 All right, it looks like we are on a welcome everyone today. We are continuing our series of live hangout on airs with the great NASA people that were able to help put this course together with us at the Sailor Academy I'm David Rose for those of you who were able to tune in two weeks ago with Jeff Ellosin We had a great conversation. He answered a lot of questions about systems engineering project managers and today we have Lisa Guerrero with us. Lisa is the technical assistant to the NASA Deputy Associate Administrator She's also an aerospace engineer. She works out of headquarters in Washington, DC She works on matters related to assessing the agency's technical capabilities in her 20-plus year career at NASA. She's done a lot of different things from designing human missions to Mars to developing the acquisition strategy for the James Webb Space Telescope STEM education partnership partnerships She's also a former research fellow at the University of Texas Austin where she developed a master's degree program in System design and built the online space systems engineering course that served as a launching point for this current Sailor NASA SSE course that you've all been taking So needless to say without Lisa's work This course would not exist at all and so for that we are extremely grateful and she's been instrumental in helping us adapt her course from University of Texas into the current SSE 101 course that you've all been taking so that is a brief intro on and I'll let her kind of introduce herself and tell you a little bit more about her and then we'll get into More question and answers just like we did last time. So Great. Thank you, David. I appreciate the opportunity to Speak to our students virtually. I'm so impressed with the number of people taking this course Which validates the interest in space systems engineering and we're really enjoying getting some of the positive feedback from you students So I'll give you a little bit more about my background and how I got introduced to systems engineering I came out of the University of Notre Dame with two degrees one in airspace engineering and one in English So it just shows you you could be multi disciplinary Still enjoy the liberal arts, but then when I decided to go to graduate school I focused on my engineering work and I went to the University of Texas at Austin and Received a master's degree in systems and aerospace engineering at the time I didn't realize I was doing systems engineering, but my thesis work was sponsored by NASA and the topic was lunar surface habitation and basically Assessing all the subsystems from the space station which was in design at that time and Seeing how you could redesign and integrate these subsystems differently to build a base on the moon And in addition to my specific thesis work on habitation My colleagues in the department were building a lunar base model or a simulation of Various missions to the moon and so without realizing it. I was doing systems engineering Both on a habitation level, but also then integrated with spacecraft and orbits and mission design How many crew would go and all the variables? To understand what's an optimum approach to building a lunar base model? So that was fascinating. I loved it. It was a great entree To start in the work world and my first job was with a company called Eagle Engineering They had an interesting business model. They hired Many retirees from NASA who had just accomplished the Apollo program going to the moon And these guys would sit out a big bullpen and they would be our advisors So they're like ten of us permanent engineers hired to design moon and Mars missions with crews And then we would use these Apollo experts to help inform our designs. So again through that cadre of excellent expertise I learned a lot a lot about the different systems and how Apollo happened and how we took their lessons learned Into the designs for future Mars missions. I also worked it on a Mars sample return design mission And different concepts there. So again early in my career. I was doing Formulations so the early phases of design Sadly none of the missions I worked on at that point had come to fruition not even the Mars sample return But it was a great learning experience from some very expert people And another interesting aspect to Eagle Engineering is they had an art department So we the engineers would work with the artists to really conceptualize and even build scale models of Our systems and even to understand integration better across the systems So it was a really interesting business approach But I left Eagle and I went on to another contractor supporting the Johnson Space Center and in that role I continued to look at lunar and Mars missions now This is in the 80s the 1980s and President Bush was pushing us towards Exploration missions beyond space station and I again continued with more the trade studies work looking at various concepts and being able to Establish criteria and judge those different mission design concepts I also had the ability to learn from some of my contractor managers to get into Risk assessment and so I did quite a bit of probabilistic risk assessment on missions And that's another aspect of systems engineering and trying to understand your system better By understanding the inherent risks in the design approach So again through that position that was in the formulation phase I really learned some of the key skills. I still use today related to systems engineering So then in the early 90s, I actually joined NASA as a civil servant And left the conceptual world and actually was brought in to be part of a cadre of engineers to do Performance reviews on missions and development. So all of you have been learning about the project life cycle in this current unit and the Lexicon we use now the key decision points KDP throughout the life cycle. That's a rather new addition to how we run our project life cycles, but in the early to mid 90s We would do Review boards, but more on an annual basis until we got to that big confirmation review When we would decide whether to continue a mission or not so I served on a number of these boards for missions that range from earth science satellites to the space station to an Astrophysics mission called gravity probe B to all the various science instruments and Platforms that are on the space station. So it was a fascinating way for me as a early Engineer in the NASA community to really get a full Perspective on all the different types of missions we do but by being on a review board and critiquing these missions and Understanding are they meeting the requirements as they're working their way through the life cycle? It really helped me understand systems engineering as a whole. I think that's when I first understood the field of systems engineering all my previous work was fun and lots of conceptual studies and imagining going to Mars, but actually reviewing current missions Showed how we actually apply our processes and tools And then I'll give one more highlight of my experience. So after doing project reviews I came here to Goddard Space Flight Center and worked on the James Webb Space Telescope You've heard about that mission quite a bit through our course as we've used it as an example And you've met some of the current players But believe it or not this mission will have been in development from the beginning of the life cycle to launch For about 20 years So I was in the very early phases of that pre phase a and into phase a And that's the the time when you're formulating the concepts. We had three different designs that we were Tracking performance. We were doing lots of trade studies. What orbit should this telescope be in? As you know, it's a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. So we were considering whether James Webb Space Telescope should be Serviceable by astronauts. What would that mean to the design and the orbit we select? So it was the fun time of being on that mission where you're just considering all aspects Of how this could play out while meeting John Mather and his cadre of science by meeting their objectives So that was just a fascinating period to work on that mission another aspect of it What you can think of as systems engineering is Looking at the acquisition strategy So I led a team of different types of engineers as well as cost analysts To look at You know, how much of this mission should we contract out to a contractor? How many of the instruments do we want provided by foreign? Space agencies how much do we want to retain at Goddard to do in-house who should do the systems engineering and integration? It even came down to What type of launch vehicle and this will be the first mission we launch on a foreign launch vehicle already on five So we actually did numerous trades to then help inform what we call an acquisition strategy or what you think of as make or buy decisions and those decisions are Performed very early in the life cycle, but now we're seeing them play out through the left rest of the life cycle And now all the players that you hear are involved in this mission We actually set the clock running for them way back in 1999 So that was definitely a highlight for me. I think The various experiences I've had up to that point It me realizes an engineer that I'm much better at that formulation phase of the work or strategic or conceptual Trying to codify the right requirements to get a mission started. So to be honest I've not worked the latter part of a life cycle You know in a way, you'll see that with various engineers if you talk to them about their careers You realize what you're good at and you keep finding opportunities to work on that aspect of a mission So I'll leave it at that Yeah, I mean Lisa. I mean you're obviously Well-qualified, I mean you have experience in so many different aspects of systems engineering that everyone's been learning about So I mean I guess that leads into our first question of I mean obviously of the background, but I guess why was the initial reason for creating that course at UT Austin? Sure so Back up to the year 2006 and we had a new NASA administrator at the time and He gave a speech at the University of Texas at Austin and He emphasized the need to teach students systems engineering UT the Department of Aerospace Engineering down there. They're ranked in the top ten in the country NASA hires quite a few people that come out of that degree program But what he saw was this lack of their understanding of systems engineering such that when NASA hires You know, they still need some training or understanding of just where they fit in to the bigger scheme of things and how missions play out so I Did my graduate work down there and all those years later I've always maintained a rapport with UT Austin in my old department and my Faculty who were my advisors for my thesis are still there So I had been down for a visit Just after the administrator and they spoke with me about hey What is the systems engineering thing that he was talking about and how could we possibly? Integrate that into our curriculum So basically it wound up where they invited me to come down to the University on a temporary basis as a research fellow and The idea being that NASA could pilot a course in space systems engineering See how it played at UT, which is what we did and then offer it to other Universities around the country. So I first did a workshop and about a hundred universities came and we Discussed it walked through it really had the feedback from students and a dialogue with the faculty on how they could Integrate it into their curriculum The course was set up in a modular way so that if the faculty do not want to teach it Mass they could pick units out and integrate it into their capstone design projects, so basically I Developed the course. I had a teaching assistant who had just gotten a master's in systems engineering from Georgia Tech So he had a great perspective from the students side and the two of us Audited the design capstone design course that all the grad the seniors need to take and we saw where we Could help them apply systems engineering tools and concepts to make for a better mission design And so the way you to set it up is to have systems engineering the space systems engineering course as a prerequisite to capstone design But many of the other universities that have picked this up like Purdue and Cal Poly West Virginia they've integrated the modules Into the capstone design course and spread it out over a year So basically we now have all my materials on a website that the space grant consortium posts and Any faculty any students who are self-motivated can pull that material from the website and learn from it So it was quite a success and I'd like to show some slides from my early Early class at UT are the slides up David I think they're being shared right now. Are we locked down on that screen? I Think so okay, so the first slide is all about How I saw the goal of the course and granted this is a whole semester long course And it's meant for seniors in aerospace engineering But it the goal applies to you It's not trying to make Everyone who takes the course the systems engineer that was not my intent Intent was to give them the breath and sense of what systems engineering is And what are some of the processes and tools that they could apply as they went out into the workforce as engineers? Knowing that they will still have their own path through their career to get them to be a systems engineer That's what they decide to do. So I've always put that up as a caveat that just because you take this course doesn't mean you walk out as a systems engineer The next slide I'm not sure if it's up There we go. There we go. So the next slide is a fuzzy picture of my Longhorn students who took the pilot class? so They were my guinea pigs they all signed up and in their last semester their senior year and Fascinating group of students very capable most of them had done internships in industry Just not realizing that they had Intersected systems engineering along the way So it was very great to get that kind of feedback and they helped me perfect the course When it was all over I'll highlight some of the students one student actually went on to work in his father's auto foreign auto parts Distribution company and you think well, what would that have to do with systems engineering and He wrote me this long email Articulating all the skills and all the concepts he learned from my course and how he's applying them to his father's business And I was stunned like wow talk about real learning and I think that's what I wanted to see Not that they're all trying to be a systems engineer. They're taking away the concepts and Actually applying them wherever they land one of the students in the front of the picture He went on to be a Rhodes Scholar and went to Delft University in the Netherlands And they have a graduate program in systems engineering. They'll be took it pretty far One of the women in there went to the jet propulsion lab and worked in navigation for years And now she just told me that she got into their prestigious systems engineering training program But it was this class that helped to realize that's what she wanted to do So if we go to the next slide, I'll let you see some of the quotes that the students Gave me at the end of the class I think my favorite one is one of them said it's the glue and I really think that sums it up Everybody can be designing their little widget or their subsystem But unless you have systems engineering to pull it together as an operational system It's not going to work the widget won't mean anything So practicing systems engineering gives you that glue to bring the whole project together Students really appreciated real-world experience that the class brings in that You know, we're just not learning something in theory But something that NASA actually applies and that they can apply it to and the next slide is one of my Original students who was in that group shot and He is still at University of Texas in Austin as a graduate student getting his PhD And what he did after the class UT is very fortunate to have a satellite design lab they designed small satellites Cube sats nano sats It's rather extensive now they've launched off the shuttle and a secondary payloads on Atlas missions and Henry is his name even though his PhD is going to be in a small satellite navigation systems. He has taken our entire course and Tailored it to a student-run mission And so you walk in their lab and you see the classic NASA 5x5 risk chart and you see you know picture of their concept of operations You see, you know, they're how they trace requirements and they're flowed out. I mean they've just totally endorsed Everything on a smaller scale, right? So even though he's doing his research He's also the lead systems engineer and he recruits the young engineers who come in the department And they shadow him and learn systems engineering before they ever get to take my course And I've heard it's very effective that then when they're in the classroom they realize Yeah, we've been doing that with the Cube sats for the last two years And just to get a sense of how a systems engineer and playing in the lab Henry may be the lead systems engineer much like Mike Menzel's the lead for JWST But each of these subsystem Engineers who are working on the thrusters or the cubes at structure They have to do systems engineering as well, right? We have limited number of students So they wear two hats and they're expected for their subsystem They're going to maintain the requirements that and understand how they interface with the other system They are managing their reserves So it's a great learning opportunity for them to play discipline engineer and That's fantastic. Thanks so much Lisa you had mentioned You know kind of the the modularity of your original course and that's definitely something that we wanted to Preserve in the course that we adopted because it's such a great aspect like you mentioned other schools are you? You can have You know anyone not even in a university kind of taking all of it or part of it And using it for whatever purpose as big or small as they want And even the the concepts themselves like teamwork and project life cycle those are things that extend far beyond systems engineering Hopefully that's what we kept in this course But one we have more questions obviously, but one other thing I wanted to mention for everyone tuning in Is that you're probably watching this on Google plus or the course page on YouTube? And so there should be a link on the bottom left hand corner of your screen that says something like join the conversation Something like that. And if you just click on that You should be able to enter a different screen and you could ask questions and I'll be monitoring those questions as we go along and Have Lisa answer as many of those as we can so Back to this conversation So I guess my next question would be then how does your background as an aerospace Engineer play into your current role as the technical assistant to NASA deputy associate administrator Sure, so I have just taken on this new position and it means working In the area or the office of the administrator, so as you can guess it's getting high up there with some bigger challenges across the agency and I'm assigned to work this focused assessment on NASA's technical capabilities so everybody knows we do great things whether it's mission ops or Entry descent and landing of spacecraft. These are all great technical capabilities inherent to NASA But in this budget situation, we need to look at how do we optimize what we do Are there some things that we could do differently? We could do it less people or less assets Or could you commercialize it? There's so much industry now that has taken on much of what NASA traditionally did So are there opportunities to make transitions into the commercial Market and so I am working with a much larger team who's taking on these different technical capabilities and looking at What do we do with them? Here's the state of the art. Here's where we are But we're trying to understand where does NASA need to be in the future and how should these capabilities Crafted so that they can meet our needs so in terms of that big effort That touches every center in the agency My skills in the systems engineering side of things really helps and that I tend to look at the big picture And be more strategic so rather than just picking off one of these capabilities and making a decision I'm trying to get the management to look at how our decisions nested You know, how do you start this capability now? What does that mean later trying to understand our future requirements in those missions? We really want in 10 20 years So what capabilities might apply and so I bring in a more strategic focus Whereas the bigger team is down in the data trying to uncover the data and what NASA does day-to-day I'm trying to pull it back to How does it apply to where we want to be as an agency and also projecting where others like a SpaceX or there'll be other entities out there who do what we do How do we want to change with the times? So it takes a you know my strategic thinking my feel for requirements and meeting requirements and part of what systems engineers do is ask critical questions and I've done that through most of my career So being able to ask the right questions to get to the right information to help us make these bigger decisions That's great. I'm sure there's you know many the students in the course many people tuning in right now I'm sure there's people that think you know In the forums and through emails. I mean so many people have you know are just in love with I'm sure I think what you do is just incredible and would love to be in that position themselves That kind of goes into You know the next thing that we'll talk about over the past week You know, we've gotten a lot of questions about Students are wondering about the education that they should get from a high school level through college. So I'm gonna kind of I'm gonna kind of combine a few questions into one and maybe you can just you know answer as many or as little as you want but so questions about You know, what kind of classes should a high school student take to become like systems engineer, you know What kind of college degree would they get? and also from Like a teacher's perspective You know, what's the best educational strategy to teach these students systems engineering? Okay, well, I appreciate the high school question because a little bit of what I was doing at the University of Texas At the end of my tenure I had the fortune to be involved in a National Science Foundation grant to design Like the ultimate one-year high school engineering course and Myself and faculty from chemical engineering petroleum engineering mechanical We built this class with lots of the systems aspects that were teaching here and did Units related to different disciplines of engineering and it's called engineer your world and now it's Offer offered nationwide to schools Phenomenal class for students in high school Preferably their upper years to really get a feel for engineering and the whole course is designed in a hands-on way So there's no textbook. It's all about doing and learning and getting a feel to work together as teams And you know the teachers were a little reticent to take this on because you know It's not always apparent what the right answer is, but that's what engineering is about You know your design may not work in his does and But you can work it out and maybe together the combined design effort is the right way to go So this high school course has been amazing in trying to teach students the practicalities of engineering and the diversity and the types of projects Well, if your school doesn't have that but you're still interested in being in the engineering path. I highly recommend taking That all the way through calculus if you don't take calculus in high school Most universities like a University of Texas will not let you enter the College of Engineering So you have to have certain level of math. You'll have to take calculus all over again But it's college level and it's hard to jump into that if you didn't take some level of it in high school So that's key and then usually taking physics in high school It's definitely a prerequisite, but it doesn't mean you can't go the engineering path I have a student. I mentor it in Austin and we did not want to take calculus in high school We wanted to have fun this senior year, but now he doesn't decide it to be an engineer and he's at University of Texas Well, it's gonna take like an extra year or at least in summer school So he's got a catch up with the entry level So just some basics and then if your school doesn't have a full-up engineering course in high school Usually schools have some kind of competition like the robotics competition or some kinds of hands-on project And I know through my daughter's middle school that even 3d printing and how to play with that technologies or Coding computers, you know, these schools will have different electives and Great if you can take the opportunity and if you don't like it, then you know that may not be your path Another thing you can do is Find an engineer a practicing engineer that will mentor you And I was part of a high school mentoring program in Austin And I worked with students one-on-one for an entire semester so they could shadow me They could understand. What is it going to be an aerospace engineer really help them Bear it out what the coursework would be like as well as what the career might be like As much as you can learn that in high school the better so that You don't make the wrong turn into college Decide you don't like it. That's great better to do it before you spend all those years tough exams But once you're in college, you know, usually the path to assistance engineer is studying a discipline So mine was aerospace engineering Where you study propulsion Attitude control of spacecraft or orbital mechanics So you're understanding the space system environment that system But you know my colleagues at NASA Johnson Space Center like to remind me Hey Lisa NASA hires a lot more electrical engineers and mechanical engineers than we do aerospace So we're sort of a dying breed You know whatever discipline you are then you will apply yourself in your first Engineering opportunities and it could be like me where right out of school you get some systems engineering opportunities Or you work in your discipline and then you learn to weave your way into Programs for systems engineering and I will note that At least three of our centers Goddard Space Flight Center the jet propulsion lab and the Johnson Space Center have designed Special programs for their mid-career Engineers to turn them into systems engineers, so they are designing specific coursework for them those engineers become interns or Shadow a real systems engineer on a project and learn that way and then they're given a mentor and I've been a mentor for three of the Students in the Johnson Space Center program and so we help them understand You know what this path might mean for them as they get intern opportunities or job opportunities to really Discuss with them which one might better fit their skills and demonstrate Engineering to them They also do a book club and there's a lot of great books that apply to the topics of systems engineering So we do book discussions to really get them to think about these different angles of System that they may not have the opportunity to work in on your day-to-day jobs That's So I mean I kind of changing gears now We got a question from a viewer that's watching right now Angelique she asks a question about the project lifecycle and she asks How do you combine the NASA project lifecycle and development of scientific tools? Is it possible to develop a scientific instrument from scratch while the pre Sorry, well the mission pre-phase a is already done See if I understand the question Like they're designing the instrument After we've started the lifecycle Yeah, that's my understanding of the question. I think so In fact often the way it goes is that the mission level is Being worked in the pre-phase a phase a till we get to a concept review And we know what type of instruments we might want on a mission But they're not designed in the gory detail We know what kind of requirements they may have and you know bit about the form fit and function So we can be designing the larger spacecraft But usually the instruments trail The concept that's being developed and that was true with the James Webb Space Telescope We were so busy Designing the different approaches to the large mirror optics and as you know It's segmented, but we had design ideas where it was all one piece like Hubble and so those early days you are designing What's the big ticket items on this mission and for James Webb? It's the primary and secondary mirrors We knew we wanted infrared Detectors, you know, we knew what kind of science we were after but the actual instruments were not designed till Later in the lifecycle and and part of it is because we also were in some very intense technology development in the early days and so we funded a lot of Like mid infrared detectors. We weren't sure we were going to get a mid infrared instrument We've got one now, but that technology wasn't proving itself out in time So usually what's happened when we're early in the lifecycle? They're pushing on the instrument technologies that might drive to the kind of Specificity in the requirements that the scientists want. That's great. Yeah, so Excuse me. So similar along the same lines of project lifecycle project phases You know we had one question Project phasing is found in the NASA systems engineering handbook, which you've all are very familiar with at this point It seems very strict and care-cut and so the question is how is this in practice does? Really deviate much from the handbook ideal or is everything more fuzzy than as presented in the handbook Sure, so, you know, we write that handbook so others can understand it So it is clear. It's very scripted But as you can guess in reality, you know, every mission is different every team that's executing the missions different And so they may Tailor something that fits their mission better and I do know we Allow tailoring Cut back on this certain area that you have to Commit to or write about or submit a plan to if your mission is under a certain dollar threshold And it may be like 250 million for Mission costs if you're under that and you don't have to have as extensive amounts of documentation risk plans configuration management They're allowing you to do what's right. They don't want the bureaucracy of it to take over and as a small mission You can't afford to Implement it But I will say as you can guess for the much larger missions We are very strict about them following this life cycle and making sure that they are crossing the T's and dotting the I's So when you have a multi-billion dollar mission like James Webb Space Telescope Yes, they are following the life cycle now not everything plays out in time in that linear fashion as you like And in fact again back to the acquisition strategy for James Webb Because we invest so much in the technologies in the mirrors And the actuators and the Sunshade That became a project unto itself and still figuring out where those technologies are going to go And how do they get factored into the design that we got a bit out of phase with some of the milestones and We made decisions about when to bring on the prime contractor Much earlier even though we didn't know all those technologies yet So there are still strategies that play out in how you Manipulate that life cycle at the point being that in the end you're going to complete all those milestones at some point Right, you're gonna get through it. You just may need to make adjustments and be Flexible particularly in the early phases when things really have to come together the technology the requirements the feasibility and then are you getting the amount of cost Allocated to getting that appropriated so that you can Further down the life cycle and curl costs by building the system That's great. So perhaps related to that We mentioned James Webb and that was a project that obviously Made it through to development and but even that you know was under thread of being shut down and so another question that we had was How many ideas Don't make it to real projects Are there any common reasons why these ideas are not selected? Sure So there's two ways to look at that question And I'll pick on James Webb Space Telescope. So when we were doing our mission concept We had the God or NASA internal concept and we called it a yard stick Measure anybody else's design against ours. And of course we thought ours was the best, right? But meanwhile we had two different contractors Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin being funded to do study of concepts to meet our science requirements and Those two look totally different from each other much less different from ours So that early phase pre phase a when you're running these study contracts, you're looking at your own baseline yard stick You're realizing wow the trade space is pretty big and this is where we can start cherry picking Hey, I really like his sunshade idea and you know, I think our You know deployable apertures a better approach So it gives you an opportunity to look at the different designs and hopefully You know when you get to writing a request for proposals Because one of those contractors actually wins it in the end you have been able to glean the best of So you're driving a much better design But you could claim that the losers you have the other proposals that didn't win Yeah, their design goes by the wayside because we're not going to build another one of these Another aspect of my career is I used to review proposals for certain missions that NASA puts out an announcement of opportunity and principal investigators come in and propose their idea and complete end-to-end design and We review these proposals and these are like the Pluto mission that's headed out to Pluto That was what I reviewed the mercury mission at Mercury now was one of those it's mostly these planetary missions and not all of them are going to win But boy we get great ideas the problem is NASA only has so much money and we definitely pick one and at most we pick two and Whether those principal investigators wait for the next opportunity and then they re-propose Or they just give up so there are quite a few opportunities where you know not everyone's ideas are going to get selected to go to flight But then the other aspect which many of us like myself and Jeff We've worked on human space flight Future missions, so I've mentioned we worked you know missions to the moon and Mars with astronauts And as you know, we've never gotten there so often We spend a lot of energy Designing a perfect mission you will go through some of that in the trade studies module And you think we know it all we understand it and What it takes is the political will to commit to doing this and to commit the resources We need because it takes decades to plan develop and finally execute the mission So in that case those get those die on the vine because we lose the political will So so so say there's a project that's kind of you know borderline of making it through To you know give me a thumbs up and starting to be developed. Is there any projects like that? Are there any process? evaluate the investment in developing technology or tools so that you know the cost might be offset by future use even if this initial intended purpose doesn't Actually come to fruition or even projects that you do decide to go forward with Is it ever factored in like something that we're going to make right now for this project is very beneficial And we should definitely invest money in it because it'll help us with projects later on down the road Yeah, I think in terms of say the scientist interests They definitely on the side are always Doing research in better detectors better methods of acquiring data Manipulating the data that can be applied to future missions whether it's astrophysics or earth science Like constant improvement on how we acquire data and use the data But I think what you might be getting at is you know, did we develop something and then you know the mission It's canceled Doesn't keep going down the life cycle. What do we do with that investment? And I do know one of a mission I worked here. It was a large X-ray astronomy mission I got her and it was very complicated and you know, it's hard to have Two big astrophysics flagship missions going at the same time And they were trying to get started when James Webb space telescope got started and they put a lot of money into the X-ray optics Again, that's you invest in your technology. That's the long lead item to make this mission feasible and they did and You know ten years later. They're still not a real mission Well, now we hear that the European Space Agency really wants to do a similar mission and they got the funding So NASA's decided okay We won't be the primary, but hey, we did all this technology work on these X-ray detectors and there's Why don't we provide that part? So what you see is you know more international collaboration right now because we don't have the level of funding To support all these great missions, but we can do the upfront tech development and research and tinkering and Then apply it to someone else's concept That's great. I think that answered. Well, I guess what I was trying to get at So another question that kind of gets back to You personally that we got in was just you know, we heard You know dr. Mather and Mike Menzel have you know kind of guest spots throughout the course about Their work with James Webb and their background and their you know favorite projects So we have a question about what was a favorite project that you've worked on Most challenging one that you've ever had. Oh, what's the most challenging project? I've had yeah favorite or challenging project well That's what happens when you have a big career with lots of little efforts But I will say it wasn't a flight mission. It was a strategic planning effort so In late 99 the administrator asked myself and Jim Garvin who I think people have seen in our Videos he's our scientists here at Goddard's base flight center We were brought from Goddard to headquarters to lead a Strategic planning team to prepare for the next presidential election So the election would be in 2000 and at that time it could have gone either way Al Gore or George Bush and The agency was in a good place Space station was launching and we really wanted to Deliver a strategy of where we should go next with human space flight And how could it integrate with the science missions that we do and so I was granted a team of about 50 engineers from around the agency and Jim and I led this virtual team through all kinds of strategic planning and It was just fascinating a to meet so many subject matter experts from across the agency Trying to get all the different perspectives of Where do we think we can go what's feasible to sell to the next president and We were doing research at the same time and understanding the state-of-the-art on technology and how can this get integrated into some stepping stone approach for a future of missions that were doable in a presidential perspective So I was fortunate to develop the storyboard and the presentation We briefed the transition team when President Bush was elected and we briefed the new administrator that he Hired for NASA and then it ultimately led to President Bush Making the speech at NASA headquarters and so Jim and I were behind the scenes on that entire effort I guess I found that you know very satisfying very challenging because it's at such a high level And you put in all this effort and you never know if you're actually going to get to the president, but we did and It was probably a high highlight of my career That's great Well, I mean, yeah, I think that you know we've been That seemed like it went by really fast, but we've actually been here for nearly an hour So it's probably all the time that we have So I mean I I think this was great. Thank you so much Lisa We're really very grateful that you're able to lend your time for this And we're already through the course, which is that you know again time is going by really quickly Next week we have scope and concept of operations, which Is probably my personal favorite. I you know, obviously spent a lot of time with the material Working with Jeff and Lisa and the entire crew at NASA and it's what I found most interesting myself So I don't know if you had any clothes, Lisa Well, I appreciate all of you taking the course. We love to get your feedback It really helps with whether we crafted the right course for a new Just to let you know there's lots more modules So you're just seeing the tip of the iceberg, but hopefully you're enjoying what you're learning at this time Yeah, that's great. Like like Lisa said It's a small sampling of what she had put together for UT Austin And so I think you'll have that link. You got it in the weekly email. So definitely check out her course and get much bigger picture Otherwise, thank you everyone for tuning in and we'll see you next week