results, while not perfect, 

closely match the names that the human knowledge networks 

would also point to.

The MII has worked well for more than a decade because 

the group that designed and manages it has been willing to let 

it evolve (and help it evolve) over the years in response to the 

needs and preferences of users. Jean Tatalias, MITRE’s director 

of knowledge services, notes, “The fundamentals remain the 

same, but we continually add content and applications, with 

major design upgrades every three to five years, including 

customization, navigation, and infrastructure enhancements.” 

A major change came early in its deployment. The original 

system design included “Publish” folders intended for important 

documents generated during project work and “Transfer” 

folders as a less formal, temporary document-exchange space. 

But users avoided the Publish folders, which to many suggested 

that only polished, “publishable” papers were acceptable. Also, 

the required HTML conversion was slower and less reliable 

than storing documents in their native formats. Staff used the 

Transfer folders as their main repository instead because they 

helped teams work across computer platforms and gave users 

the most control. Rather than trying to force users to obey the 

intended system “rules” (which never works), system designers 

eliminated the Publish folders and threw their support behind 

the Transfer folders.

How does the MII work in practice? Here is an example. 

A MITRE project leader receives a question from his 

government sponsor: What does MITRE know about UAVs 

(unmanned aerial vehicles)? He immediately turns to the MII 

collections and an active Listserv discussion to quickly find 

pertinent information. Within ten hours, he has accumulated 

a significant amount of data. He spends the next day working 

through the material to arrange the data into respective 

categories appropriate to the questions. Through the contacts 

made on the MII discussion list, he engages his colleagues in 

a quick peer-review process. He then creates an interactive 

CD with his findings, which includes a summary paper 

and hyperlinks to myriad resources. This neat little package 

gives his customers just about everything they need to make 

decisions on procuring and budgeting for UAVs.

The MITRE manager believes that having access to 

the breadth of information and active discussion groups is 

extremely valuable to the company and typifies MITRE’s 

ability to leverage its knowledge. The customer is surprised 

and impressed not only by the amount and quality of data, but 

by the amazingly quick turnaround time. It takes the customer 

two weeks to assimilate the data—and they consider the work 

a wonderful “Cliffs Notes” version of material supporting 

intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. The blended 

use of technological and social infrastructure, including MII 

and the discussion groups that provide up-to-date input from 

colleagues, happens every day at MITRE. This particular 

instance occurred before the Listserv discussions were indexed; 

now they can be searched on the MII as well. 

The Collaborative Landscape

As we have suggested, the MII could not work in a vacuum, 

no matter how well designed it is. A rich context of behaviors, 

values, and environments support it and all aspects of 

knowledge sharing. Physical workspace is one. As buildings 

are renovated, small kitchens and comfortable seating areas 

where small groups can sit and talk are included. The campus 

InfoCenters are adjacent to cafés that serve snacks and 

coffee—effective magnets for creating a collaboration catalyst 

and drawing people together.

MITRE also uses technology to extend workplace 

connections. Its extensive, high-quality videoteleconferencing 

facilities allow multilocation meetings, discussions, and 

presentations. These “team rooms” go a long way toward 

making the Bedford and McLean offices, separated by more 

than 500 miles, feel like part of a single facility. Most other 

sites also have videoteleconference facilities that link them to 

both campuses and to each other (i.e., multipoint). While the 

SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATION, AND 

MORE SPECIFICALLY EXPERTISE LOCATION, 

RELIES ON BOTH THE SOCIAL NETWORKS 

THE CORPORATE CULTURE ENCOURAGES 

AND FOSTERS AND THE TECHNOLOGY.

ASK MAGAZINE | 11
company used to use the term “reach back” for site personnel 

to take advantage of the expertise of main-campus employees, 

it now uses “reach across,” expanding the meaning to include 

tapping the extensive knowledge of employees located at 

customer sites. 

Since its beginning, MITRE has had a collegial atmosphere 

and interest in learning that some employees describe as academic 

rather than corporate. Employees hold frequent Technical 

Exchange Meetings, or TEMs—as many as thirty a year on 

subjects ranging from performance engineering to serviceoriented architectures to technology portfolio management. 

Anyone in the company can organize a TEM to share what they 

judge to be important ideas with their colleagues. The meetings 

are advertised through the MII News Center and banners, 

Listservs, community Web sites, and the MITRE Activities and 

Information Display (MAID) screens distributed throughout 

the MITRE campus. The TEMs are a major mechanism of 

knowledge exchange at the organization, a further opportunity 

for relationship building, and proof that MITRE takes its 

claim to “bring the corporation to bear” seriously. Members of 

MITRE’s Corporate Communications and Knowledge Services 

Division often act as reporters who capture the essential content 

of these meetings as a resource for both the attending staff 

and for future readers who could not attend but can access the 

records in the TEM archives. 

Fulfilling the Mission

MITRE’s mission is to work in partnership with the 

government, applying systems engineering and advanced 

technology to address issues of critical national importance. 

Commitment to this essential work is an important part of 

the collaborative landscape. The shared goal of a worthwhile 

mission helps knit people together and tends to reduce the 

conflicts, competition, and suspicion that prevent knowledge 

sharing and other kinds of cooperation. The best NASA project 

managers know this and describe how keeping a project team’s 

collective eye on the mission goal supports collaboration and 

excellence. Knowledge management initiatives that emphasize 

financial savings or other efficiencies rarely win employees’ 

wholehearted participation. 

MITRE’s work for the government is neither simple nor 

straightforward. Government sponsors ask MITRE to undertake 

large, complex, and sometimes unique projects. No single person 

at MITRE has the skills to meet these challenges; no one element 

of the organization’s collaborative landscape is “the answer” to 

organizational knowledge and learning. MITRE’s work creates 

an intrinsic need to collaborate, builds teams with multiple skill 

sets, and provides systems, like the MII, to fulfill MITRE’s 

mission and truly bring the corporation to bear. The strength of 

what MITRE does lies in the consistency and interconnection 

of its values, goals, behaviors, practices, and technologies. ●

JULIE GRAVALLESE is the director of the Information 

Technology Center at MITRE and leads a team of more than 

230 engineers and computer and social scientists supporting 

a diverse set of government sponsor programs and internal 

research and development initiatives. julieg@mitre.org

REN RESCH is a lead information systems engineer in MITRE’s 

Information Technology Center. renresch@mitre.org

JEAN TATALIAS is the director of Knowledge Services at 

the MITRE Corporation. In this role she works to advance 

knowledge management in MITRE, championing efforts that 

support staff collaboration and knowledge sharing and that 

strengthen MITRE’s knowledge base.

NO ONE PERSON OR ISOLATED TEAM CAN KNOW EVERYTHING REQUIRED TO DO THE 

WORK WELL, AND MITRE’S ACCUMULATED EXPERIENCE IS AN EXPECTED AND ESSENTIAL 

PART OF WHAT IT OFFERS ITS CLIENTS.

12 | ASK MAGAZINE
In 1999, Eileen Collins became the first woman 

to command a shuttle mission. She commanded 

Discovery’s return-to-flight mission in 2005, after 

the Columbia accident. She retired from NASA 

this year. Commander Collins talked to Don 

Cohen about learning to be an astronaut and 

about what being an astronaut has taught her.

I N T E R V I E W W I T H

COHEN: Tell me a little about how you 

learn to be an astronaut.

COLLINS: There are two kinds of 

learning—formal and informal. The 

formal side is pretty easy. Astronauts go 

through a structured training program 

with a syllabus, classroom work, 

simulators, T-38 flying. There are clear 

objectives; you know what you need to 

know and you learn it. Informal learning 

is more difficult because you don’t always 

know what you need to know.

COHEN: What’s an example of important 

informal learning?

COLLINS: You need to learn the jobs 

people are doing. You need to learn 

people’s names so you know who to 

call to help you if you need something 

done—who’s in charge of what part of 

the organization and what engineer is 

working on what part of the project. 

Those things aren’t in the curriculum 

or in a book. A leader or manager needs 

to get to know the people themselves: 

their families, their hobbies, the specific 

needs they have in their lives. I keep a 

notebook of who I meet and under what 

circumstances and jot down one or two 

things they said to me that I might need 

to know a year from now.

Eileen 

Collins 

BY DON COHEN

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 13
COHEN: How did you learn that you 

needed to learn those things?

COLLINS: Experience. You make mistakes 

as you go along. I found myself saying, 

“I wish I had written down the name of 

the person running that program.” As an 

astronaut, I meet a huge number of people. 

After the Columbia accident, I asked my 

crew to travel to the various centers and 

factories around the country that work 

on the Space Shuttle program. We went 

to Michoud in New Orleans, where the 

external tank is made, to Rocketdyne 

in Southern California, to Thiokol in 

Utah. We met people and presented 

awards, including Snoopy awards [for 

outstanding performance that contributes 

to flight safety and mission success]. It’s 

important to meet people and learn what 

they do.

COHEN: And it’s important for people 

working on the program to meet you.

COLLINS: It’s hard for the astronauts 

to meet everybody because we have 

responsibilities in the office and families 

we need to see, so we try to spread out. Not 

every employee will meet every astronaut, 

but we hope that every employee will meet 

some astronauts. Besides, it’s fun. When 

we meet the employees, we get motivated 

to strive harder because we can see how 

hard other people are working.

COHEN: Before you flew, you held several 

support positions at NASA. Did they 

help you prepare to fly?

COLLINS: I worked in three big jobs: 

shuttle engineering, astronaut and testing 

support at Kennedy Space Center, and 

CAPCOM [spacecraft communicator] 

in mission control. I was fortunate to 

see three very different parts of the 

organization and meet many people in 

engineering and operations—a huge 

benefit when I flew. Having worked in a 

variety of jobs increases your confidence 

as an astronaut because you know the 

people you’re dealing with when you’re 

up in space. When I was at Kennedy 

Space Center getting ready to launch 

on my mission, I felt more comfortable 

and more prepared because I had worked 

there. When I was in space, I was more 

comfortable and prepared because I 

had worked in mission control and 

understood what was going on there. And 

INFORMAL LEARNING IS more difficult BECAUSE YOU DON’T 

always know WHAT YOU need to know.

14 | ASK MAGAZINE
because I had friends and contacts in the 

engineering directorate at Johnson Space 

Center, I was able to communicate with 

them better about how things operated 

on our mission.

COHEN: It’s always easier to communicate 

with people if you’ve done the same job.

COLLINS: It allows you to be more frank 

and a better communicator because you 

know the things they need to hear and you 

know the technical language they speak.

COHEN: Are there things you did as a 

shuttle commander and insights from 

your astronaut experience that can 

help the Agency pursue its new mission 

successfully?

COLLINS: When I was commander of STS114, the return-to-flight mission, I asked 

my crew to be creative, to think about 

everything that could go wrong during 

the mission that no one has thought 

about yet and bring it to the attention of 

the flight control team. We have a plan 

for what we want to do, but we also need 

to have a plan or a partial plan in place for 

what could go wrong. Many people never 

thought foam could hurt the outside of 

the shuttle. There are other things out 

there that we don’t realize could hurt us. 

I asked my crew and the people I worked 

with to try to be creative and smart about 

those things.

COHEN: Other insights?

COLLINS: Astronauts have a unique 

perspective because we have touched 

so many different areas: crew systems, 

engineering, operations, working at 

Kennedy Space Center and Johnson 

Space Center. And the fact that you have 

been there gives you unique insight into 

the kinds of things that can be done—

how much work an astronaut can do on 

a day-to-day basis. You don’t want to give 

the astronauts too much because they’ll 

try to do everything on the schedule and 

will get overworked and tired. On the 

other hand, you want to optimize what 

you can get out of the mission.

COHEN: Those issues will be even more 

important as missions get longer.

COLLINS: You need to be realistic about 

how much work to expect from the 

astronauts who will be on the moon. 

You’re better off underscheduling because 

things will inevitably break and need 

fixing and things seem to take longer 

when you get up there. When you’re on 

Earth you do a lot subconsciously. You 

don’t think about walking from one place 

to another, you just do it. In space, you 

have to think about how to get from point 

A to point B. Thinking about getting 

from one place to another keeps you from 

thinking about what you’re going to do 

when you get there, so everything takes 

longer. That will be true for astronauts on 

the moon, with its one-sixth gravity.

COHEN: Do you have any particular 

advice for the first commander of the 

Crew Exploration Vehicle [CEV]?

COLLINS: That person won’t need advice 

on the technical side of the job. On the 

people side, I would advise the CEV 

commander to be prepared for a lot of 

media attention. We get little training 

in handling the media and publicity that 

goes with some of these missions. For 

example, John Young, the commander 

on STS-1, had a huge amount of media 

attention. So did my flight in 1999, when 

I was the first woman shuttle commander, 

and the flight last summer, because it was 

a “return-to-flight” mission. I would say, 

hire one person to handle the inflow of 

e-mail, letters, and unusual requests. The 

crew can’t deal with those things; it’s too 

distracting. But I think it’s important 

for the Agency to respond because part 

of our charter is education. I gave the 

same advice to Barb Morgan, who was 

Christa McCauliffe’s backup and will 

fly as the teacher in space next year. You 

need to focus on your job; you’ve got to 

have someone else take care of these other 

things you don’t have time for.

COHEN: Does seeing the earth from 

space give you a new perspective on 

the world?

COLLINS: Yes, you do see the earth from 

a different perspective. It’s so beautiful—

blue and white, a water planet. My first 

thought after looking out the window was, 

“The earth is round!” Of course we all 

know that, but it was the first time I’d ever 

seen it with my own eyes. The auroras—

the northern lights and southern lights—

are beautiful from space. I had never seen 

them before because I had never been that 

far north or south. I sometimes think of 

the earth as a Christmas tree ornament 

because it’s small in the big scheme of 

things and it’s fragile. The surface of the 

earth has an extremely thin atmosphere on 

it. We live on a small and fragile planet.

ASK MAGAZINE | 15
I ASKED my crew TO BE creative, TO THINK ABOUT everything

THAT COULD go wrong DURING THE MISSION THAT NO ONE 

has thought about yet AND BRING IT to the attention OF 

THE FLIGHT CONTROL TEAM.

COHEN: Does that perspective stay with 

you when you’re back on Earth?

COLLINS: Yes, and I want to learn more 

about the planet and ways we can 

preserve it for future generations. I do 

a lot of reading and studying about the 

earth. Also, I want to visit places I’ve seen 

from space: Australia, the Great Barrier 

Reef, those beautiful little islands in the 

Pacific. Looking down at Europe and the 

Middle East, you think of all the history 

that took place in those areas and you 

want to visit them.

COHEN: Although I’m sure it’s not the 

same as being there, I think even seeing 

photos of the earth from space have 

changed the way people think about our 

planet.

COLLINS: Definitely. Most of the change 

in my perspective came from studying 

to be an astronaut. Maybe the last few 

percent of what I know about the earth 

comes from viewing it from space. The 

studying made more of a change in me, 

and that’s something anyone can do if 

they have books and a computer and the 

desire to learn.

COHEN: What’s your response to people 

who argue that we shouldn’t spend our 

resources on further space exploration?

COLLINS: The space program is an 

investment. In the short period of time 

we’ve been sending people into space, life 

on Earth has benefited tremendously. 

We have better ways of observing and 

communicating, with telescopes and 

communications satellites in orbit. 

Someone said, and I agree, that when 

people look back at the twentieth century 

and early twenty-first century 500 years 

from now, they will see space exploration 

as our biggest contribution—the things 

we did to get off the planet to learn how 

to live in space stations and on the moon 

and Mars. We’ve gotten off the planet; 

we will move on to traveling faster so that 

some day people can travel outside the 

solar system.

COHEN: Before we end our conversation, 

is there anything else you’d like to say 

to our readers who work in the space 

program?

COLLINS: Yes. It’s important for people to 

listen to one another. Listening is hard, 

especially if you don’t agree with what 

the person is saying. But you’ve got to 

listen and let people know that you 

heard them and have considered what 

they said. The leader cannot possibly 

make decisions in everybody’s favor, but 

he or she needs to let people know that 

what they said was considered. Decisions 

have to be made and cannot be delayed 

unnecessarily because of disagreement. 

That’s one of the things I did. I said, “I 

hear you. I listened to you. Now I’ve got 

to make a decision.” ●

16 | ASK MAGAZINE
Growing Space Systems Engineers: 

The Key to Realizing the Vision for 

Space Exploration

BY ROBERT D. BRAUN

Now that NASA is headed back in the direction 

of becoming a space flight development agency, 

the Agency’s need for highly capable space 

systems engineers is greater than it has been since 

the end of the Apollo program. Unfortunately, 

at many NASA field centers the current demand 

for capable space systems engineers with strong 

technical leadership skills far exceeds the supply. 

This issue has been overshadowed by media 

debates about the destinations and timetables 

for the vision for space exploration and the 

challenges of returning the Space Shuttle to 

flight. As a former NASA space systems engineer 

and a professor of space technology, I believe 

that systems engineering technical competency 

is central to NASA’s ability to realize its bold 

The current ARES wind tunnel model is shown in May 2004.

Photo Credit: NASA Langley Research Center

human and robotic space exploration plans. 

Today, there are a number of high-caliber space systems engineers 

in the Agency’s field centers who eat, sleep, and breathe technical 

excellence and possess the development expertise needed to craft 

our nation’s future exploration programs. Complemented by 

systems-savvy project managers who carefully balance technical 

risk, cost, and schedule, these personnel are the heart of any 

successful development effort. But, because NASA has operated 

for more than a decade without a development initiative on 

the scale of the new vision for space exploration and was given 

limited hiring authority during this time, I do not believe the 

Agency is currently staffed with enough experienced space 

systems engineers to complete its mission.

While pockets of systems engineering excellence exist at 

each NASA Center, few of these organizations have sufficient 

in-house systems engineering and project management expertise 

to meet the demands of all the development missions presently 

assigned. For NASA to successfully implement the vision for 

space exploration, the NASA field centers must be transformed 

into technically focused organizations distinguished by space 

flight development rigor. These missions demand a focus 

on technical excellence across the organization, a systems 

engineering approach to project implementation, technical 

insight and crisp decision-making from project managers, 

clear communication across the organization, and early risk 

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 17
identification, prioritization, and mitigation. Some of the 

necessary expertise can be developed and sharpened through 

cross-fertilization of systems engineering skills, experiences, 

and organizational approaches among its field centers. For 

example, space flight development practices and personnel at 

the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center 

have been honed by decades of robotic exploration mission and 

flight system development. Lessons learned at those centers 

could be directly applied to the Agency’s human space flight 

efforts by way of workshops, collaboration, and the rotation 

of systems engineering personnel in the next few years—early 

enough to benefit NASA’s major near-term human space flight 

development tasks.

Good systems engineers are not born; they are created over 

time. Intellectual curiosity and education are required, but 

so is substantive experience operating across the boundaries 

of traditional aerospace disciplines in a hardware or mission 

development setting. As a university professor, I know that the 

knowledge needed to become a skilled systems engineer cannot 

be found in a textbook or classroom. We teach orbital mechanics, 

aerospace structures, space propulsion, and even systems 

engineering methodology, but the traditional educational 

approach is ill equipped to prepare a real space systems engineer. 

The important skills can only be mastered from years of “doing 

the work” in a space flight development culture. While a 

traditional university curriculum can provide the foundation 

and tools needed to begin a successful space systems engineering 

career, a complete space systems engineering perspective requires 

a hands-on development experience that spans the whole life 

cycle of a project. 

Paramount to strong systems engineering expertise is 

the ability to see the big picture; seamlessly integrate the 

contributions of disparate disciplines; balance technical, cost, 

and schedule risk; and learn from failure as well as success. 

Over the course of my NASA career, I sharpened these 

systems engineering skills by working as part of small, focused 

teams, including those responsible for the Mars Pathfinder, 

Deep Space 2 Mars Microprobes, Mars Sample Return 

Earth Entry Vehicle, and ARES Mars Airplane hardware 

development activities. These efforts continuously strove to 

reduce technical risk while living within stringent cost and 

schedule constraints. Thinking back on these space flight 

system development efforts, I am struck by a few common 

characteristics—the engineering excellence each of these teams 

exhibited daily, their passionate commitment to achieving 

the team goal, clear communication and camaraderie, and a 

singular focus on mission success. Succeed or fail, space flight 

system development is about enjoying and learning from the 

ride. Members of these teams did just that, learning from each 

developmental struggle, becoming stronger and wiser, and 

eventually applying these lessons to larger space flight projects 

like the Mars Exploration Rover missions and the Mars Science 

Laboratory. Such small space flight development projects serve 

a vital personnel development function, allowing for creativity, 

learning, and innovation, requisite steps to becoming a true 

space systems engineer.

To meet NASA’s space systems engineering needs of 

the future, the Agency must create a hands-on development 

environment in its field centers, relying on strong systems 

engineers to understand and evaluate mission risk. Landing 

on Mars will never be a low-risk venture, nor will developing a 

telescope capable of detecting Earth-size planets around other 

stars, flying a new generation of human-rated launch systems, 

or carrying out a lunar surface mission. Our nation needs to 

dream big, and these are precisely the right missions for NASA 

to pursue. For ambitious projects like these, when low risk is 

not an option, good systems engineers who understand from 

experience how to identify, assess, and reduce risk are vital. 

A long-term development culture at all NASA field centers 

will nurture the space systems engineering expertise we need 

among the Agency’s current personnel. A mix of small and 

large space flight projects is needed to develop this expertise, 

providing both “sink or swim” and mentor/apprentice 

experiences, while allowing each of NASA’s Centers to develop 

GOOD SYSTEMS ENGINEERS ARE NOT 

BORN; THEY ARE CREATED OVER TIME.

18 | ASK MAGAZINE
appropriate systems engineering practices and gain a stronger 

understanding of the concept of acceptable risk. This may be 

the most effective way to grow the Agency’s current personnel 

for the missions of tomorrow.

We must also start early, improving and expanding on the 

relatively small number of opportunities students in our nation’s 

universities have to participate in hands-on space systems 

development and operations activities. These efforts require 

only modest funding and may be the only way to create the 

pipeline of space systems engineering talent the Agency will 

need in the future. Recently, the number of such opportunities 

has been reduced as NASA focuses its resources on large, nearterm human space flight development efforts. This choice may 

work in the near term, but where will the systems engineers 

for the 2018 human lunar mission cut their teeth? Without 

the proper smaller-scale hardware development and mission 

operations experiences to teach them how to design, test, fail, 

re-design, test again, and then fly, these systems engineers will 

simply not be there in NASA’s time of need. Such smallerscale efforts have the potential to dramatically increase the 

number of young space systems engineers with the interest 

and experience to help them carry out the Agency’s plans for 

human lunar exploration. Hands-on student activities would 

offer meaningful learning experiences by spanning the complete 

project life cycle while providing immediate benefits, enhancing 

the scientific return of NASA missions or advancing important 

space systems technologies. Sponsoring student-focused 

hardware development activities would also encourage a closer 

working relationship between current NASA engineers and 

the outstanding generation of young engineers in the nation’s 

universities, improving the pool of new engineering talent that 

NASA can draw on as the students graduate.

NASA is returning to its roots as a space flight development 

organization. Success will depend on large numbers of the 

Agency’s current technical staff getting experiential training 

to make up for more than a decade of neglecting the Agency’s 

technical expertise, particularly in the areas of space systems 

engineering and space flight project management. Small space 

flight development efforts must be a vital element in the Agency’s 

personnel development strategy, providing a practical means of 

building a systems engineering competency and an environment 

in which well-understood risk can be taken, technical creativity 

and innovation applied, and space flight development lessons 

learned. In addition, the best way to develop the expertise NASA’s 

multidecade exploration program requires is to increase the 

number of hands-on space systems development and operational 

activities at our nation’s universities. NASA has been given a 

grand set of future human and robotic space system challenges. 

Agency management must focus on growing the personnel who 

can successfully make this bold vision a reality. ●

ROBERT D. BRAUN is the David and Andrew Lewis Associate 

Professor of Space Technology in the Guggenheim School of 

Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, where 

he leads a student research and educational program focused 

on the design of advanced flight systems and technologies 

for planetary exploration. From 1989 to 2003, he worked at 

Langley Research Center, where he contributed to the design, 

test, and operation of numerous space flight development efforts. 

robert.braun@aerospace.gatech.edu

Photo Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion LaboratoryPhoto Credit: NASA Kennedy Space Center

Left: This artist’s concept of 

the proposed Mars Sample 

Return mission shows a 

rendezvous of the orbiting 

sample container with the 

Earth return vehicle.

Right: In Kennedy Space 

Center’s Spacecraft Assembly 

and Encapsulation Facility2, Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

workers mate the Mars 

Pathfinder small rover to one 

of the lander’s three petals. 

PARAMOUNT TO STRONG SYSTEMS 

ENGINEERING EXPERTISE IS THE 

ABILITY TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE...

ASK MAGAZINE | 19
This vibrant image taken by Spitzer Space Telescope 

shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to 

our own Milky Way galaxy. Nearly one million objects 

are revealed for the first time in this Spitzer view.

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Meixner (STScI) and the SAGE Legacy Team

On August 25, 2003, at 1:36 a.m., I was sitting in the Mission 

Director Center at Cape Canaveral. That is the exact time the 

Delta II rocket ignited and carried the Space Infrared Telescope 

Facility (SIRTF) into an orbit that is the first of its kind with an 

infrared telescope design that is also the first of its kind. After 

three months of successful in-orbit checkout, SIRTF was officially 

commissioned and renamed the Spitzer Space Telescope after 

Lyman Spitzer, the renowned astrophysicist.

20 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY
 FINDING A WAY:

THE SPITZER SPACE TELESCOPE STORY

BY JOHNNY KWOK

As I write this article, Spitzer has just celebrated its third 

anniversary, and all indications show its cryogen, which cools the 

telescope and its instruments to just a few degrees above absolute 

zero, will last beyond five years. An infrared telescope observes 

the thermal emission of objects and therefore must be kept very 

cold to prevent its own emission from drowning those from 

observed objects. Spitzer uses liquid helium to cool the telescope 

to 5 kelvin; the detectors are cooled to 1.4 kelvin, or –272 ̊C.

SIRTF was originally conceived as a follow-on mission to 

the InfraRed Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) that was launched 

in January 1983. At that time, SIRTF stood for Shuttle Infrared 

Telescope Facility. The shuttle was supposed to be the workhorse 

for all NASA payloads, human or robotic, and SIRTF was to fly 

two-week sorties attached to the cargo bay. Almost as soon as 

this concept was conceived, though, it became clear the shuttle 

environment was not conducive to the thermal sensitivity and 

cleanliness required by an infrared telescope. The shuttleattached concept was replaced by a free-flyer concept: SIRTF 

would be launched by the shuttle, and the Orbital Maneuvering 

Vehicle (OMV) would raise its altitude to 900 km. When the 

cryogen ran out, the OMV would bring SIRTF back to the 

shuttle, the cryogen tanks would be refilled, and the OMV 

would raise it back to operating altitude again.

An infrared telescope in a low-Earth orbit has to overcome 

two disadvantages. First, the earth is a significant heat source. 

Second, it blocks half the sky. In addition, the telescope cannot 

point near the sun, so the telescope would routinely have to 

change its attitude to ensure sensitive optics and thermal surfaces 

would stay within design constraints. Of course, we know that 

the OMV never materialized, and after the Challenger accident 

in 1986, the shuttle-based concept was dropped completely.

Artistic concept of the Spitzer Space Telescope in solar orbit.

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

ASK MAGAZINE | 21
In November 1988, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was 

asked to conduct a SIRTF high-Earth orbit (HEO) study. That 

was when I became involved with the project. I led the mission 

analysis portion of the study. We chose an orbit altitude of 70,000 

km, which was later raised to 100,000 km. That altitude eliminates 

the two disadvantages of the low-Earth orbit mission. At that 

distance, the earth only blocks a seven-degree cone of the sky and 

the effects of the earth’s heat are minimal. Also, that altitude is 

above the trapped radiation zone, the region surrounding the earth 

where high-energy charged particles from the sun, and cosmic rays, 

are trapped by Earth’s magnetic field and can interact with infrared 

detectors to produce undesirable noise. 

The high-Earth orbit has a significant disadvantage, however. 

To achieve it, the launch vehicle would have to carry the telescope 

into a parking orbit, initiate a burn to transfer the telescope to 

100,000 km (a quarter of the distance to the moon), and then 

perform a second burn to circularize the orbit. The total change 

in speed of the two burns is about 4 km/sec, more than what is 

needed to send a spacecraft to Mars. It only takes about 3 km/sec 

to escape Earth’s gravity. To reach a high-Earth orbit, we would 

have to use a Titan IV launch vehicle. I knew that the orbit was not 

efficient, but the project was going well using that mission concept 

and we had no motivation to propose changes. One estimate of 

the total cost of the mission was close to $2 billion, however. In 

the budget-constrained climate at NASA, it was inevitable that the 

Titan SIRTF would be cancelled, as it was in late 1991.

The project had to regroup. Jim Evans became the project 

manager in January 1992. The scientists and instrument 

teams scheduled a meeting at JPL to consider ways of reducing 

cost. A week before the March meeting, Jim came to my office 

to ask me if I had any ideas. I was a little taken aback by 

his personal visit. Jim was new to the project, and he and I 

had not known each other prior to SIRTF. I was supporting 

the project on a part-time basis but was not part of the project 

staff and not collocated with the project team. Jim was at 

least two levels above me in the JPL management hierarchy. 

Trying to sound as casual as I could, I replied, “I can talk about 

changing the orbit.”

Jim’s background is not in astrodynamics, so I did not try 

to explain the details of my idea. I simply said that sending the 

telescope into an Earth escape orbit would make it possible to use 

a smaller launch vehicle, such as one of the Atlas family. He took 

my word for it and said he would ask to put me on the agenda. 

A couple of days before the meeting, the agenda was circulated. 

I was not on it. I thought Jim had not followed through, or the 

agenda had so many other proposals that mine was dropped. I 

was not going to push for it. I was surprised again when Jim called 

me and asked me if I had changed my mind about presenting the 

orbit option. When I told him I was ready but the agenda did not 

include me, he said that was a mistake. Shortly afterward, a new 

agenda was circulated, with my name included.

The day came. When it was my turn to speak, I explained 

why a high-Earth orbit is an inefficient orbit and used an Atlas 

performance chart to show that the Atlas can carry only 1,600 

kg to HEO but can carry 2,700 kg to an escape orbit. That 

was still a far cry from the 5,700 kg SIRTF designed for launch 

on a Titan IV. But I pointed out that a telescope in cold, deep 

space far from the earth might not need as much cryogen to 

cool it. In addition, the size of the sun/Earth aperture shield 

could be reduced since there would be no Earth avoidance zone 

anymore. Using a foam cup as a prop for the telescope and a 

3 x 5 inch index card stapled to the side of the cup for a solar 

panel, I explained how the telescope would always have the solar 

panel toward the sun and still be capable of pitching and yawing 

to allow long-duration observations.

My brief explanation was met by a few seconds of dead 

silence. Then Frank Low, the facility scientist, jumped up and 

said, “That is the best idea I’ve heard today.” The project quickly 

put together a proof-of-concept study and showed that an Atlas 

SIRTF was possible, but with the mission life reduced from five 

to two and a half years. One estimate pegged the cost in the 

mid-$800 million range, a reduction of more than half.

The new SIRTF mission was well received by NASA 

Headquarters and Dan Goldin, who became the NASA 

administrator in April 1992. But the cost was still too high for 

the era of faster, better, cheaper. The project team was told it had 

22 | ASK MAGAZINE
The Spitzer Space Telescope, 

without the solar panel, 

during integration and testing.

THIS WAS SUCH A RADICAL DESIGN THAT IT TOOK A SIGNIFICANT EFFORT TO ARRIVE AT A PROOF OF CONCEPT...IT TOOK ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS TO GO FROM THAT CONCEPT TO LAUNCH.

Photo Credit: Russ Underwood, Lockheed Martin Space Systems

ASK MAGAZINE | 23
to cut the price tag to under $500 million and consider the Delta 

II class of launch vehicles. It was time to pull another rabbit out 

of the hat.

The rabbit took the form of a warm launch concept proposed 

by Frank Low in late 1993. In traditional infrared telescope 

missions, the telescope and its instruments are housed inside a 

thermal bottle, the cryostat. Liquid helium fills the insulating 

walls of the cryostat, and the telescope and instruments are already 

cooled at launch. Frank proposed to let the coldness of deep space 

encountered in the solar orbit help cool the telescope and put only 

the instruments in the cryostat. Not having to build a cryostat to 

encase the entire telescope would eliminate a significant amount 

of mass, possibly allowing a Delta II class launch vehicle.

This was such a radical design that it took a significant 

effort to arrive at a proof of concept. In early 1995, the project 

finally settled on the Delta II solar orbit warm launch SIRTF. It 

took another eight years to go from that concept to launch, with 

many trials and tribulations, but the mission concept essentially 

remains the same. With better refinement in the cryogen system 

design and the use of an enhanced version of the Delta II, we 

managed to build a SIRTF with a cryogen life of at least five 

years. The launch mass of SIRTF was 852 kg. 

The basic lessons of this long, complicated story are fairly 

simple, but I think they’re important. First, don’t get locked into 

any one way of achieving your goal; there may be a better way 

to solve the problems you face than that first good idea. Second, 

when you’re looking for new ideas, especially radical new ideas, 

it makes sense to cast a wide net and welcome a broad range of 

thinking, expertise, and imagination.

As I was sitting at the Mission Director Center at Cape 

Canaveral watching the Delta II rocket carry SIRTF into its solar 

orbit, I could not help wondering what would have happened if 

Jim had not insisted that an idea had to be heard. ●

Note: Jim Evans left SIRTF in October 1993 when he was promoted 

to assistant lab director. Sadly, he passed away shortly afterward. 

This story is a tribute to him and many of the unsung heroes on 

SIRTF who contributed to the success of the mission.

JOHNNY KWOK joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1979 

as a trajectory engineer and mission designer. He worked on 

the Spitzer (SIRTF) mission from November 1988 to December 

2003, first as a member of the concept development and 

proposal team, later as the mission engineer, and finally as the 

facility engineer.

DON’T GET LOCKED INTO ANY ONE WAY 

OF ACHIEVING YOUR GOAL; THERE MAY BE 

A BETTER WAY TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS 

YOU FACE THAN THAT FIRST GOOD IDEA.

24 | ASK MAGAZINE
In 1968, Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce left Fairchild Semiconductor to form Intel Corporation. 

Intel soon became one of the most important companies in the world, a crucial driver of the 

Information Age, while Fairchild declined. In the mid-1970s, Digital Equipment Corporation 

(DEC) took a huge bite out of IBM’s mainframe business by creating the minicomputer; twentyfive years later, DEC has disappeared. In the early 1980s, Apple created a huge following when it 

introduced the Macintosh computer; Apple largely fell off the radar screen for a number of years, 

only to be recently resurrected as an innovation powerhouse. In 1967, NASA experienced a disastrous 

fire on the Apollo 1 spacecraft that killed three astronauts; two years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz 

Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface, the first of six crews to do so. NASA subsequently underwent 

severe budget cuts leading to the cancellation of at least three lunar landings, but then sent rockets 

to Venus, Mars, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, Jupiter, Mercury, many outer planet moons, even outside 

the Solar System. Today, the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers are still churning out valuable 

information, far exceeding their expected life. 

Imagination, Motivation, and 

Leadership Make Visions Real

BY EUGENE S. MEIERAN AND HARRISON H. SCHMITT

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 25
We believe that the difference between success and failure 

in these varied cases, the difference between succumbing to 

disaster and learning how to reach greater goals in the future 

comes down to three ingredients: leadership, imagination, and 

motivation. If you have none of them, or only one, success is 

unlikely. If you have all three, it is almost certain.

Intel was founded by Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore, 

both acknowledged as technical masterminds as well as great 

visionaries. Andy Grove joined them and lent technical talent 

as well as an organizational mind-set that changed the world 

by creating and delivering revolutionary new semiconductor 

devices. They created a company that motivated people 

through personal recognition as well as financial rewards; 

that led to the invention of the microprocessor by Ted Hoff, 

Intel’s first Fellow, and erasable memory or EPROM by Dov 

Frohman. Imagination, leadership, and motivation made this 

success possible. Intel’s leadership was willing to bet their 

company’s future on the potential value of these new devices. 

Frohman and Hoff were young men with deep technical 

knowledge, and Gordon Moore, of Moore’s Law fame, and 

Bob Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit, understood 

the technology as well as the capability of these people. This 

combination, along with the motivation to succeed inspired by 

Grove’s leadership, led Intel to shape the information future of 

the world. 

NASA endured the fire on Apollo 1 and chose not to sink 

into despair but to learn from the experience. On the second 

manned Apollo flight, less than two years later, astronauts 

Frank Bormann, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders flew around the 

moon and enabled Neil and Buzz to step out on the surface, just 

seven months and three missions later. They too had wise leaders 

like George Low and Wernher von Braun, who understood the 

technology, had a vision of the future of space travel, and had 

a great motivation to succeed, fueled by the desire to beat the 

Soviet Union and by an inner drive to be first to the moon, 

regardless of politics. NASA’s workforce, mostly people in their 

twenties, was motivated to succeed, particularly after the fire. 

They analyzed the entire Command Module to ferret out all 

the potential problems and, ultimately, built a safe Command 

Module. The wise leaders considered and accepted the calculated 

risks involved and had the imagination to change a mission’s 

schedule to allow for a direct flight to the moon after just one 

manned Apollo flight, even though the lunar module and the 

Saturn V booster were still being debugged. And so the flight of 

Apollo 8 opened outer space to exploration and conquest. 

These same qualities came into play after budget cuts 

eliminated several lunar missions. Imagination showed how 

to explore the solar system using unmanned vehicles, how 

to land vehicles on Mars, and how to analyze comets and 

asteroids. Leadership kept NASA’s mission in view in spite of 

the difficulties. Motivation ensured success regardless of budget 

cuts and technical challenges.

Leadership means making decisions that often involve 

significant risk (like going to the moon on Apollo 8 after just 

one manned flight, or betting the company on our ability to 

replace core memories). It’s the great and therefore risky goals 

that fuel motivation: the goal of creating the Information Age, 

putting a man on the moon, or hitting an asteroid moving at 

50,000 km/hr with a little space probe. Powerful motivation 

can empower great leaders (Churchill comes to mind), but 

great ideas most often need great leaders and high motivation 

to succeed. Von Braun’s vision and capability to go to the moon 

needed a John Kennedy to make that vision a national goal and 

George Low to make it achievable. 

When imagination is insufficient to discover what’s really 

possible, and huge opportunities are lost or leadership fails to make 

meaningful but risky decisions that take advantage of emerging 

opportunities or fails to motivate the workforce, then challenges 

and setbacks are likely to lead to failure, not success. So our advice 

is quite simple, though following it may be quite difficult: 

• Allow people to be imaginative and innovative. 

Imagination makes the near impossible possible.

• Allow leaders to provide leadership, not just management 

skills.

• Help leaders choose ideas that create motivation for the 

people working on them. These ideas will flourish in spite 

of the obstacles. ●

EUGENE S. MEIERAN is Senior Intel Fellow and a member of 

the National Academy of Engineering.

HARRISON H. SCHMITT was the Apollo 17 Lunar Module Pilot 

and is chairman of the NASA Advisory Council.

26 | ASK MAGAZINE
Featured Invention: 

Emulsified Zero-Valent Iron

BY JOHANNA SCHULTZ

Dr. Quinn, an environmental engineer in the Applied Sciences 

Division of the Kennedy Applied Technology Directorate, joined 

Kathleen Brooks, an analytical chemist in the center’s Materials 

Science Laboratory of the Center Operations Directorate, along 

with Drs. Christian Clausen, Cherie Geiger, and Debra Reinhart 

at the University of Central Florida’s Departments of Chemistry 

and Civil Environmental Engineering to come up with a 

solution that would provide a safe, effective, and economical 

way to clean dense nonaqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs) 

from the environment. DNAPLs are a common cause of 

environmental contamination at thousands of Department of 

Energy, Department of Defense, NASA, and private industry 

facilities around the country. Kennedy Space Center’s Launch 

Complex 34 was polluted with chlorinated solvents that were 

used to clean Apollo rocket parts during the space program’s 

early years. When left untreated, DNAPLs contaminate fresh 

water sources and are costly and difficult to remove.

The team’s original treatment concept relied on using iron, 

which has been used to eliminate chlorinated contaminants 

in groundwater for about a decade. Iron is cheap and is found 

in most groundwater environments from natural sources such 

as iron oxides, hydroxides, and sulfates or sulfides. It is also 

essentially nontoxic. When iron metal is exposed to chlorinated 

solvents (particularly dissolved solvents) in groundwater, it 

creates a reaction that replaces chlorine in the molecules with 

hydrogen, leaving a harmless end product of ethene or ethane. 

“Once we came up with this idea, we saw that it could 

be extrapolated to treat a different compound in a different 

environment,” says Dr. Quinn. The expanded idea included 

treating polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a compound 

commonly used in the 1970s for hundreds of applications from 

carbon paper to paints, adhesives, and dialectic transformers, 

which has proven exceptionally difficult to safely remove from 

the environment. “We have altered the metal we use for the 

degradation and developed different liquid membranes for the 

emulsion droplet to extend EZVI’s capabilities and treat PCBs 

in addition to DNAPLs,” explains Dr. Clausen. According to 

Dr. Quinn, “We’ve been able to take our original technology 

into a completely different application use.”

Leadership and vision were essential elements to the team’s 

success with EZVI. Brooks, who initially joined the team as a 

graduate student in environmental chemistry, found particular 

inspiration from the guidance and examples of the team’s senior 

researchers. Quinn also attributes EZVI’s success to the team’s 

collaborative and flexible approach to research. The research 

team had worked together on projects in the past and was “a very 

comfortable working group,” explains Dr. Quinn. “We know each 

other’s triggers and how to work with those sensitivities.” This 

familiarity promoted rapport, trust, and experimental freedom 

that were essential to thinking beyond the usual methods of 

DNAPL clean-up (slow, inefficient pumps and costly thermal 

treatments) to create something entirely new. “We discussed 

many options and in the end weren’t tied down to one idea,” 

explains Quinn. “And once we came up with something that 

worked, we sat down again and asked ourselves, ‘How can we 

expand this product to treat other contaminants as well?’” 

While the group allowed themselves plenty of creative licenses, 

they were also realistic about financial parameters surrounding 

When faced with a big problem, it’s often the small ideas that are able to create big results. Allowing 

those ideas to grow is equally important, according to Dr. Jacqueline Quinn, who helped create an 

innovative groundwater treatment technology that uses nanosize and microscale bits of iron (ZVI 

particles). “Let the science expand beyond your original plans,” says Dr. Quinn, “and it will take 

you places.” The result, Emulsified Zero-Valent Iron (EZVI), worked so well that it is currently in 

use to treat not only groundwater pollution but above-ground PCB pollutants as well. 

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 27
the project. “At the time, everything that was getting funded 

was nanotechnology,” Quinn explains. “We knew we had a high 

probability of getting our project funded if it used nanotechnology, 

so we decided to use nanoscale materials.” Dr. Geiger added that 

the nano iron particles were essential for moving EZVI deep 

through the soil to the highest concentrations of contamination. 

In order to do this without expensive trenching, they needed very 

small particles that could move through a series of wells. 

There were also considerable regulatory hurdles surrounding 

the use of iron to clean up environmental pollutants because it was 

publicly perceived as harmful to the environment. “Every time 

you introduce a new technology that’s going to be released into 

the environment, you face a challenge in getting the regulatory 

community to understand that what you’re putting into the 

ground is going to be beneficial,” says Dr. Quinn. “Iron is in the 

vitamins we take and does not pose a harm to the environment in 

the scale and scope we were proposing to use it in.” The team came 

up with the idea to use food-grade products such as vegetable oil 

that would create a surfactant to hold the EZVI system together. 

“We went with materials that were specifically understood to not 

have an impact [on the environment],” Dr. Quinn explains. “We 

didn’t even test surfactants that we knew could potentially be 

toxic, because we knew it wouldn’t go anywhere.”

The resultant EZVI overcomes the limitations of current 

DNAPL treatment technologies because it is able to directly treat 

the contaminant particles by mimicking and therefore exploiting 

DNAPL’s chemical properties. The oil membrane acts as a wick 

that pulls the DNAPL contaminants out of the water (much as 

a paper towel pulls water into the towel when placed on top of a 

spill on your kitchen counter) while the nanoparticles break down 

the DNAPL into harmless compounds that can be consumed by 

microbes in the soil. “The EZVI droplets are like mini-reactors 

that are sent into the most concentrated contaminant areas,” 

explains Dr. Geiger. The result is a quick, effective, and costcompetitive substance that produces less toxic and more easily 

degradable by-products than conventional methods. 

The result of the team’s flexibility and willingness to expand 

upon their initial hypothesis has produced a level of success that 

even they hadn’t initially imagined. Quinn explains that more 

than 60,000 gallons of EZVI has been put into the ground 

at four industrial locations and at three locations within the 

Department of Defense. The technology has won the SE Federal 

Labs Consortium 2005 Excellence in Technology Transfer 

award, the national Federal Laboratory Consortium Excellence 

in Technology Transfer Award for 2006, the NASA 2005

Invention of the Year Award, and the 2005 NASA Commercial 

Invention of the Year Award. “It was just a great experience to 

work with a team who knew each other so well, who had such a 

level of respect for each other and each others’ talents, and who 

weren’t afraid to pursue new ideas,” Quinn says. ●

Conversation with Kathleen Brooks

Kathleen Brooks joined the EZVI team while she was a 

graduate student and now works for NASA full time. She 

talked to Kerry Ellis about what she learned from the 

experienced team she joined. 

WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM WORKING ON THIS PROJECT? 

Even if 90 percent of your experiments fail, you just keep trying until you 

get one that works in the lab. In order to create something that would be 

reliable and work in the field, we needed to reproduce the exact same 

results each time, which was difficult. In this type of work, it’s important 

to remember that one experiment can give you results that are either 

false or too good to be true. You need to keep testing in order to get a 

product that works. 

HOW DO YOU PERSIST WHEN 90 PERCENT OF YOUR EXPERIMENTS 

FAIL?

Sometimes proving that something doesn’t work isn’t as exciting as 

proving that it does, but you can learn a lot from experiments that don’t 

work well. At the very least, you help other chemists know what not to 

do. You can’t expect anything to work magically the first time. None of 

us expected this idea to work as well as it did! 

WAS IT DIFFICULT JOINING A TEAM THAT HAD WORKED TOGETHER IN 

THE PAST AND HAD SUCH A CLOSE-KNIT RELATIONSHIP? 

I had worked in environmental analytical chemistry for ten years, but 

working as a part of this team was a life-changing experience for me. 

I was accepted as part of the team from the beginning, and I got my 

job at NASA through my experience with the team. I am still part of the 

group today, doing research on PCBs. The work complemented my 

research background, so I immediately thought of ways to make the 

concept work. I felt comfortable and that I could just jump right in and 

get going. 

HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED ON THIS PROJECT?

I took an environmental chemistry class with Dr. Geiger and did a 

presentation on groundwork contamination. When she asked me to 

join the group as a researcher, I was hesitant at first. I’d focused on 

environmental research for so long that I felt ready to try something 

new. But after I spoke to Dr. Quinn and others on the team, I realized 

that we could really do this. 

WHAT DID YOU MOST ENJOY ABOUT WORKING ON THIS TEAM?

Everyone had very specific things to offer that made it easy to work 

well together. Dr. Quinn is very analytical and good at the business side 

of things, Dr. Clausen is an amazing think tank, and Dr. Geiger keeps 

us all organized. These individual contributions matched well together. 

Vision is also important. Dr. Clausen and the team had drawn out the 

basic idea, and we were able to reproduce it under the microscope. 

That was exciting.

DO YOU AGREE WITH DR. QUINN’S ADVICE OF NOT LOCKING 

YOURSELF IN TO ONE IDEA?

Yes. It’s a huge task to take something from a pure concept, make it 

work in the laboratory, and then get it into the field. For example, we 

had several different emulsions that worked. We preferred one version 

over the other options, but when we tested it in the field, our preferred 

choice was no longer feasible, so we were forced to go back to our 

previous research and continue testing. 

28 | ASK MAGAZINE
How Do You Make 

Good Managers 

BY MICHAEL A. SPATOLA

In the middle of winter in 2005, Art Pyster, SAIC’s director of systems engineering and integration, 

sponsored a companywide workshop to develop strategies for improving workforce management 

and collaboration. I was not expecting to do more than participate in the workshop, and I looked 

forward to the sessions, which would address both program management and systems engineering. 

Little did I know that as a result of this workshop bringing together by chance the director of systems 

engineering and the director of learning and leadership development, my job would change entirely. 

EDUCATION

TRAINING

EXPERIENCE

LEADERSHIP

FLEXIBILITY

BREADTH DEPTH

MENTORING

COACHING

PARTICIPATION

KNOWLEDGE

BETTER?

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 29
SAIC, which provides scientific, engineering, and other 

technical services to the U.S. military, has a strong tradition 

and emphasis on project management. We also have a deepseated culture of independence and an entrepreneurial 

spirit (“a thousand companies in one”). That tradition 

led to strong corporate support, training, and approaches 

dedicated to “Excellence in Program Management” and 

excellent but sometimes independent practices and initiatives 

within line organizations. When Ken Dahlberg took over 

as SAIC’s chief executive officer, he was clear in his first 

direction for program management: “Get our program 

managers better training.” 

Easier said than done. We wanted this to be a 

collaborative effort across the company and raise our 

program management (PM) development to the next level. 

To define “better training,” we created a small planning 

team—which I led as the overall program manager—and 

a PM Advisory Panel, comprising senior program managers 

from across the company. The team given this task believed 

the only way to substantially improve PM training was to go 

back to first principles to figure out what makes for program 

management excellence, and we took a leap of faith, hoping 

management would understand the value of that approach. 

The guiding principles we created for improving our PMs 

were as follows: 

• Competence in program management is developed through 

education, training, and experience with mentoring and 

coaching. You need all three.

• Program management professionals can be developed 

and advanced along a flexibly defined career path. There 

is more than one way to gain the education, training, 

and experience needed to be a successful program 

manager.

• Program managers need to develop broader expertise 

through technical, functional, line, and other roles. PMs 

need both breadth and depth.

Once we established our guiding principles, we needed to 

create a competency model that clearly defined the knowledge, 

skills, and attributes our PMs needed to be successful. With 

that model, then, as our foundation, we could (and had to) 

design a curriculum and career path that helped program 

managers acquire that knowledge and those skills.

The first version of the SAIC PM Competency Model was 

ready for review by the end of May 2005; then it went through 

three months of review, comment, and update. In a company 

of more than 44,000 employees, we were faced with a “review, 

comment, and update” process across six organizational groups 

and twenty-four business units. We also held review sessions 

with our PM Advisory Panel, keeping in mind the members 

were from different locations and offering them different 

times to participate so the PMs on the West Coast could 

contribute. Sending out material a few days in advance, we 

used a Web-based DataExchange system, audio teleconference, 

and projection systems to help our discussions and ensure 

everyone was looking at the same information. To get the best 

participation possible, we would schedule several opportunities 

for them to join the discussion.

We also wanted feedback from our line managers, and we 

were smart enough to realize they already had many demands 

on their time. To ensure we got their feedback without taxing 

their workloads more, we sent our preliminary drafts to line 

managers’ key staff, asked our PM Advisory Panel members 

to help notify line managers about the materials, and set up 

several discussion sessions for them. We also offered to meet 

with any business unit general manager who could not attend 

a discussion session. 

One lesson we learned from the comments we received was 

that how the model was displayed was just as important as what

the model displayed. Because of that, we reexamined the model 

from a communications point of view and adjusted it so we 

had several versions for different audiences. Looking back at our 

process, our keys to success were

• Recognizing that PMs need to have both leadership and 

management skills, which resonated across the company

• Considering SAIC’s company values and needs, which 

established a model consistent with our culture

• Evaluating appropriate external sources, which added 

credibility to the final results 

• Realizing that the skills a PM needs vary by project size and 

complexity, which allowed a fuller look at what we really 

need in a PM

30 | ASK MAGAZINE
• Identifying competencies by project type aided in 

developing a curriculum, which focused on the right 

training for each type of project

Using the PM Competency Model as the foundation, we 

created a “map” that showed what courses we had and which 

competencies they helped support. Historically, SAIC had 

emphasized internal program management courses that were 

both developed and taught by SAIC experts. But the “state 

of the practice” for program management as well as our own 

internal processes had grown and evolved to better meet the 

needs of practitioners and customers. Unfortunately, not all of 

our internal courses had kept pace. 

To make sure our courses reflected “better training,” and 

recognizing our limited internal resources to both develop and 

instruct courses, we kept in mind the following:

Because our stakeholders felt the working relations and 

review processes we used for the PM Competency Model 

were disciplined, fair to all, and complete, we used it again 

for developing our curriculum. Our first major review of 

the curriculum from the line organizations had more than 

300 comments, which was a huge response. In addition to 

responding to this feedback, having representation from seniorlevel (seasoned) program managers from across the company 

was critical to our success. And we would not have succeeded 

without participation across the company throughout our 

efforts. That participation kept interests high, ensured real 

needs were identified and met, and aided buy-in to solutions to 

those needs—all of which were key.

Releasing the new PM curriculum represented a 

philosophical change in SAIC’s approach to project and 

program management training: external vendors, more training, 

increased training costs, and more. And as the first classes were 

held, e-mails hit my inbox and the phone started ringing with 

an overwhelmingly positive response to what we had done. I 

could tell our long journey to success had really just begun, and 

that there is much more to come in the future. ●

MICHAEL A. SPATOLA is a senior program manager and vice 

president for Program Management at SAIC. He is currently the 

program manager for SAIC’s internal efforts to develop project 

and program management training curriculum and career 

development programs. Michael has more than twenty-five 

years of experience practicing program management, ranging 

from software development to large satellite systems.

1. Training within the curriculum, consistent 

with the competency model, should be 

tailored to project type.

2. Training should include a mix of vendorprovided “state of the practice” training 

focused on project management skills.

3. Training should include complementary 

company-specific training focused on 

applying those project management skills 

within the SAIC environment.

4. Leadership training should form an essential 

part of the curriculum, just as leadership is an 

essential part of a project or program manager.

5. Training should include both core (required) 

and recommended courses.

6. Line organizations will supplement the PM 

curriculum with additional required courses 

based on customer, project, and organizational 

needs.

ASK MAGAZINE | 31
communicating

 SCIENCE

BY DR. RICHARD E. SHOPE III 

32 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY
Each scientific discipline has its own language, history, and 

methodologies, and tends to view the rest of the science world 

through its own set of experiences. A field biologist values the 

surrounding context of an ecological niche where a molecular 

biologist finds the heart of the matter in the laboratory tracing 

DNA sequences. When an astrobiology mission brings both 

those scientists together on the same team, they may find it very 

difficult to communicate to one another without a deliberate 

effort to understand and empathize with each other’s perspective. 

A large and diverse space science team working on a major solar 

system exploration mission compounds the challenge. Several 

fields come together and must agree on a common set of goals, 

objectives, and strategies for data gathering. This requires the 

art of diplomacy, maneuvering through minefields of potential 

errors, biases, and disagreements based on the diversity of the 

science cultural views. Each investigator’s drive for mission success 

generally motivates them to work toward common ground where 

their specializations can meet, but it can be rough going.

As a science research analyst working for the Office of Science 

Research and Analysis at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), my 

job is to communicate effectively across the gulf separating scientific 

specialties. I report highlights of recent JPL space science research 

results to discipline program scientists and managers in decisionmaking positions at NASA Headquarters. Through this process of 

what I call space science “upreach,” I provide one of many streams of 

information that help NASA’s Science Mission Directorate remain 

aware of the leading-edge developments in solar system research 

occurring at JPL under their auspices. My communications must 

quickly frame the big picture, get to the point, highlight the 

significance, quietly mention a recommendation or two, and then 

exit as gracefully as a silent mime, having ignited a spark of interest 

that flashes through the NASA hallways.

What qualifies me for this job? Two things, really: my 

lifelong interest in science and my mastery of the art of mime. 

I grew up in a family of renowned virologists. As a child, 

I sloshed through central New Jersey fields and woods with 

my grandfather (Richard E. Shope) and galumphed through 

barnyards with my father (R. E. Shope, Jr.) as they went virus 

hunting. For me, it was a grand time of swatting mosquitoes and 

filling my quota of laughter and wonder, enjoying the company 

of my actively curious namesakes. I would ride with my 

grandfather to his laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute in New 

York City and look out the window at the East River or marvel 

at his honorary degrees while he fiddled with his centrifuges. 

On different occasions I would visit my father’s virology lab at 

the University of Minnesota Veterinary College in St. Paul as he 

checked the results of his viral cultures in Petri dishes and made 

the rounds to check on the experimental animals. 

So I grew up speaking “science” as a first language. Early on, I 

learned that science is less about knowing than about questioning. 

Question everything, including authority and tradition, but 

most especially question one’s own first impressions and pet 

ideas. No knowledge is to be considered absolute. Looking at 

a situation with new information or from a different point of 

view might change what is actually known. So the scientist 

must remain open to divergent possibilities and points of view. 

At interdisciplinary gatherings of science colleagues at JPL, I 

learn most from listening to the questions scientists ask each 

other. Often they are the same questions that form in my own 

mind—fundamental questions that aim at understanding how 

esoteric details relate to the big picture.

My earliest claim to fame is as a mime artist who studied with 

Marcel Marceau and other great mimes in Europe and Japan. 

That experience and expertise also contributes to my effectiveness 

as a science communicator. I mastered the art as a performer, 

but I also apply its underlying principles to the field of science 

education. Those principles are epitomized in the Greek concept 

of mimesis, the representation of reality in art. Participatory mime 

accompanied by narrative explanation—movement and words 

together—guides participants to construct vivid conceptual 

understandings of dynamic processes. What is normally an 

interior thinking process—analyzing and then synthesizing or 

constructing a map or model of a dynamic system—occurs out 

in the open as a mime improvisational event.

For groups of visitors at JPL, I often create a participatory 

mime of the Mars Exploration Rovers, treating each component 

as a live character. I invite volunteers in the audience—most 

often a mix of parents, teachers, and children of all ages—to act 

out the science story. Using my mime skills and informed by 

reliable data, I guide them through gestures and explanations 

toward an understanding of the science concepts. One group acts 

out the robotic arm, working in synchrony to deploy its science 

instruments. Each instrument—the Rock Abrasion Tool, the 

Microscopic Imager, the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, the 

The enterprise of scientific inquiry is an adventure of going where curiosity beckons. 

Scientists generate questions, propose explanations, carry out investigations, and 

communicate their findings. Communication within a scientific discipline has its 

own challenges, but cross-discipline communication is especially rich in difficulties 

and pitfalls.

ASK MAGAZINE | 33
Mössbauer Spectrometer—is played as a separate heroic character. 

Each “character” creates mime moves that aim to communicate 

how the instrument works, what it measures, and how it relates 

to the underlying science concepts. The result is that all those 

present have a shared experience of mimesis in action: either as 

direct participants (by acting it out) or as participant observers 

(by actively watching). This mimediate inquiry event—that is, 

this tangible representation of reality (mimesis) mediated (as 

externalized constructions of thought) by meaningful mime 

and narration—can be referred to, talked about, replicated, and 

modified by an infusion of new information. 

The thinking processes of the artist and the scientist are 

analogous—both apply their skill and knowledge to complex 

data to construct a representation of reality that can be tested 

and validated. For the mime artist, the test is whether the 

mime performance communicates meaningfully and increases 

understanding for an audience. For the space scientist, the test is 

whether the dynamic model continues to correspond to the realworld phenomena it seeks to explain. And scientists, too, often 

employ a kind of mimesis to make their ideas visible—or tangible—

to their colleagues, using a combination of written, spoken, and 

visual presentations at their gatherings. As Glenn Orton describes 

the spinning bands of atmosphere near the poles of Saturn, there is 

a hint of a dancer’s pirouette in his body language. Kevin Baines 

speaks so kaleidoscopically fast that in the space of two or three 

minutes, your mind has visualized quick updates of the deep 

storms of Saturn and high-flying ammonia clouds in Jupiter’s 

upper atmosphere. This is where the discourse of science gets highly 

animated, as differing interpretations of results are argued about 

and worked through toward eventual consensus about the viability 

of a proposed explanation. This is also where it becomes apparent 

that science communication is a complex process even among 

scientists. Speaking across disciplines is an act of intercultural 

communication. And this is where my own mix of expert studies of 

science, intercultural communication, and mime come into play.

For example, from 1989 to 1994, Magellan’s science 

instruments beamed radar waves through the thick layers of 

sulfur dioxide clouds to map nearly every nook and cranny on the 

surface of Venus. In 2002, as Dr. Sue Smrekar and her team at 

JPL pored over the Magellan data, they noticed patterns formed 

by surface features that resembled polygon-shaped formations 

on Earth. But these Venusian polygons were on a vastly larger 

scale. She and her team developed a computer algorithm that 

could scour the surface of Venus for candidate areas where giant 

polygons exist. As the computer scouted out the terrain, Dr. 

Smrekar had to shape the data into mental pictures that would 

help her recognize key patterns. It was as if she and her science 

team were physically there, on Venus, climbing atop the basalt 

plateaus, looking closely at the forms to unlock their mysteries 

and unravel millions of years of Venusian history. 

Enter the science research analyst/mime artist. Through the 

use of mimediate inquiry processes I climb into the science story 

to gain my own understanding. In this case, I incorporate the 

dynamical model proposed by Smrekar to inform participatory 

mime performances, figuratively climbing atop the basalt 

plateaus and re-experiencing the formation of the Venusian 

polygons. If my mimediate picture is accurate, which I check 

by conversing further with the scientist, then I am confident 

that I have the understanding I need to create the space science 

highlight. In this roundabout way, my mime expertise supports 

my work in the highly specialized world of space science upreach 

as I communicate significant results to science decision makers. 

One of the deepest human yearnings is to feel that one’s 

work is significant. A space scientist’s involvement in a massive 

enterprise like the space program can arouse a feeling of 

existential insignificance. The scale of the extragalactic abyss 

inspires trembling and trepidation. In a different way, so does 

realizing that you have stepped into an uncharted region of 

specialized knowledge and your professional reputation hangs on 

the improbable success of a chunk of aluminum carrying a highly 

sophisticated science instrument hurtling through interplanetary 

space for several breath-suspended years to capture miniscule 

and esoteric measurements, which will be beamed back through 

space to Earth, streaming into your laptop to be interpreted by 

your own agile mind. Then you turn that thrill of discovery into 

a paper that goes through months of peer review in order to be 

published for the specialist science community, which views the 

paper as one tiny brush mark on a lavish canvas. And you face the 

nagging question, have I glimpsed reality or have I been fooled 

by its shadow? The verdict may dangle unresolved for years in 

the ensuing discussion among colleagues. Such is the ongoing 

angst of the space scientist. My work, communicating the import 

of scientists’ results to decision makers and scientists outside their 

discipline, is one critical piece of this shared enterprise of space 

exploration and inquiry. ●

DR. RICHARD E. SHOPE III is a science research analyst 

working for the Office of Science Research and Analysis at the 

Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I GREW UP SPEAKING “SCIENCE” 

AS A FIRST LANGUAGE. EARLY ON, I 

LEARNED THAT SCIENCE IS LESS ABOUT 

KNOWING THAN ABOUT QUESTIONING.

34 | ASK MAGAZINE
The X-38 Vehicle 131R drops away from its launch 

pylon on the wing of NASA’s NB-52B as it begins 

its eighth free flight December 13, 2001.

Photo Credit: Carla Thomas, NASA

Seven Key Principles of 

Program and Project Success

BY VINCENT J. BILARDO, JR.

To support the Next Generation Launch Technology Program and the Constellation Systems 

Program, twenty seasoned program managers and systems engineers from the aerospace industry, 

academia, and government joined together to create the NASA Organization Design Team (ODT). 

The team conducted a series of workshops, surveys, interviews, and studies to discover and describe 

the essential elements of successful programs. As a result of this work, we believe that the following 

seven key principles are critical to program and project success. 

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 35
Principle 1: 

Establish a Clear and Compelling Vision

Creating a clearly defined vision of the future that inspires and 

motivates the workforce is an important first step on the path 

to project success. An effective vision statement should be vivid, 

concise, motivating, and memorable. Early in NASA’s history, 

President John F. Kennedy provided a clear goal to “land a man 

on the moon and return him safely to Earth.” NASA created the 

Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs to achieve that vision. 

The Apollo program required billions of dollars, millions of 

hours, and thousands of men and women, yet that simple goal 

drove the entire effort. For almost a decade, President Kennedy’s 

words pushed the space program forward. 

A lack of vision can be disastrous. In its 2003 report, the 

Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) noted the lack 

of a national mandate for NASA over the past three decades. 

According to the report, this absence contributed to NASA’s 

failure to receive budgetary support, which resulted in an 

Agency struggling to do “too much with too little.”1 Without 

a compelling goal, successive Administrations and Congresses 

were unwilling to commit the billions of dollars required to 

develop the next generation of space transportation. 

Principle 2: 

Secure Sustained Support from the Top

Maintaining top-level support for large programs requires 

developing and sustaining “program protectors” inside and 

outside an organization. Managers should also establish 

effective working relationships with key stakeholders. A home 

division CEO protected Lockheed Martin’s stealth fighter 

prototype by setting up special financing to maintain the 

secrecy of the special project for which Lockheed’s “Skunk 

Works” became famous.2 This allowed the project to be 

autonomous and prevented other interests at the company 

from interfering with the work in progress.

A lack of “protectors” has caused many programs to fail 

or be cancelled. The X-38 project could not survive changes 

to project requirements because it lacked a top-level protector.3

The Advanced Launch System and National Launch System 

programs also suffered from poor support. These programs 

began during President Reagan’s Space Defense Initiative (SDI). 

When President Bill Clinton took office, he de-emphasized the 

SDI and eliminated the heavy lift requirement that had founded 

the initiative. The program was later cancelled despite five years 

of intense effort by major aerospace companies.4

Principle 3: 

Exercise Strong Leadership and Management

Strong leadership requires managers to identify and develop 

other leaders and technical staff, define clear lines of authority, 

demand accountability, implement sound project management 

practices, and demonstrate uncompromising ethical standards. 

As Dr. Wernher von Braun—a key leader of the Apollo 

program—often emphasized, you should hire people smarter 

than you and give them the responsibility and resources 

needed to accomplish the task.5 This allows managers to 

focus on the program as a whole, a crucial perspective for 

leadership to maintain. 

John Muratore, X-38 project manager, emphasized that 

strong project leaders should also resist the rush to flight 

until all technical and safety issues have been resolved.6 The X38 management team delayed their flight test program to allow 

for more aerodynamic analysis. They would not proceed to 

the next flight test until they had completed the analysis 

and run it by an independent review team. As a result of 

Muratore’s “test before you fly” approach, the project had two 

perfect flights. 

This uncompromising integrity for project performance also 

requires ethical behavior from managers. Team members will 

not follow a leader they know is capable of unethical behavior 

and decision making. Lack of integrity fosters cynicism among 

the team and can compromise the mission.

Photo Credit: U.S. Navy

A Virginia class attack submarine surfaces. 

36 | ASK MAGAZINE
Principle 4: 

Facilitate Wide-Open Communication

Fostering open communication has always been a cornerstone 

of good project management, but it can be—and has been—

stifled by leaders who do not want to hear bad news. As a result, 

the bearers of bad news learn to stop communicating problems 

upward. Not listening is bad; criticizing anyone who brings 

to light unpleasant, but necessary, information is worse. Few 

individuals will dare come forward with critical information if 

they know they are likely to suffer public criticism.

Dr. William Starbuck of New York University identified 

several other reasons why organizations suppress communication 

and have trouble learning from both success and failure.7

Organizations tend to overlearn and repeat behaviors that result 

in success, which can cause inflexibility when new problems 

require different approaches. But organizations also have trouble 

learning from failure, often writing off failures as idiosyncratic 

and overlooking possible systemic causes. This tendency, known 

as the “normalization of deviance,” was evident in the Space 

Shuttle Challenger accident.8 According to the CAIB report, 

faulty communication also contributed to the loss of Space 

Shuttle Columbia. 

Principle 5: 

Develop a Strong Organization

Dr. Starbuck emphasized that organizations can remain effective 

over long periods if three interdependent pillars—culture, 

rewards, and structure—are carefully designed and aligned.9 The 

National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite 

System was an outstanding example of careful organization 

design and culture management.10 The program intentionally 

sought to create a new culture by collocating personnel from the 

program’s three contributing agencies: Department of Defense, 

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA. 

They carefully negotiated respective roles and responsibilities 

before staffing and initiating program office operations. In this 

way, they carefully removed as many potential organizational 

conflicts and barriers as possible before executing the program.

The Virginia Class Submarine program, according to 

deputy program manager George Drakeley, is a good example 

of a strong organizational architecture that aligned well with the 

product being produced. This program structured itself around 

the Integrated Product and Process Development acquisition 

methodology, which the Department of Defense developed in 

the 1990s to streamline major weapons systems acquisition. The 

payoffs of this approach included a shortened overall design 

schedule, a reduced number of change orders because they 

encountered fewer problems during construction, reduced cost 

in vehicle production, and an operational weapon system that 

effectively balanced capability and flexibility with cost. 

Principle 6: 

Manage Risk

NASA has always taken risk into account when pursuing a 

mission. In the early days of Apollo, management required 

quantitative estimates for these risks. However, during the 

later Apollo era and the shuttle era, NASA relied primarily on 

qualitative—or “gut check”—measures to estimate and control 

mission success and safety risk.11 As a result, NASA began to 

address other risks qualitatively, including cost and schedule. The 

Agency used bottom-up, judgmentally based approaches, which 

were not tied directly to technical risks that were often the causes 

of mission loss. Using quantitative models of potential accident 

scenarios as well as developed operational data and physical 

models of relevant phenomena is necessary for managing safety 

and mission risk on a continual basis.12

Professor Elisabeth Paté-Cornell indicated that one of 

the most valuable lessons learned from her work on the Space 

Shuttle and elsewhere was the importance of continuously 

collecting operational data and embedding it into a risk-based 

structure. Doing this provides an ongoing or “living” measure 

of the residual risk in continuing operations. The Concorde’s 

crash on July 25, 2000, provides an example of how this data 

might have been used to forestall failure. During 75,000 hours 

of previous Concorde operation, fifty-seven tires had burst and 

debris had come close to penetrating the fuel tank several times. 

Using a “living accident precursor” system had proven valuable 

in hospital anesthesia, the Ford/Firestone Explorer tire failure, 

and the Boeing 737’s leading edge.

Principle 7: 

Implement Effective Systems Engineering 

and Integration

The final key principle comprises several subprinciples: 

• Develop clear, stable objectives and requirements from the 

outset. 

• Establish clear and clean system interfaces. 

• Maintain effective configuration control.

ORGANIZATIONS TEND TO OVERLEARN 

AND REPEAT BEHAVIORS THAT RESULT 

IN SUCCESS, WHICH CAN CAUSE 

INFLEXIBILITY WHEN NEW PROBLEMS 

REQUIRE DIFFERENT APPROACHES.

ASK MAGAZINE | 37
 1. Richard H. Buenneke, “On Not Confusing Ourselves: Insights on Organization, Policy, and Culture from the Columbia Accident Investigation,” presented at ODT Workshop III: Organization Design and Best Practices, Williamsburg, VA, 

December 2003.

 2. Sherman Mullin, “Lockheed Skunk Works Program Management with Focus on the F-117 Stealth Fighter Program,” presented at ODT Workshop VI: Building a Historical Program Database, NASA Johnson Space Center, May 2004.

 3. John Muratore, “X-38 Program System Engineering Lessons,” presented at ODT Workshop VI: Building a Historical Program Database, NASA Johnson Space Center, May 2004.

 4. Darrell Branscome, “Advanced Launch System,” presented at ODT Workshop III: Organization Design and Best Practices, Williamsburg, VA, December 2003. 

 5. Dave Christensen, “Space Program Lessons Learned/Best Practices,” presented at ODT Workshop III: Organization Design and Best Practices, Williamsburg, VA, December 2003.

 6. See note 3 above.

 7. William Starbuck, “Keeping Organizations Effective Over the Long Run,” presented at ODT Workshop I: Tools and Methods for Organization Design and Analysis, NASA Langley Research Center, August 2003. 

 8. Diane Vaughn, Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (University of Chicago Press: 1996).

 9. See note 7 above.

 10. Stanley Schneider, “National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Integrated Program Office,” presented at ODT Workshop III: Organization Design and Best Practices, Williamsburg, VA, December 2003.

 11. K.P. Sperber, “Apollo Experience Report—Reliability and Quality Assurance,” NASA TN-D-7438, September 1973.

 12. Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, “On Signals, Response, and Risk Mitigation: A Probabilistic Approach to Precursors Detection and Analysis,” presented at ODT Workshop I: Tools and Methods for Organization Design and Analysis, NASA Langley 

Research Center, August 2003. 

 13. See note 2 above.

 14. See note 3 above.

 15. Ming Tang, “National Aerospace Plane Organization and Management,” presented at ODT Workshop III: Organization Design and Best Practices, Williamsburg, VA, December 2003.

 16. George Drakeley, “Virginia (SSN 774) Class Submarine Program,” presented at ODT Workshop VI: Building a Historical Program Database, NASA Johnson Space Center, May 2004. 

• Use modern information technology and analytical tools 

to model and simulate system performance, including 

organizational performance, well in advance of hardware 

development.

The very nature of developmental programs implies the 

outcome is, at least to some degree, uncertain. Shifts in objectives 

result in increased requirements. These shifts and resulting 

requirement changes lead to program delays, cost increases, and 

even program failure or cancellation. In successful programs, 

systems engineering and integration (SE&I) establishes a clear 

and stable set of objectives at the outset and develops a minimal 

set of requirements to achieve those objectives. Several programs 

limited top-level program requirements to one page. The F-117A 

program13 had only five requirements. Muratore advised against 

writing documents just to fill in the squares and recommended 

carefully controlling and tracking interfaces.14

In addition to clean product and system interfaces, many 

presentations given in the ODT’s workshops emphasized 

the importance of establishing clear and clean organizational

interfaces. Specifically, they stressed designing an organization’s 

structure to mirror the architecture of the system being 

developed. 

Once the program objectives, requirements, and interfaces 

are solidified, they must then be controlled by establishing an 

early program baseline around them. The SE&I effort must 

keep the design team on track and be continually vigilant against 

“requirements creep.” Shifting requirements ultimately led to the 

demise of the National Aerospace Plane program, which started 

in 1984 as a single stage–to-orbit technology demonstrator but 

ended in 1993 as a collection of various hypersonic technology 

development activities.15

Monitoring requirements and risk with modern 

information technology and analytical tools can help reduce 

what was once a very labor-intensive process. The Virginia

Class Submarine program used a single electronic database 

to integrate all aspects of design, planning, and construction. 

The team used the database to link design with production 

and business operations, 

providing a fully integrated 

data set throughout the 

program’s life cycle.16 This 

database also enhanced 

the effectiveness of early 

developmental hardware/

software-in-the-loop testing.

Creating Your Own 

Success

While there is no set formula 

to guarantee program and 

project success, the ODT’s 

efforts have defined a firm 

foundation on which leaders can build. Learned from the 

unfailing teachers of experience and error, these principles are a 

starting point on the road to success. But more important than 

discovering what aids success and what cripples it is capturing 

those discoveries, sharing them with other leaders, and ensuring 

they are understood by everyone on the project team. The 

ODT’s robust efforts have done just that, and the results will 

benefit more than the next generation of space exploration for 

which it was formed. ●

The above article is a summary of a much larger study. A link to 

the full report can be found on our “ASK Interactive” page in this 

issue.

VINCENT J. BILARDO, JR., currently manages the Ares I-1 

Upper Stage Simulator project at Glenn Research Center and 

founded the Organization Design Team in 2003 while serving as 

a program/project manager at Langley Research Center. He has 

twenty-four years of broad federal government experience.

Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force

An F-117A Nighthawk in flight.

38 | ASK MAGAZINE
Chandra X-Ray Observatory

PERFORMANCE 

AS PROMISED:

BY KEITH HEFNER

Photo Credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/UCSB/P. Ogle et al. (X-ray); NASA/STScI/A. Capetti et al. (optical)

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 39
An artist’s illustration of the Chandra spacecraft 

in orbit.

Photo Credit: Marshall Space Flight Center

NASA Headquarters decided to restructure Chandra in 

January 1992 despite the highly successful mirror technology 

demonstration in September 1991 that won us Congressional 

approval to begin the observatory’s full design and development. 

NASA senior management had determined that Congress 

would not fund the originally planned Chandra program, and 

they challenged the entire team to develop dramatically less 

expensive options to conduct the mission. While such exercises 

are unfortunately all too common, identifying significant 

savings (and later realizing those savings) is much rarer. We 

accomplished it in less than four months.

Restructuring the program was not easy. Headquarters 

was pushing for deep budget cuts, the science community was 

vociferously resisting, and Marshall Space Flight Center was 

working hard to recover a viable and sustainable program. A 

broad team came together to achieve what seemed impossible: 

Marshall’s Observatory Projects Office, in-house Marshall staff 

at the X-Ray Calibration Facility, Marshall’s Project Science 

Office, a science team from the Smithsonian Astrophysical 

Observatory (including Chandra Science Center, which 

operates the observatory), and four principal investigator teams. 

Northrop Grumman Space Technology led the industry team 

and worked with Marshall to build teamwork—not by holding 

team-building off-sites, but by fairly and rigorously analyzing 

the technology and our new goals. By considering a wide 

range of alternatives and making decisions based on data and 

analysis, what could have been a contentious decision evolved to 

consensus and served to bring the entire team together.

We evaluated cost, schedule, performance, and risks for each 

new option. Balancing science utility and cost led us to select a 

highly elliptical orbit with uncrewed robotic delivery, deployment, 

and maintenance. The proposed 100,000 km apogee orbit would 

The hurly-burly interactions in the compact group of 

galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet are shown in this 

composition of a Chandra X-ray Observatory image, in 

blue, superimposed on a Digitized Sky Survey optical 

image, in yellow.

Photo Credit: NASA/CXC/INAF-Brera/G. Trinchieri 

et al. (X-ray); Pal.Obs. DSS (optical)

This image was produced by combining a dozen NASA 

Chandra X-ray Observatory observations made of a 

130 light-year region in the center of the Milky Way.

Photo Credit: NASA/CXC/UCLA/M. Muno et al.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory inherited a 

legacy of good lessons from the Hubble Space 

Telescope, and nearly the entire team as well. Since 

we’d all worked together for years on Hubble, 

Chandra began with a great team environment 

and incredible communication, so we were 

prepared to handle upcoming challenges.

40 | ASK MAGAZINE
provide much greater science observing time, since Earth would 

block the telescope’s line of sight for a much smaller fraction of 

each orbit, but two alternate technologies were necessary to reach 

this flight path. We used composite materials extensively to reduce 

observatory mass from more than 32,000 lbs to 10,110 lbs. We 

had to eliminate other features entirely: four of twelve mirrors were 

removed from the plans along with two focal plane instruments—

one was primarily a low-risk backup; the other did not require 

mirrors of Chandra’s quality and was assigned to fly on another 

spacecraft. We also changed Chandra from being a low-Earth 

orbit telescope like Hubble to a higher-orbit observatory to allow 

us the same amount of observation time with lower operations 

and servicing costs, which meant eliminating shuttle servicing 

from our plans. Because we knew we wouldn’t be able to reach the 

observatory again, its design had to be extremely robust.

The team achieved some significant performance 

improvements through the restructuring as well, including 

better photon collection due to iridium mirror coating, higherefficiency detectors, and better-than-expected mirror coating 

reflectivity. Mirror smoothness provided focus three times 

sharper than our requirements. Chandra achieved significantly 

more observing time than we anticipated because restructuring 

lowered our anticipated time in slewing, safe modes, scheduling 

inefficiency, etc. and enabled the observatory to spend less 

time in radiation belts by raising its orbit from 100,000 km to 

140,000 km. Chandra provided substantially more performance 

than promised for the budget.

The restructuring saved American taxpayers $3.6 billion, 

but it also left the program with a very lean budget. NASA was 

entering an era of “faster, better, cheaper,” and while Chandra 

was still a large program, it was given very limited flexibility. 

Our team was able to execute the lean program because of 

a program management approach that allowed us to focus 

on mitigating key risks and a culture that emphasized highvalue investments or savings, which influenced individual, 

organizational, and team behavior to focus efforts on what was 

best for the program.

Proactive Risk Management

Chandra demonstrated the value of reducing technology 

risk. The team proactively conceived and created a prototype 

pathfinder for the spacecraft that ended up preventing a two- to 

three-month delay. We had allocated reserve funds to produce a 

model of a key portion of the Structural Test Article (STA)—a 

model of the spacecraft structure. Creating the pathfinder 

uncovered a problem with the resin, which only partially cured 

at room temperature during the forty-six-day lay-up. If we had 

not created the pathfinder, this problem would have emerged 

while developing the equipment compartment for the STA and 

caused the delay. These lost months would have led to a late 

start in the mechanical integration of our flight spacecraft, and 

ultimately may have threatened the overall program schedule. 

Lessons learned from the central cylinder pathfinder were 

folded into the STA’s development. We shared knowledge not 

only with regard to materials and designs, but also with respect 

to assembly and testing processes. Later, the team used the STA’s 

static loads test to develop ways to reduce the flight structure’s 

static test by four months. We also simplified the approach for 

applying loads to minimize time-consuming configuration 

changes. These measures reduced required testing from more 

than thirty weeks to seven weeks. 

Our team also encouraged efforts to push back against 

some risk-reduction expenditures. Examples include working 

closely with Johnson Space Center to get a test exemption for the 

elements that bore Chandra’s 500-lb. mirrors. We also developed 

a gravity off-load approach for the High Resolution Mirror 

Assembly (HRMA), which allowed it to be checked during a 

series of other tests already occurring at the X-Ray Calibration 

Facility instead of being shipped later to ITT in Rochester, NY, 

for separate tests that would have extended its build time. 

High-Performance Culture

Cynics assume project team members will play “project 

manager’s poker” and exploit problems elsewhere in the program. 

Some take it as given that industry can be counted on to take 

advantage of government changes, and there will be waste and 

inefficiency because project organizations can’t work as a team 

and would rather “throw problems over the transom.” If these 

behaviors had occurred among the Chandra team, the program 

might have slipped many years and suffered high overruns.

At a monthly meeting with the telescope subcontractor ITT, 

an engineer announced his team had discovered a problem in 

meeting a Level 3 specification for the obscuration caused by the 

HRMA’s thermal baffling. ITT had developed an effective fix 

ASK MAGAZINE | 41
for $282,000 to meet the science requirements with no schedule 

impact, and the team was ready to move forward with the plan. 

A science center representative, who had the engineering insight 

to understand the validity of the violation and the proposed 

fix, was in the audience. He also had the science insight to 

understand the violation was trivial and was willing to stand up 

in a room of fifty people and say, “That is the stupidest thing 

I’ve ever heard.” He instead recommended taking no action and 

saving the money. The team listened to him, quickly verified 

the facts, and eliminated any further efforts on the issue. 

This is a significant contrast with other programs where no 

scientist would yield on a requirement affecting performance, no 

matter how trivial. It also demonstrates a culture that welcomed 

broad technical and scientific participation and encouraged 

dissenting opinions. 

If culture is a key driver of outstanding program performance, 

then the critical question is how to cultivate a high-performance 

culture. On Chandra, the ingredients included an experienced 

science team that was fully integrated into the project—their 

culture of skeptical inquiry with a focus on mission utility was a 

core part of the overall program culture. Including our operations 

and ground contractors early in our design and development 

also served us well. They were all intimately involved in the 

requirements and design reviews and worked with us hand in 

hand to ensure flight and hardware systems were compatible. 

A lot of our operations success today is built upon these early 

steps we took during development. A prime contractor led 

the industry team and was responsible for aligning corporate 

incentives and behavior with program goals. The NASA Project 

Office selected team members and assigned roles based on the 

best value to the program and led by example in managing the 

team in a collaborative and constructive fashion. And, after the 

restructuring, NASA Headquarters and Congress were able 

to provide stable funding and top-level requirements, which 

enabled us to focus on project execution.

Still Performing

As the nation looks toward bold new ventures in space, the 

Chandra X-ray Observatory offers an example of how billiondollar missions can successfully develop with tightening fiscal 

constraints. Chandra experienced many of the challenges facing 

space programs—state-of-the-art technical requirements and 

budget-induced slips and restructurings—and still achieved 

the originally envisioned performance for dramatically lower 

cost. This was accomplished through teamwork, systems 

engineering, advanced technology, and effective approaches for 

program implementation as well as a high-performance culture 

that aligned goals and focused on mission success. As Chandra 

now surpasses its original five-year mission, the observatory 

continues to provide superb scientific performance. ●

KEITH HEFNER joined Marshall Space Flight Center in 1985 and 

was assigned to the Observatory Projects Office in 1986, where he 

specialized in project and resource management with the Chandra 

and Hubble Space Telescope programs before becoming Chandra’s 

program manager in 2002. He has received the NASA Exceptional 

Service Medal, recognizing significant, sustained performance 

characterized by unusual initiative or creativity, and the Silver 

Snoopy Award for contributions to the Space Shuttle program.

IF CULTURE IS A KEY DRIVER OF OUTSTANDING PROGRAM 

PERFORMANCE, THEN THE CRITICAL QUESTION IS HOW TO 

CULTIVATE A HIGH-PERFORMANCE CULTURE.

This montage of NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory images shows a pair of 

interacting galaxies known as the Antennae. Rich deposits of neon, magnesium, 

and silicon were discovered in the interstellar gas of this system.

Photo Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/G. Fabbiano et al.

42 | ASK MAGAZINE
Everything I Needed to Know 

About Project Management 

I Learned in a Cockpit 

BY RAY W. STRATTON

In a national survey, nearly 2,000 project managers reported that only 47 percent of their projects 

met their goals and only one-third said their projects are often completed on time and on budget. 

If pilots flew aircraft like we run projects, no one would ever fly. Yet every day millions of people 

fly for work or pleasure and flights arrive on time almost 80 percent of the time, delayed mainly 

by weather. Airline travel is also the safest form of long-distance travel with a fatal accident rate of 

.022 per 100,000 hours flown. (If you flew every day of your life, you have less than a 1 percent 

chance of being in a fatal accident.) We have been flying for just over 100 years, but project 

management has been around since the building of the pyramids and the Great Wall. As both a 

pilot and former project manager, I believe some hard-won lessons from thousands of pilots can 

be applied to project management as well.

Lesson #1: Before spending an hour or more planning a flight, 

smart pilots make a rough estimate of the trip’s distance, fuel 

requirements, the aircraft’s range, and passenger and baggage load 

to determine its feasibility. If a pilot jumps into detail planning 

first, he or she can become emotionally committed to a flight 

that might not be easily completed. Project Managers: Do a 

project feasibility study. Once you begin detail planning, you 

might be emotionally committed to try to do the impossible. 

Lesson #2: Good pilots ask their passengers (their 

stakeholders) what they want most: the shortest flight, the 

smoothest flight, or the most scenic flight. It is almost impossible 

to do all three in the same trip. Project Managers: You must 

know the stakeholders’ key expectation. Only one expectation—

cost, schedule, or performance (quality)—can be key. 

Lesson #3: Pilots know that operating an aircraft beyond 

its designed gross weight is unwise. You may be able to fill all the 

seats, fill the tanks, and fill the cargo area, but the plane might 

be too heavy to leave the ground. Trade-offs are usually needed. 

Project Managers: Manage your constraints consistent with 

the key expectation. Adjust the other expectations and keep the 

key constraint fixed.

Lesson #4: Pilots learn that there are many ways to get 

from A to B. The safest route may not be the most direct route. 

They evaluate multiple routes for wind, turbulence, safety 

factors, aircraft capability, and passenger interests and select the 

best one. Picking the best route requires compromise. Project 

Managers: During planning, evaluate different sequences of 

project activities and select the best. Consider the stakeholders’ 

expectation and likelihood of success. The first activity sequence 

is not likely the best. 

Lesson #5: Detailed flight planning might prove a flight is 

impossible, and pilots know the results of a flight feasibility estimate 

might be wrong. They should prepare their passengers to hear, 

“The flight can’t be done safely, and we are not leaving.” Passengers 

do not have the knowledge to make go/no-go decisions. (The next 

time your airline cancels your flight, remember it’s better to be on 

the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you 

were on the ground.) Project Managers: If you can’t get a project 

plan to work out, it won’t work itself out later. Let your scheduling 

and resource tools tell you what you can and can’t do. Prepare your 

stakeholders to hear, “No, it can’t be done.” They are counting on 

you to make decisions in their best interest.

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 43
Lesson #6: Takeoff is one of 

the most critical phases of flight. 

Good pilots monitor all gauges 

and the aircraft performance early 

and frequently during takeoff. If 

the acceleration or anything else is 

not normal, the takeoff is aborted. 

The source of the problem is 

determined and fixed, or the flight 

is canceled. Project Managers:

Frequently monitor the beginning 

phase of your project. Once a week 

is not too often. Check staffing 

levels, communication, cooperation, 

progress, and productivity. If your 

project does not start off well, stop, 

fix the problem, and start over. 

You are unlikely to recover from a 

bad start.

Lesson #7: Throughout the flight, pilots check their 

progress over the ground against their flight plan. Is their path 

over the ground correct? Is the flight at its checkpoint on time? 

How long have they been flying and how much fuel has been 

used? Pilots continuously evaluate the fuel and time required 

to complete the flight. Project Managers: Know your real 

accomplishments to date. Just knowing the funds and time 

spent is of little value. Use earned value management to know if 

the work completed is appropriate for the expenditures. Update 

your planned completion date and budget if needed.

Lesson #8: Flight planning uses weather forecasts, which 

are just assumptions from weather forecasters. Assumptions 

can be wrong, and they create risk. During a long flight, pilots 

obtain updates to the forecast and current weather conditions. If 

the current conditions are not as they were originally forecast, it’s 

likely other assumptions about the weather are wrong, too. Project 

Managers: Continue to review the assumptions that were made 

during planning. If these assumptions prove to be wrong, update 

the assumptions based upon the current project environment.

Lesson #9: Regardless of weather forecasts, the weather 

outside the cockpit window is fact. It is what it is and must 

be dealt with regardless of what was forecast. There is no 

value in telling the forecasters they 

were wrong. Project Managers:

What you see is what you get. Past 

assumptions and promises about 

resources, vendor delivery dates, and 

subsystem performance are history; 

deal with the present situation.

Lesson #10: Pilots have had 

accidents when they got distracted 

during key phases of a flight. In one 

case the cockpit crew was so focused 

on a burnt-out lamp that the plane 

descended into the ground. Airlines 

have a “sterile cockpit rule” during 

critical phases of flight: no casual 

discussions among the crew. Flying 

the plane is always job number one. 

“Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” 

is the pilot’s rule to keep things in 

priority order. Project Managers: Running your project is 

always job number one. If, for example, annual workplace safety 

training is scheduled during a key project problem-solving 

meeting, the project meeting gets priority. Getting work done is 

always most important.

Lesson #11: Planes with two pilots on board have had 

accidents when each thought the other was doing the flying. 

In one case, a tandem seat plane descended slowly into the 

ocean after circling a sailboat. Each pilot thought the other was 

flying. Pilots are now taught to confirm who is doing the flying. 

Typically one pilot states, “You have the plane,” and the second 

pilot responds, “I have the plane.” Project Managers: When 

you delegate project responsibilities and tasks, release control 

and confirm new ownership. 

Lesson #12: In 1982 Air Florida 90 crashed into the Potomac 

River and killed seventy-eight people. During takeoff, the first 

officer said, “That’s not right.” The pilot replied, “Yes, it is.” The 

first officer cautioned the pilot again, but the pilot ignored his 

comment and proceeded with the takeoff. Once airborne, the 

first officer exclaimed, ”We’re going down,” and the pilot said, 

“I know it.” It wasn’t until this last dialogue that the pilot took 

the first officer seriously. Today cockpit crews use a tool called 

Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force

44 | ASK MAGAZINE
Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) to ensure everyone is 

comfortable with the decisions and actions being taken. The 

pilot in command listens to alternative opinions and ideas before 

taking any critical action. Other crewmembers are charged to 

mention anything that concerns them. Project Managers:

Charge everyone on your project team with keeping the whole

project out of trouble. Respect and respond to all concerns.

Lesson #13: Excellent pilots think ten to thirty minutes—

or more—ahead of the aircraft’s position. Today’s training 

teaches pilots to know what should happen next, how to know 

when it does, what to do when it happens, and what should 

happen after that. A pilot who is just keeping up with the 

aircraft’s position is acting more like a passenger than a pilot. 

Project Managers: Know what is supposed to happen next on 

your project, how you will know it occurred, what you should 

do when it does, and what should happen after that. While it’s 

important to know what was done last week, it’s also important 

to think at least two to four weeks ahead.

Lesson #14: Good pilots always have an alternate plan 

and ask themselves, “Where could I land within ten minutes of 

takeoff, along the route, right now, or if the destination airport 

has poor weather?” Pilots constantly monitor a flight’s progress. 

If trends show the flight might not be meeting its planned 

progress, or destination weather is becoming questionable, 

pilots begin thinking about executing their Plan B. Project 

Managers: Start to re-plan the project before the re-plan is 

needed. Always be operating to a plan.

Lesson #15: Pilots are required to follow the instructions 

issued to them by air traffic control, yet U.S. air regulations 

also state, “The pilot in command of an aircraft is...the final 

authority as to the operation of the aircraft” and “may deviate 

from any rule to the extent required to meet (any) emergency.” 

If a pilot needs to climb or dive to avoid an approaching aircraft 

she can, no questions asked, and just report what she did. Project 

Managers: Assume all the authority you need to be successful. 

Surveys of senior management have shown their frustration that 

project managers do not assume more authority. If necessary, do 

what you need to do and be prepared to explain later.

Lesson #16: The airport at Catalina Island, California, has 

drop offs on three sides and a hump in the middle because it was 

built by leveling two mountaintops. While landing, the pilot 

of a small jet mistook the hump for the end of the runway and 

accelerated to abort the landing. Once he saw the remaining 

runway, he applied the breaks to complete the landing. He 

then realized there wasn’t enough room to stop, so he again 

applied power to abort the landing. There wasn’t enough room 

to accelerate to flying speed, and he crashed off the end of the 

runway. His first decision to abort the landing was correct 

in light of his doubts and would have resulted in becoming 

airborne for a second, more knowledgeable, landing attempt. 

Project Managers: When you make a decision, make it timely 

and stick with it, unless overwhelming evidence proves it to be 

wrong. Flip-flopping on decisions wastes resources, frustrates 

the team, and usually results in poor outcomes.

Lesson #17: Today’s aircraft can literally fly themselves 

thanks to sophisticated autopilot systems, but there have been 

accidents when these systems did not perform as expected. The 

pilot typically sees the problem but is out of the loop because 

he or she let the autopilot control the plane up to that point 

in time. Project Managers: To paraphrase a recent NASA 

recommendation to pilots, “The more [project management] 

automation there is...the more the [project manager] should 

work to remain an active and integral part of the [project].” 

Project management software cannot run a project.

This wealth of piloting experience is a result of the NTSB 

investigating each accident and changing habits or systems as a 

result of these investigations. Unfortunately, there is no “NTSB” 

for projects, but both pilots and project managers address risk, 

communication, uncertainty, and a host of common challenges. 

If you run your project like pilots fly airplanes, you might find 

it ends as successfully as virtually every airline flight. ●

Note: A version of this article originally ran in Projects@Work 

(www.projectsatwork.com). A one-page list of these lessons may be 

found at www.mgmt-technologies.com/pm_pilots.html.

RAY W. STRATTON, PMP, EVP, is president of Management 

Technologies (www.mgmt-technologies.com). He presented at 

NASA’s PM Challenge in 2006 and is the author of “The Earned 

Value Management Maturity Model.” When not conducting project 

management training and consulting, he donates his flying skills 

to Angel Flight, a nonprofit organization that transports financially 

needy medical patients from remote locations to major medical 

centers. raystratton@mgmt-technologies.com

IF PILOTS FLEW AIRCRAFT LIKE WE RUN PROJECTS, NO ONE WOULD EVER FLY.

ASK MAGAZINE | 45
Learning to drive a Mars rover is no easy task. It’s not a process you can just read up on and do right 

the first time. For one thing, there is the time lag to contend with. It takes ten minutes or more for 

a radio signal to travel between Earth and Mars, so you get no rapid feedback to show the result 

of a command or allow for quick corrections of mistakes. The surface of Mars, rock-strewn and 

with many different types of soil, poses constant challenges. And you have to become intimately 

acquainted with the peculiarities and limitations of each rover. Spirit (MER A) has been challenged 

with mountainous territory and now has power constraint issues that have to be taken into account. 

Opportunity (MER B) has been used to explore a relatively flat, crater-strewn area; it has developed 

different problems over time that affect what you can ask it to do.

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL

Left: Rover engineers check how a test 

rover moves in material chosen to simulate 

some difficult Mars driving conditions.

Right: Men and women of the Mars 

Exploration Rover mission admire some of 

Spirit’s first images in 3-D. 

LEARNING TO DRIVE

46 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY
Photo Credit: NASA

THE MARS ROVERS

On-the-Job Training

As one of the original group of ten drivers (or “rover planners,” 

as we are called), I came to the task with eighteen years of 

experience driving planetary rover prototypes and had been a 

rover driver for the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner rover. I had also 

led the team that created the software tool called RSVP (Rover 

Sequencing and Visualization Program) that rover planners 

use to create the command sequences for the rovers each day, 

so I knew how the system was supposed to work. Even so, my 

fellow planners and I had to do a lot of on-the-job training. 

Getting Opportunity out of the first crater was a challenge. It 

got stuck in soft soil material, and we had to learn to drive it up 

the sloping crater wall at an angle and figure out how to seek out 

more coherent soil. Later the rover’s wheels got buried in a sand 

dune, which we named “Purgatory” in recognition of the long, 

slow process of extracting it.

Over time, we developed new techniques and sequences to 

deal with the conditions we found on Mars. We do “slipchecks” 

to verify that the rover is not stuck—sequences that have the 

rovers use their onboard visual systems to track features in 

images and tell if the rover is slipping on soil. Since the rover’s 

flight system assumes perfect traction when they look at the 

progress of the six wheels, we compensate for slippage in the 

Martian soil by programming a slightly longer distance than we 

actually want the rover to travel.

Because of the complexity of the task and the potential 

damage of a serious mistake, planners always work in pairs. Rover 

Planner One gets requests from the science team and writes 

command sequences to carry them out. Rover Planner Two 

checks the sequences, negotiating changes when necessary, until 

he or she is confident that the program will work and is willing to 

take ownership of it. Only then are the sequences sent to a rover.

Selecting and Training New Planners

To develop new teams of planners, we first try to identify 

promising candidates, using several important basic criteria. Early 

in the mission we wanted people who could live on Mars time, 

who have both the commitment and the family support needed 

to make that possible. Since the Martian day is about forty 

minutes longer than a day on Earth and most rover operations 

are only possible when the rovers’ solar panels are generating 

power, planners need to work during the Martian day. In the first 

three months of rover operation, this meant shifts at all hours of 

the day and night, seven days a week. Now that we have gotten 

more from the rovers than we ever expected and the cost per day 

of exploration has decreased, planners operate in a more Earthnormal mode and take most weekends off. But a planner’s eighthour shift can still start anywhere from 6:00 a.m. to noon.

Good hand–eye coordination is essential, and the ability to 

visualize and work in a three-dimensional space is important. 

BY BRIAN COOPER

ASK MAGAZINE | 47
During the interviewing process, we sometimes ask people what 

video games they like to play. A flight simulator fan is a more 

likely candidate than someone who prefers solitaire. We also favor 

people who have already worked in some capacity on the Mars 

Exploration Rover mission and are likely to have some familiarity 

with the subsystems. Many of the candidates recommended to us 

are from Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s mobility and robotic systems 

section, where they have gotten relevant experience. Finally, and 

not surprisingly, we look for people who have the enthusiasm 

needed to devote the time, energy, and attention that learning 

and applying rover-driving skills require.

Those chosen for training usually start by spending several 

months as downlink analyzers. Interpreting the information sent 

by the rovers helps them learn the subsystems. The job also teaches 

them how to analyze the “health” of the rovers and familiarizes 

them with the kind of scientific data their future work as planners 

will help acquire. At the same time, they begin practicing with 

the RSVP tool—the software used to command Spirit and 

Opportunity—which lets them visualize what the rovers do in 

response to instructions. This virtual training includes using 

3-D goggles that allow them to see a stereoscopic image on the 

Martian landscape that the rovers traverse. Although a few veteran 

planners who do not have stereoscopic vision have found ways 

to compensate, the depth perception that 3-D provides makes 

it much easier to evaluate this unfamiliar terrain—for instance, 

judging the height and depth of rocks to determine whether they 

are small enough to roll over or will impede a rover’s progress. 

Some of the trainees continue to do part-time downlink 

work when they move on to the next learning phase: five to 

eight months spent “shadowing” the rover Planner Two role. 

They work with different teams on different shifts, so their 

mentors change from day to day and they get the benefit of 

observing the techniques of a variety of planners. They watch 

the planners at work; they study documented processes and 

read the rover planner Web site and wiki to keep abreast of the 

latest thinking on guiding the rovers. Over time, through this 

combination of observation and reading, they learn the “flight 

rules” for rover operations. Their planner mentors give them 

small tasks and then gradually ask them to do more and more 

until they’re essentially performing the rover Planner Two role 

under supervision. The veteran teams that work with the trainees 

meet to share impressions of their progress and decide when an 

individual is ready to fly solo and become a planner. In fact, 

the process is akin to learning to fly an airplane, doing more 

and more under the supervision of an expert until you become 

expert enough to handle the controls without supervision.

After gaining experience as rover Planner Two, the candidates 

begin shadowing rover Planner One. They go from being a 

checker and explainer of rover sequences to being the sequence 

creator. This transition can last several months, after which, if 

they pass the scrutiny of the veteran driving team, they graduate 

as full-fledged rover planners.

The process is a kind of apprenticeship, where observation, 

study, and supervised practice combine to pass on knowledge 

and skills that book learning or theoretical discussion alone could 

never teach. We think this is the only effective way to teach the 

complex and subtle skills a rover driver needs. As of fall 2006, we 

have had seventeen rover planners responsible for moving Spirit 

and Opportunity over the Martian surface. So far, the two rovers 

have safely and successfully carried out their mission, functioning 

for more than 950 sols (Martian days) and traveling a combined 

distance of almost 16 km. ●

BRIAN COOPER has twenty-one years of experience creating 

ground control software for planetary robotic vehicles and is 

currently at Jet Propulsion Laboratory/CalTech. He led the 

development of the RSVP software tool and was the lead rover 

driver for both the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner and the Mars 

Exploration Rover missions.

DURING THE INTERVIEWING PROCESS, 

WE SOMETIMES ASK PEOPLE WHAT 

VIDEO GAMES THEY LIKE TO PLAY. 

A FLIGHT SIMULATOR FAN IS A MORE 

LIKELY CANDIDATE THAN SOMEONE 

WHO PREFERS SOLITAIRE.

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL

It required more than five weeks of planning, testing, and carefully monitored 

driving to free Opportunity from the soft, sandy material of a wind-shaped 

ripple, later dubbed “Purgatory Dune,” on Mars. 

48 | ASK MAGAZINE
IMAGINING

THE FUTURE

BY W. SCOTT CAMERON 

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 49
During the initial agenda-setting meetings, I suggested we address 

the future, specifically what project management capabilities and 

skills would be required in 2010. My suggestion was added to 

a list of potential topics and eventually made the cut. Then our 

group had to assign speakers. After much discussion, I was chosen 

to present the topic I’d proposed. Be careful what you ask for!

I tried to wrap my mind around the topic, but I found 

defining the future to be a daunting task. I didn’t know where to 

start. To make matters worse, initial enrollment figures indicated 

this presentation was becoming the most requested topic of the 

conference. In fact, so many people enrolled that I was asked to 

give the presentation twice to accommodate the requests. 

I talked to others about their views of the future to get ideas 

on what I should cover in my talk. These discussions gave me 

more things to think about when I needed to focus my ideas, 

because time was running out to complete my talk. But the 

responses I’d received helped me realize the basic truth that 

most people spend little time thinking about the future of their 

work. Everyone knew where they were today and what they were 

working on; most were somewhat foggy about what they did 

yesterday; and only a few took the time to think about where 

they would be in five years, what they wanted to be working on, 

and the skills they would need to continue to be successful.

I decided that the underlying theme of my talk would be 

“Change is a given, not an option.” I would try to analyze a tenyear span of the past (1999), the present (2004), and the future 

(2010) from three different perspectives: corporate, project 

management, and individual.

It was easy to research past and present corporate strategies, 

because they were described in the company’s annual reports. 

When a strategy didn’t achieve the desired results, it was 

modified to react to the dynamic marketplace and meet the 

established company goals.

Past and present project management strategies were also 

documented and available for review. Driven by organizational 

strategies, they consistently delivered desired outcomes and 

were flexible enough to support changing corporate strategies. I 

found the following to be true of project management:

• The basic characteristics of successful project management 

had not changed appreciably in the past five years nor were 

they expected to change significantly in the foreseeable 

In 2004, I was part of a team developing the agenda and session topics for a Procter & Gamble 

engineering community of practice meeting. This major, two-day, biannual event brings all project 

managers and related disciplines (construction, cost engineering, capital finance, capital purchasing, 

and scheduling and planning) in the company together to share experiences and lessons learned. 

50 | ASK MAGAZINE
future. The basic success criteria for a project manager has 

been—and continues to be—delivering the project on 

schedule for the stated cost and making sure it meets the 

defined technical, business, and quality requirements. 

• The key to project managers’ success is how they apply 

the tools at their disposal. Right tool + Right application 

= Successful project. The development of IT tools (cell 

phones, portable computers, voice mail, BlackBerry, 3D 

CAD, etc.) and software programs during the past five 

years has been staggering, with no sign of technology 

slowing down in years to come. 

My final task was to review what the past, present, and future 

looked like for each individual striving to achieve success in an 

ever-changing environment. During the August 2004 NASA 

APPL Masters Forum, author Tom Davenport presented a talk 

on “The Knowledge Worker Attention Deficit.” His presentation 

reminded me that, along with meeting organizational goals, 

most change motivators focus on an individual’s basic question 

of “Why change if there is nothing in it for me?”

During my presentation, I reminded the audience that the 

elements driving and shaping change included organizational 

need and individual need. Sometimes they were or seemed to be 

in opposition, but lasting, successful change depended on those 

needs complementing each other—and on individuals as well 

as organizations thinking about change and the future. I asked 

audience members what was driving change in their lives. I had 

them reflect on the difference between where they had been five 

years ago and where they were today. I asked them, “What is your 

assignment, and what does your personal life look like? What tools 

did you use to be successful over this time period? What do you 

think you need to be successful over the next five years at work 

and at home?” I then asked them if they thought they were leading 

change or chasing it in their organizations and at home.

The presentation was well received. But it was the reflection, 

discussions, and research during its planning and preparation that 

taught me an important lesson: If the people leading change five 

years ago had not had a vision of the future, we would not be where 

we are today; strategies formulated in the past are often the basis for 

today’s successes. But if I hadn’t made this presentation, I would not 

have taken time to look at where the organization and I were, the 

progress we had both made, or how exciting the future could be.

Organizations often document projections for the future, 

but individuals seldom take the time to think about where they 

have been and where they are going. One of the requirements of 

my annual performance review is to develop an action/training 

plan for the upcoming year. In the past, I have not made this 

a high priority. Based on my experiences with my presentation, 

this activity will become more robust for me.

The question “Are you leading or chasing change?” was 

my closing slide. I am only now beginning to understand the 

importance of this point myself. I realized it is essential to look 

back on the vision and leadership of those who preceded me, to 

assess the impact they’ve had on the successes of today, and to 

use that perspective to plan for the future. 

In answering this last question myself, I am investigating 

ways I can continue to lead change to successfully influence 

people and organizations in the future. In five years, I want them 

to look back at what I am doing now and recognize the forces 

and foresight that drove the successes they will achieve in 2010. 

Aside from working toward leading change in my professional 

life, I am assessing ways to lead change on the home front as my 

wife and I raise our triplet teenage daughters. Try as I might, my 

future assessment is I will be chasing change in my home life, 

not leading it for the foreseeable future! ●

W. SCOTT CAMERON has held various positions at The Procter 

& Gamble Company since 1970 and is currently the global process 

owner of project management in corporate engineering. He has 

a BS in civil engineering and an MS in sanitary engineering from 

Iowa State University.

IF THE PEOPLE LEADING CHANGE FIVE 

YEARS AGO HAD NOT HAD A VISION OF 

THE FUTURE, WE WOULD NOT BE WHERE 

WE ARE TODAY; STRATEGIES FORMULATED 

IN THE PAST ARE OFTEN THE BASIS FOR 

TODAY’S SUCCESSES.

ASK MAGAZINE | 51
Knowledge in Brief

Learning from Projects

Project work often generates new knowledge—both technical 

knowledge and knowledge about how to carry out projects 

successfully. Members of a project team carry what the experience 

teaches them to subsequent assignments, but they seldom share 

what they learn in a systematic way with one another or with 

others in the organization. When a project ends, participants 

typically move on to the next task without taking time to evaluate 

or document their learning from the work just completed. Some 

organizations have developed interesting processes for eliciting 

and sharing project knowledge. Here are three examples.

The After Action Review

The U.S. Army developed the after action review (or AAR) to 

improve learning from experience. At the end of every “action”—

a project, a training exercise, a military engagement, or even a 

single meeting—participants meet to answer three questions: 

What did we expect to happen? What actually happened? 

What did we learn? The ground rules for discussion keep the 

focus on learning rather than assigning blame. The main aim 

of the process is to help the participants learn from their shared 

experience, and the army’s AAR process includes mechanisms 

for documenting and aggregating generally applicable lessons in 

a shared database. Some corporations have instituted their own 

AARs, with mixed success. It is most effective when it is a firmly 

established feature of every project or action, not an optional 

activity carried out when and if people find time for it.

“Harvesting” Project Knowledge at Intel

Recognizing that essential knowledge was often not shared 

across projects at the company, knowledge managers at Intel 

have assigned “knowledge consultants” to key projects to help 

identify valuable knowledge and make it available to others in 

the company. Spending thirty hours or more on each project, 

the consultants meet with project members to define their 

knowledge needs, document important learning at various 

project stages (which they describe as “harvesting” knowledge), 

and facilitate knowledge-sharing conversations between 

people who have knowledge and people who need it. Their 

involvement with a range of projects gives them information 

about knowledge needs and resources that those focused on 

specific projects seldom have, so they can serve as knowledge 

“brokers,” connecting knowledge seekers and providers. The 

Intel knowledge consultants are also gathering harvested 

knowledge in a publication they call “Knowledge Nuggets.”

Projects as Mentoring Opportunities

Most projects provide opportunities for informal mentoring. 

Experienced team members often take newcomers under their 

wing, offering advice and constructive criticism. This kind of 

on-the-job training and support powerfully teaches the kind of 

hands-on knowledge that book learning cannot provide.

Some organizations more deliberately combine mentoring 

and project work. One of them is MWH, which carries out 

water distribution, wastewater treatment, hydroelectric power, 

and other water projects. Project planners naturally assign 

people who have the skill and experience needed to do the 

work successfully to project teams, but they also intentionally 

put less experienced people on the teams and match them with 

team members who can mentor them and help them develop 

those essential skills. These mentoring relationships, developed 

through shared work, transfer knowledge from veterans to a 

younger generation of employees. At NASA, Goddard’s SEED 

program does something similar, training systems engineers by 

giving them a range of project experience under the supervision 

of mentors. ●

52 | ASK MAGAZINE
ASK Bookshelf

Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the 

Transcontinental Railroad 1863–1869, by Stephen 

E. Ambrose (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000)

Long before Apollo 11 flew to the moon, ambitious engineering 

projects tested the technical and managerial skills of the 

organizations that undertook them. Stephen Ambrose tells 

the story of one of them: the building of the transcontinental 

railroad nearly 150 years ago. His book describes how the 

massive project was tackled at a time when nearly everything 

was done by muscle power. He captures the difficulty of laying 

nearly two thousand miles of track across land that includes 

great stretches of desert, three mountain ranges, and vast areas 

without trees for ties or bridges. 

He describes in detail the interactions between engineers 

and their bosses at the two companies competing to build 

as much of the railroad as possible. The Central Pacific and 

the Union Pacific companies had to contend with different 

problems and circumstances. Central Pacific built the railroad 

from Sacramento over the Sierra Nevada to the east. The 

mountains presented particular problems to the engineers and 

workers; they had to find solutions for tunneling through rock, 

dealing with deep mountain snow, and choosing the most 

efficient route. The Union Pacific’s starting point was Omaha, 

Nebraska. Building west from there, they were challenged 

by barren lands, hostile American Indians, and the extreme 

weather changes of the Great Plains. The logistics of providing 

building materials, water, and food caused problems for both 

companies, as did obtaining enough laborers. Building in 

unsettled lands required the use of local resources to keep the 

construction going at a quick rate. Sometimes quality was 

sacrificed for speed, as when Union Pacific decided to use less 

durable cotton wood trees to make ties.

Ambrose gives readers a vivid peek into a day in the life 

of a railroad worker. He describes the backbreaking work and 

details the rations workers ate and how long they were allowed 

to rest. The railroad companies pushed their workers hard to 

win the race. They even built great bonfires out of brush so 

the work could continue at night. These descriptions reveal the 

incredible achievement—and human cost—of building the 

transcontinental railroad. 

Building the transcontinental railroad involved challenges 

and uncertainties that characterize any large-scale project. 

Managers had to keep their laborers content and the company 

owners satisfied with the rate of progress. Like NASA project 

managers, they had to deal creatively with unforeseen problems, 

while remaining in good communication with superiors and 

subordinates.

Challenger Park, by Stephen Harrigan (New York: 

Knopf, 2006)

This book takes up some familiar novelistic themes: a rocky 

marriage, adultery, forgiveness, and the stresses of caring 

for children when both parents have demanding jobs. In 

Challenger Park, though, the parents are astronauts. The novel 

deals mainly with Lucy Kincheloe’s training at Johnson Space 

Center and her troubled shuttle mission, as well as with her 

troubled personal life.

The marital drama is reasonably well crafted, but Challenger 

Park is no Anna Karenina. What makes the book worth reading 

is Harrigan’s evocation of the experience of space flight. Basing 

his descriptions on interviews and accounts given by real 

astronauts, he creates a vivid sense of what weightlessness feels 

like, of the subtle smell of space that clings to a space suit after 

extravehicular activity, and of the crew members’ exhilaration 

and tension. For readers who work in the space program but will 

never leave the earth themselves, the novel offers a vicarious ride 

on the shuttle and visit to the International Space Station. ●

Here are descriptions of two books, very different from one another, that we believe will interest 

ASK readers.

ASK MAGAZINE | 53
The Knowledge Notebook

The Other Frontiers of Space

BY LAURENCE PRUSAK

While we at NASA are very aware of research and 

activities related to every aspect of outer space, 

there are other kinds of space that have been 

gaining the attention of organizational researchers 

and practitioners. These include social space and 

cognitive space, which are increasingly seen as 

important factors in how successfully organizations 

can pursue the ever more important goals of 

collaboration and innovation.

What do we mean by “social space”? I have an 

old friend who has done quite well for himself and 

lives on Central Park West, near 95th Street in New 

York City. His immediate neighborhood, across 

from Central Park and full of stately apartment 

buildings, looks and is quite prosperous. But just 

a few yards further north on the same street, the 

population shifts dramatically. Residents here are 

working class people; the buildings they live in are 

functional but far from prosperous-looking. Despite 

the close proximity of their dwellings, the social 

distance between my friend and his neighbors is 

huge in terms of income, education, employment, 

and almost every other social category. They 

occupy different social spaces. Although they live 

literally a minute’s walk from one another, contact 

between them is minimal.

This is not just a phenomenon of New York 

City life or city life in general. Similar social distance 

exists in many if not most organizations. Some 

commentators point to the positive relationship 

between physical proximity and collaboration, and 

they are right to suggest that—all else being equal—a 

workspace that encourages meetings between people 

can make sharing expertise easier. But, as my New 

York City example suggests, physical collocation 

is no guarantee of mutual understanding, shared 

goals, cooperation, or even much contact. Rigid 

hierarchies, which are still the norm for many 

organizations, create vast social distances between 

employees. Knowledge sharing across these 

distances is rare and, when it does occur, rather 

ineffectual. It is true that sometimes organizations 

create physical barriers that reflect and increase the 

distance between “classes” at work—mahogany 

rows where access to leaders is guarded by zealous 

executive assistants. But removing those barriers 

without significantly reducing the social distance 

will not improve communication. What you know 

and whom you speak to depends on where you are 

socially as well as physically. Among other things, 

this is why many executives only have a vague idea 

of what goes on in their organizations.

Social distance is one of many sources 

of differences in cognitive space—the ideas, 

assumptions, values, and perspectives through 

which one understands and acts in the world. People 

who inhabit very different cognitive spaces will 

naturally find it difficult to understand and work 

with one another. So this subject has also attracted 

the interests of researchers who want to increase 

collaboration and reduce “knowledge friction” in 

organizations. Sometimes this research takes a 

cultural turn, looking at cultural institutions and 

values to understand how and why cross-cultural 

teams and projects succeed or fail. At the Babson 

College Working Knowledge Research Program, 

we have looked at how cultural differences influence 

some cross-cultural collaborations. People in 

different parts of organizations—engineering, 

marketing, manufacturing, and others—tend to 

live in different cognitive spaces even when their 

general cultural backgrounds are similar.

54 | ASK MAGAZINE
Successful collaboration depends on bridging those 

cognitive gaps. For example, the Honda Corporation used to 

develop new car models in a linear fashion, with the research 

and development group handing off prototype models to 

operations, which in turn passed them on to marketing. Each 

group tried their best to modify the prototype according to 

their own perspective on what is feasible and what will sell. 

Not surprisingly, Honda found this method inefficient and 

ineffective. They began to insist that the groups work together 

to produce one prototype they all agreed on. They called this 

way of working “Knowledge Fusion.” It has proved to be a 

successful way of bridging knowledge and cognitive spaces in 

a productive way.

Intraorganizational collaboration is a life or death issue 

in our knowledge age. Not using the full knowledge of the 

organization when and where it is needed is a major handicap. 

Lessening social and cognitive distance increases the likelihood 

of influence, familiarity, trust, and empathy. It is difficult to 

help a person in their knowledge search if one “lives” far from 

him or her in terms of social space.

Getting out of your own social and mental space and 

genuinely interacting with others not in your social group 

is a good way to start. (The fact that this rarely happens in 

many organizations is one reason for the increasing social and 

cognitive distances we see everywhere.) Another road may be to 

ensure projects and teams are staffed with people from differing 

social and organizational groups. Most people get to know and 

like others with whom they work on a continual basis, and this, 

too, can help overcome social barriers.

We don’t expect these walls to fall with a mighty crash 

any time soon, any more than we think that New York’s social 

divisions will dissolve. But the issue has been neglected for 

too long, and the hope that merely calling for collaboration 

or designing a more open and accessible office plan will 

overcome the problem is bound to be dashed. Social and 

cognitive space matter. ●

WHAT YOU KNOW AND WHOM YOU 

SPEAK TO DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU 

ARE SOCIALLY AS WELL AS PHYSICALLY. 

AMONG OTHER THINGS, THIS IS WHY MANY 

EXECUTIVES ONLY HAVE A VAGUE IDEA OF 

WHAT GOES ON IN THEIR ORGANIZATIONS.

ASK MAGAZINE | 55
feedback

We welcome your comments on what you’ve read in this issue of ASK and your suggestions for articles you 

would like to see in future issues. Share your thoughts with us at ASKmagazine@asrcms.com.

ASKinteractive

For More on 

Our Stories

Additional information pertaining to articles 

featured in this issue can be found by 

visiting the following Web sites:

Seven Key Principles for Project Success

http://pmtoolkit.saic.com/PDF/Seven Key

Principles of Program and Project 

Success.21Mar06.pdf

Spitzer Space Telescope 

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer/

index.shtml

Chandra X-Ray Observatory 

http://chandra.harvard.edu/index.html

Reminder: PM Challenge 2007

Don’t forget to register for NASA’s PM Challenge 2007, the Agency’s fourth 

annual project management conference. It will be held February 6 and 7, 

2007, in Galveston, Texas, near the Johnson Space Center. The conference 

will feature twelve tracks, including Spotlight on Systems Engineering, 

Mission Success Stories, Risky Business, Knowledge Works, and much 

more! Registration opens November 1. For more information, and to register, 

visit http://pmchallenge.gsfc.nasa.gov. 

Web of Knowledge

NASA has created a knowledge network to promote learning and sharing 

among NASA’s engineers. Through NASA Lessons Learned, an Agency-wide 

search, an expertise locator, and discipline-specific communities of practice 

portals, the NASA Engineering Network connects engineers to NASA’s vast 

engineering resources to help them solve problems and design solutions

more effectively and efficiently. Find out more about the Network online:

ASK Magazine Special Issue on Constellation

Lessons from the past are guiding NASA’s next step into the future as the space agency 

prepares to replace the Space Shuttle with an Apollo-style vehicle for human explorers. ASK 

Magazine plans to release a special issue in 2007 about NASA’s new Constellation program 

to capture these lessons and new ones that are discovered as hundreds of people pave the 

way for the next generation of space exploration. From stories about crew exploration vehicle 

Orion’s design and build to the challenges of organizing cross-center efforts, you can help 

ASK provide the stories you need and want by letting our editors know what you think and by 

sharing your own stories. To submit stories or ask questions, contact Managing Editor Don 

Cohen at doncohen@rcn.com or Technical Editor Kerry Ellis at kerry.ellis@asrcms.com. 

Read more about the Agency-wide effort to return us to the moon and journey on to Mars 

online: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html.

56 | ASK MAGAZINE

http://nen.nasa.gov (NASA only) 

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA Headquarters

300 E Street SW

Washington, DC 20546

www.nasa.gov

NP-2006-10-446-HQ