 Okay, it looks live David. Is that a good sign? It looks like just like earlier this week We have lost David from the very beginning of the broadcast So I suppose in the event that continues to happen. We may want to postpone reschedule But we do have a couple viewers. It looks like right now. We'll be seeing live stream you know in a few seconds there's a bit of a of a delay so I I can go ahead and get us started if you like and David is back. I am back. I'll let him take it away Sorry about that. So what what was I saying? Anyways, so we have Jeff and Lisa both here today. I'm not sure where it cut off when I was talking But Jeff and Lisa are both here today And so they will just be answering any final questions you have about the course Anything to wrap it up if you still have Questions about specific content Or even just questions about them specifically about their work about faces of engineering as a whole Please do ask those We'll try and get through as many of your questions as we can today. So I'm Jeff and Lisa welcome. Thank you for being here We're great that we can kind of wrap up the course with With Lisa who created the course content initially and Jeff who kind of spearheaded this adoption process Really glad that both of you here. So one question that I Was kind of wondering that maybe we can start off with is that so both of you have Systems engineering backgrounds, but it seems that both of you have kind of transitioned into other roles Jeff you it seems like you do more project management stuff these days And Lisa as the technical assistant to the NASA Deputy Associate Administrator But it seems like there are opportunities for systems engineers to grow into other fields Do you see is that Do you see yourself as an example of that or I guess as an exception to the broader rule or So Jeff maybe you can start with with the opportunities Okay, yeah, yeah, thanks David. So yeah, it's a good question And I think Lisa and I have taken very different career paths But we both kind of started out doing a lot of system engineering Analysis and stuff like that. So we're probably two good examples of what you can do If you come into the field and you really like aerospace and you have an interest in Being that organizer coordinator kind of person and seeing the big picture kind of person. So Jokingly I was trying to think Lisa and I were exchanging emails over the last week about something and I thought about it I thought actually Lisa's world has been more the white collar version of NASA. I've been the blue collar version, right? So so it's like you could take engineering in two different directions so I'll let Lisa talk about what she's been able to do in more recent years, but She's worked a lot at the very strategic level and I think system engineers have that kind of big picture capability to kind of move Into that world where then the other side though as a system engineer Becoming a project manager is kind of a perfect example of what you can do too because as a project manager more down in an Individual product project role. You still have to be able to understand all the engineering stuff You have to be able to challenge the engineering team because they're spending your money They're you know, they're causing you schedule delays and so having an engineering background is the perfect thing to move into project management So so I think you can kind of go either way. I think it just depends on What part of the system engineering life cycle you enjoy the most, right? So I'm working at the part of the life cycle where we're going through and Building the flight hardware and getting ready for launch and I think I like that part where you have this very discreet end point so You know, we've got three to four years to get ready for launch and we have to go from phase a B type analysis all the way through flight Hardware development testing and launch in a really short period of time So I think that that kind of excitement and drama and stress is something that I really enjoy So I think that's where I kind of gravitated to so before this I worked in flight operations where? similarly you're making decisions and pressure situations and The implications are very real because the satellites in orbit We're trying to make a decision on how to fix the battery to keep it living longer To do a maneuver to get it in the right position. And so I think I kind of gravitated towards that environment because I really like that kind of Tangible result of engineering analysis where you really got to see the product right away. So But yeah, we definitely have done similar things in our careers now We've kind of done different things along the way So I'll at least have talked about some of the different things she's done, so Taking off on that idea of the white collar Promotion I have spent the recent part of my career at NASA headquarters and Unlike working at a center like Goddard Space Flight Center where Jeff is at headquarters We are looking at the agency writ large and our responsibilities involved As Jeff said strategic planning really looking at what future missions should NASA do But also other aspects of missions beyond the technical side So getting the the budget financing from congress getting the Support from the White House Working with the communication spokes and outreach aspects of getting a mission started Working with the national academies of the science mission to make sure it's part of their Strategic plans for the country in a particular venue of science and so at headquarters You're not only playing the engineer who needs to understand what that mission is but all those other aspects of getting a mission approved funded Started initiated and even picking which center should manage it. Should it be Goddard Space Flight Center? So in that regard as a systems engineer because I've been good at looking at the big picture and how do you put those pieces together? Gravitating up to a more senior position Where you're looking at at a much higher level, but it's still putting the pieces together and make sure It's a viable program or a viable mission Why people get out of systems engineering it really often comes down to getting a promotion So being a project manager like Jeff or doing what I'm doing at headquarters often means you get a promotion And so it comes with more responsibilities or exposure more opportunity And everyone wants that in their career. So over a 20 30 year career We've gravitated out of our you know original work, but not everybody does that Many people just want to stay being engineers and they're often at the centers at headquarters, you'll find most people are more at the Big picture strategy management level Yeah, and so like from a center perspective I really appreciate that there are people like Lisa at NASA headquarters because you think of NASA, right? It's not just it is a big federal bureaucracy. It has to be right so But you want to know that the people in decision-making roles really have a good engineering background and really understand The decision process they're going through right so you really want to have people with a system engineering background At the headquarters level to make sure the agency is making wise decisions because somebody at the at the center Like myself is going to have to execute So if decisions are made bad up front about how much a mission would cost or how complex it's going to be or whether we Should pursue this mission versus that mission It might turn out terribly and it's going to be the people at the center who are going to live that dream or or nightmare Whatever it happens to be so so I think that's the real value of system engineers I think a lot of system engineers are like afraid of like a NASA headquarters environment because they're like oh That's where bureaucrats are and that's but it's like well. No not at NASA I mean there there's a certain amount of bureaucracy that comes with it, but there's a critical function This is a very technical feel that we all work in to have people who really understand this stuff making decisions So so throughout the history of NASA some of the best engineers the agency have matriculated the headquarters to take our leadership role So so I think it's not you know It's not like you lose all your engineering capability when you go to headquarters You put it to a different kind of use at a strategic level And in fact, I'll add one more thing to that NASA's looking at an asteroid retrieval mission where we go Retrieve an asteroid bring it into the lunar Facinity and have astronauts actually encounter the asteroid and we have two different concept teams Thinking about ways you would actually retrieve this asteroid and so those teams Bring their ideas to headquarters and it's us senior leadership that get to sit in the meeting and hear these different very different concepts you want Engineers in those leadership positions so we can ask the difficult questions and challenge those concepts and Hopefully lead the engineering concept teams to better thoughts better design ideas And then they come back to us and this particular mission is very early in in pre-phase a right as you're learning Engineering so it's very conceptual, but this is a way we can steer it So it's more viable because those of us at headquarters still have to get the funding Approved and really have to sell this mission because it's just in that concept phase So so it just depends so so as a system engineer you could go either way or any one of three ways Where you could stay as a system engineer and I work with a senior system engineer on my project That's been a system engineer for probably 25 to 30 years now He loves that job He just moves from mission to mission to mission when a new mission comes up And he doesn't even want to work on a big James Webb telescope He likes working on a small project because he likes going through the whole life cycle in a four to five year period So so for those folks they love it and they get a reputation and they get immediately put on another mission And they walk through the life cycle again, and they bring all their experience from one mission to the next So that works out great for the agency because you get these kind of seasoned system engineers Who have worked on a whole bunch of missions and brought their experience so and then but then again some I've worked at headquarters and that's where Lisa and I first met for about ten years of my career And I think at each time that I was at headquarters I stayed for four or five years, and I started the long for the Life cycle completion so you know I headquarters you only see the pre-phase a the beginning part and you know So I started really want to be back in an environment where I had a small team around me We kind of formed a family and we kind of went through all the stress and strain to get to a launch pad Where you can watch a rocket launch and think hey, we just did that as a group of individuals So so I think there are people who dip back and forth to so I love being on the strategic end of it But I think after a while I start to burn out and then I want to run back out to a center and take on another kind of role So so people do both too. It's not like you have to make one track or the other your career choice Although I will add that I know from my personality type I'm an INTJ that I am definitely Met for the formulation period. That's where it's not all of my career has been so I even worked on JWST Back in 1997 your 2000 here at Goddard, but that's when it was in formulation and we were doing all the trade studies And we had three different design concepts, and I know that's what I'm better at I love looking at all the options and weighing those options and helping a Whole team and working with the scientists in the front end and even now at headquarters What I get to do and see in these larger strategy mission It's all formulation, and that's what I know I'm good at and that that's where I tend to Work and it's and that's what's important to you as an engineer is to know What you're really good at you don't have to do the whole life cycle There are opportunities in your career where you can just work Formulation but you have to know and understand that and then look for those opportunities Yeah, so I'm an ENFP so I think yeah for me. It's all about I like that family thing So I'm still friends with people who I launched missions with back in the 90s So I think for me it's all about kind of forming these small teams, and I love being the leader But but kind of encouraging everyone and organizing and getting in the middle of the fights along the way and trying to settle the Disagreements and you know it's kind of like I enjoy the manic depressive lifestyle of a project manager where one day everything's going great And I'm just so happy and then the next day the total train wreck and we're never gonna get to the launch pad And then the next day is the opposite so so yeah, you're right It's it's depending on personality. It's maybe puts you where you want You know what guides you to where you might want to feel more most comfortable in your career Thanks guys, that's great I mean I think that's I'm sure good news for a number of students who have the you know that Such different types of personalities, but you know they can fit in in a ton of different ways into a big project So another question that we got from a student just now Daniel he kind of asked and maybe Lisa this would be better to start with you He asks how the two of you got involved in this particular This project the space systems engineering course that they're all wrapping up now I Lisa maybe you can start because you're involved earlier on in Jeff I remember so sure sure so Those of you have been taking the course you've seen John Mather in interviews in some of the units and maybe you participated in His recent hangout so as I mentioned I used to work on JWST so John Mather and I have been colleagues over the years and John knew that I had developed The more involved undergraduate space systems engineering course at the University of Texas in Austin and so he called me while I was in transition from Austin back here to Washington, DC and He did a recent effort with Sailor Foundation and thought hey this MOOC concept. It's going wild Why don't we try to do that with your space systems engineering course so it was really through John Mather's interest and a love of the MOOC concept that he wrote to me in and we spent time with David here Over last summer really contemplating. What would that mean? As I mentioned the University of Texas course Is much more developed It's a full semester long course 25 units as opposed to the 6th that we developed here So what we've done for you guys is just a pilot a sampling of some of those units I Knew that Jeff was teaching the space systems engineering course that I developed here locally at School called Capital College and so knowing that he's currently teaching it and Also working on a mission and much closer to Applications of systems engineering than I am right now at NASA Thought he would be a great representative For the course so so yeah and remember so if you didn't know so Lisa used to be my boss So I still do whatever she asked me to do Yeah, I think you know we had worked together before I Had started to teach the curriculum that she developed down in Austin And so when the opportunity came up I jumped at it because I think I've been teaching college classes for about 11 years now and I really enjoy the teaching aspect of Engineering because kind of feel like when I was going through this as a young engineer I didn't have MOOCs I didn't have all these kind of ways that you can interact with people and help them understand what system engineering is and how to apply it and So I you know the any opportunity to get to do stuff like this is just fantastic So that an opportunity to co-author a couple engineering textbooks and so so when this came up I'm like yeah, I'm all in because it's it's a kind of a neat opportunity. So Oh, yeah, and I do follow whatever Lisa tells me to do still so Well, yeah, we're me personally I'm couldn't be more grateful that the two of you have been involved It's been great. I mean Lisa it seems you mentioned that those meetings over last summer and it seems So so strange that this is you know the last hangout of the course and the course, you know I have been it was developed and you know, we had all those filming sessions with Jeff and Our here and it's just you know, it's been a great process and from our perspective. It's been great to have you to involve So we see you had mentioned the your full course at UT Austin so I think you know kind of a big question for a lot of students at this point is Where where do they go from here if they want to continue their spaces and engineering studies, perhaps there's a few Modules from your course that you could highlight that maybe would be a good next step for them to transition into from this point So I do have a website and if you look up space se Dot space grant dot org and they are hosting the site and it has all the modules from the undergraduate course there are other modules for a graduate level course and There are also examples of student theses from University of Texas Related to systems engineering mostly about how do you apply systems engineering to Cube sats and There are other resources on that site. So You know, it's open to anyone and you can learn as much as you'd like, but you know, it's self-motivated, right? Otherwise, I know a lot of universities have picked this up, but it's part of formal curriculum Like I said, it's become a prerequisite for capstone or it's integrated into capstone So for those of you not in a accredited engineering program all engineers in a University program have to take a final capstone design course and that course is like the culmination of all your learning and Professors will put forward a design challenge Whether it's a paper design or an actual build project of physical design Where my course has been mostly used in other universities is Integrating these modules into the capstone learning. So as they're actually doing a hands-on build They're they're applying all these processes and techniques So they're doing a concept of operations on whatever they're going to build their writing Requirements of whatever they're going to build before they build it They're doing trade studies before they actually go off and build whatever you're going to design So a good example of this because Jeff and I have both been involved They ask the sponsors the robotics mining challenge and used to be called lunabotics But universities from all over the country They select 50 schools into this competition and they're building lunar excavator Automated vehicles and as part of that challenge, you know before they come to Kennedy Space Center to actually Test and then compete against each other in this challenge They have to write a systems engineering paper and that paper has to Count for all these things you have learned in this course plus more what you know That's in the rest of my course and they get judged on their paper And they get points towards that paper that helped with the big award at the end of the competition so Here at NASA. We've not only provided this curriculum worked it put it out on a Website integrated it into other universities, but now make it part of their learning through these University level challenges. Yes, so and if you look at Lisa's materials, so think about it what we learned in the first Maybe four or five modules getting into requirements, right? So at the beginning we were learning things like the whole life cycle What does it mean how's it broken up and then some really high-level things like the scoping exercise and stuff? But so the scoping exercise and then requirements and then trade studies Starts to kind of lead you to what the rest of the modules are like, right? So they're now taking individual things that you would do within the life cycle like you do requirements development in phase a and phase b and Kind of going deeper into well, how do you do requirements development? How do you make sure you manage requirements? What kinds of requirements are there and so then like Unit 6 was trade studies, right? So same thing in phase B and in phase C and even in phase a there's a trade studies going on at different levels So it was a deeper dive into trade studies So if you look at the rest of the modules that Lisa developed for the course, there's a lot of those other deep dive subjects So how do you do risk management while you're progressing through the life cycle to manage those things you worry about in a more Structured way than just saying hey, I'm worried You know, how do you actually make use of that worry and put it into a structured environment and then work it off So that you don't have the launch gets slipped or you don't overrun your budget So so there's a lot of those kind of subjects make versus buy There's a whole module on would you want to make a product a gyroscope? Or would you be better off to go off and buy it on the market for your specific satellite? So again trying to add that structure You might intuitively say well, I could figure out how to do that But it's like well what Lisa's material kind of walks you through is well What's a structured way to do that so that the decision you and make in the end has a little bit more Analysis and depth to it than just saying well off the top of my head I'd rather buy it because it makes it easier for me, or I think it'll be cheaper So so I think that's what you'd find if you go through the rest of the modules You know you're going from this big picture of the whole life cycle down into what are specific tools that and processes that you Can use at different points in the life cycle to kind of work your way through and handle different kinds of issues that come up So Jeff is that what you would suggest if someone wants to further their knowledge after this course to dive deeper into every single topic that they've covered rather than Expanding into other modules. Hey David. I'm very self-centered So I say no they should all sign up to take courses at Capitol College, and I could be their teacher in person But but okay like let's say they couldn't do that right they don't happen to live in Maryland or one of my great years So yeah, it's that's probably exactly what to do is pick topics that you're interested in or that you have questions about When you look at the topics on Lisa's website, it's going to be intuitive You'll see risk management It's like trade studies and make versus buy so you'll get it you know costs right one of the things We didn't cover which is critical to a system engineer is understanding cost management in a life cycle because System engineers are not just purely thinking about technical subjects. You're thinking about the cost Implication of those technical decisions. So so there's a cost module But so I think by name it would be pretty easy to noodle through. Oh, yeah, that's what that's going to cover But again, it'll kind of help you understand different aspects So if you're somebody who is working on something or will like to work on something in a more of a phase CD kind of a Building and integrating environment There are some of the modules on Lisa's course that are more relevant to that part of the life cycle If you like the idea or want to learn more about what it's like to start a new project from scratch Then there are things that tend to lend themselves to the beginning of the life cycle and again I think when you see the names of the modules that would be intuitive the kind of to figure out which ones might Wanted to learn more about What kind of capital college David that's the other choice Yeah, we'll put over once this video is uploaded and finalized on YouTube a bit put a big link to a capital college enrollment I don't know this entire second course into my Yeah So another question that we have From Angelique. This is content specific. It's about the MSR project And she's wondering if you could provide an example of figure of merit She's just saying that the concept still is a little obscure to her sure So so me and we can both talk about this But let me because I've actually had some students inquiring about the the project. So let me maybe take a broader Tacket this first is that people have said well what what it what should I do? I mean the JPL I think there's a link out there to the JPL mission design that they currently have for if NASA someday at a Mars sample return. Here's kind of our baseline Concept but now at least I could talk to James Webb. They said in the James Webb example There were many there was a government baseline design But then people came up with different variations and different ways to do it And so that was part of the beginning kind of pre-phase a Looking at different options right so so this is exactly what I'm hoping the students will do with the Mars sample return is that sure There's a JPL example baseline mission and sure there are laws of physics That are built into that that you don't want to violate right so whatever design you come up with probably has to follow a Lot of the similar you know How much mass you could take to Mars and how long it will take to get to Mars You're probably not going to be able to change those things too dramatically But what you could think about is well, you know I don't want to just sit down with a rover that picks up rocks in a local area Because I've learned about Mars and I know that there are a lot of very interesting locations I would love to get samples from the poles. I love to get samples from Olympus Mons I'd love to get samples from deep in one of the valleys So maybe you design something that puts out a bunch of little probes that pick up samples from different areas And then they may be helicopter those samples back to a location where the rocket brings them all back or you know So I'm really hoping students will kind of take the basic design of the JPL mission and start to think about What could you do differently that would make the mission more exciting more interesting technically? Scientifically and so so I think that's the part where system engineers always work within Some amount of boundary conditions and they try to leverage as much past experience as possible So knowing what JPL's baseline mission is knowing what the curiosity rover has been able to do and what it's you know How it works those are all key to designing your mission because you can't just come up with the most fanciful idea You want and have it be practically and you know practical to execute So but it's that's what I'm really hoping is that I feel like the ones that should get the most votes Should be the ones that follow all the engineering disciplines But they also add that creativity that maybe other students had a thought about so so so to go all the way back Down into how do you think about figures of merit right so the idea here is that when you're doing trades along the way And I think one of the core things I've told students who have asked about this project is I'd like to see that you've learned something from the course So I'd like to see your project design or your layout You know really map to the different modules and what you've learned in the course So so I think doing something like showing that you've done a trade study and applied figures of merit is a great You know is one great way to do that right so For figures of merit it could be anything that you would want to use to evaluate Multiple choices that you would have like say you want to decide whether it should be a rover that collects the samples or a Helicopter or an airplane or a you know underground boring machine or whatever and that you put those all on a list and say okay Here are all the different ways I think I collect samples from around the Martian environment now which one of those Take the most electrical power so that's maybe one figure of merit is which ones take more power So so you have a power as a figure of merit, and then you say boy on Mars I want to use I can only use solar power so I can only have a certain amount available So if one of these applications would need a lot of power that might not be good It might not be a good one to pick but there might be a lot of other factors So maybe another figure to merit is how heavy it is right So maybe building a rover might be very heavy. We're a helicopter you could build a design That would be very lightweight So you know that taking mass to Mars is very difficult takes big rocket to get it there So maybe a figure of merit is I want to understand how much mass each one of these type of Collecting devices would take so I know and maybe there's some more of that I don't know you know so what other well You could also take it from a qualitative view as well as Jeff said, you know Can your concept? Support getting samples from lots of different locations. So now you've got a variety of samples So that would be a good figure of merit also Sample size So some of the concepts NASA has done and I know I've seen him you end up like with dust particles And we think oh my god It's not worth doing this Multi-billion-dollar mission just to get some dust back, you know, at least it'll be a rock right but you know, what could your concept afford in terms of Sample size so those are more qualitative But again, it lends itself to know is this mission worth it? Is this a valuable mission? Yes, so lots a lot of times what people will do is develop a Like a spreadsheet So and then they'll put all the choices for like in this case ways to collect samples And then they'll have all of their figures of merit on the other axis and then they'll go through and say okay And again, it could be qualitative or quantitative They'll write something in each box like if one of the measures is how much samples could be collected with that Mechanism they'll put in you know, okay for a helicopter system that goes off to these places I could bring back this much samples for a rover. I could bring about this much samples back So so then this way when you get done You've got this big matrix and you've got all these different things where maybe some of your choices Scored better in certain figures of merit. They would really do well in the amount of samples brought back But that same choice might use a lot of electrical power So then you're like, oh geez I got and maybe you start to filter it down And maybe there's not a clear-cut winner, but maybe two of the choices look a lot better than all the others So then you say okay Maybe I need a couple more figures of merit to add to the list to maybe draw out the Differences between these two final ones to make the decision So so I think it can be an iterative process to where you try to go through Maybe down select a little based on a few figures of merit and then do more deeper analysis of the couple remaining so And I will add one more thing because I've had a flashback One of my first jobs in the 80s when I got out of grad school Was to design the sample canister for a Mars sample return mission so believe it or not way back then we thought we were going to do this and Martin Marietta was the lead contractor back then and we were a subcontractor where I was working and We had the idea that we wanted more samples So I was designing this hexagonal Sample canister so you could separate the samples you were receiving but launch it off of one Canister but then you know we'd show our design to Martin Marietta and in the end It wasn't good because the mass penalty of something like that was too great given they were designing the bigger return vehicle So it's interesting. You know what we thought was the valuable design parameter get lots of samples and have them segregated in one system You know thinking about the mass penalty wasn't what we were doing at the time So I know what's really shocking is that we've been around since the 80s. I know that's But we actually worked together back then too so that was like our first we didn't really know each other But we're both working on sending humans to the moon and Mars Lisa was down at Johnson Space Center. I was up at NASA egglers at the time And so we were doing system engineering back then of Concepts for how do you get humans to Phobos? How do you get humans down to the surface of Mars? So so yeah So those things like a more sample return have been studied and studied and studied But it'll be great to see what you guys come up with because there's always some room for some creative new ideas Because technology has changed a lot since the 80s when we first started so so adventure There's a lot of new cool things you could think of doing in a sample return that do you know people didn't think about years ago, so Thanks guys So next question I'm not too sure how much either of you know about this particular thing But the question is just how effective do you think the new? Space-specific universities such as the International Space University in Schaasburg are going to be with regard to the advancement of human space exploration And how do you think their production of students with space-specific knowledge will help boost the space economy in the future? Utah there so yeah, so believe it or not the International Space University started in the 80s and I was actually asked to teach at the very first offering for students and MIT hosted ISU for the first time and It has been consistently teaching students ever since I have encountered graduates from that university they tend to be more in policy positions and international relations positions and in fact I have recently been involved in an effort that the Swiss government Using the Swiss Embassy here in Washington Is interested in building these Relationships and awareness of space and the leader of that conference is a graduate of ISU and so Coming from those types of universities. I think it's wonderful. They have a full awareness What space offers all the international players our particular Working group with the Swiss Embassy is geared towards how can we influence the future economy by making the most use of space? so They take it at a different level. They're trying to teach their students not just a technical awareness But all these other factors, you know the economy the international relations the communication side of getting the public behind space and And so the people I've met who have come from ISU have just been in these invaluable positions Which sometimes the the diet in the wool engineer were not as good at the Communicating or the reaching out to convince people space is good. We just think it's good and everyone should know that Whereas I think the International Space University people They really come out with this global view and how to communicate the value of space Yeah, and I think just add on to that. I've worked with a lot of folks who have gone to ISU And so I think what happens is they they get put in a very Condensed environments kind of like working on a project team where they get to know people from around the world very quickly And they form bonds so a lot of times what I'll see is that once they come out of like an ISU environment They keep their connections so that over their career They're like, oh, yeah, I know somebody that works in France or I know somebody that works in Italy a lot of us Engineers have never been exposed to that kind of broad, you know community of the aerospace world We only know our little area. So so I think those ISU folks have not only are they good because they do learn the policy side and Outreach side and all the other aspects, but that they also form this kind of web of Former ISU alumni who all keep in touch and kind of you know keep their relationships and that helps them in their jobs later too, so it's very different than a normal engineering curriculum that in at a regular university in the US Jeff and I used to work international relations for NASA With respect to sending humans to the moon and Mars And we would go to Europe quite a bit and work with the European Space Agency And I know our lead liaison to the European Space Agency came from ISU and He knew a lot of different people much more aware than we were And a great colleague to work with I really value that And if you think it's difficult working just within a small project team when you have to work yet What we were doing with the international community you're a working at a strategic level and you're working engineering problems So what we're doing was trying to promote this idea that the exploration of the moon and Mars future Should all be collaborative among nations and so you know they all had to deal with their international or their National politics right their governments and so we would get together as a team and we talk about well If we send a rover to the moon Would you guys want to send a lander with it and do something and do some samples and but then they all had to go Build advocacy back in their home countries and when you bring all those cultures together and try to work That's where I think ISU grads really come in handy because a lot of times I think there were Challenges for me Had worked a lot of international to be able to communicate with folks from Japan and folks from Europe and Culturally understand kind of how do you reach agreements and how do you work through issues and stuff like that? So see that's where definitely I see folks coming in and I'll add one more thing a good colleague of ours from the Johnson Space Center He just started this month Rotating into a leadership role with ISU to develop their curriculum and this allows NASA to bring our design challenges into the ISU curriculum and they'll be On that tenure for three years So it'll have a NASA flavor right now, and then they'll rotate off that leadership and pick another country Yeah, because not everybody follows the exact NASA life cycle so for example, right? So you throw phase B out and the Japanese are looking at you like phase B I'm not quite sure I worked with NASA. I think I know so so that is a big challenge Is that everyone kind of does the same engineering life cycle more or less? But terminology and the way you go about it and the way you get your government to support it is very different different Countries and so that could be and I think more and more of these big Missions that we're talking about whether you're going out to dive under Europa and figure out if there's water and stuff And we're big human missions to Mars. Those are good or more sample return Those are going to have to be international missions so more and more it's not just that one country can have all the Resources required to pull off a mission like that So so it is critical for folks to be able to understand how to work in an international environment That's great. That's great Jeff maybe you can start off with this next question because you know you kind of lectured on some of this material in the beginning of the course About how systems engineering started but another question that we had is how a systems engineering developed with time Since the Apollo mission and how do you think it will evolve continue to evolve in the future? Yeah, so David I think you know You know so like take my mission for example, so I'm way smaller mission. We're working on tests to send us small It's a 200 million dollar mission that spacecraft to sell us $200 million which in NASA parlance is a pretty small mission The life cycle is only five years long. It's physically, you know, no bigger than your dining room table So it's not a giant spacecraft. It's only got one scientific instrument and that's a set of Four identical cameras that are going to look for these exoplanets around other stars So it's a very straightforward mission pretty small We don't have a lot of time to go from beginning to end So when you when we use Apollo examples and we talked about the development of a system engineering Process in Apollo for NASA that was kind of predicated on these Gigantic missions that had people all over the country nowadays all over the world trying to combine To form a team and to do different pieces of something But all that have to come back together and the life cycle may take ten years or twenty years or thirty years To go from pre-phase a all the way like on space station took almost thirty years to go from pre-phase a all the way to Completion on orbit so so that process was developed with that in mind But you know over time we've kind of adapted it to all the different kinds of missions that NASA flies And so Lisa and I were talking about just before we came over that there's still work at NASA to try to figure out as We do these smaller missions How do you adapt the principles of system engineering and the processes that you guys have been learning about my course? But don't over burden a mission with too much paperwork and process and bureaucracy That may not always be value-added when you don't have a long time to get to the launch pad And you've designed the mission to be simple and straightforward So maybe you don't need all of the process or you can streamline some of the process that you guys learned about So I think that's what's happening is that you're trying to make the process not be one-size-fits-all But where can you customize it and still be safe where you don't run too much risk that you're going to overrun your budget or Overrun your schedule run into technical difficulties that can't be solved So you don't want to lower the bar too far and then all of a sudden you've got all these missions I can't complete and they're being run at too high a risk But on the other side you can't always take that full Life cycle that we've talked about with all of the bells and whistles of process and lay it on a smaller mission So the other thing that comes up is I was mentioned in you know Moons of Saturn or Jupiter that might have water under ice or whatever Is that we have to learn how to make the process go fast enough to be nimble to be able to kind of react to these things Right so science is changing all the time So you set out to build a certain telescope or a certain rover and then as time is going by if that life cycle is taking too Long other scientific discoveries might come along and you're like oh wow I wish we would have known that because we're not nimble enough maybe to go back and make changes to that rover to explore Something different or whatever so so I think NASA has to continue to evolve the life cycle process And as well as others that kind of make it more nimble so that you could kind of quickly react some new scientific Discovery comes up like the whole area of exoplanets and then you can put the resources into it and quickly fly missions That could help you learn more and more about that subject matter So so I think within NASA we're constantly trying to make the process Streamline where it can be and then make sure that we keep enough checks and balances in it Make sure that we're successful and then run the least risk of emission failure But I think the other part of this is that space is becoming more and more a commercial endeavor as much as it is a NASA endeavor So I think what's happening when you look at a some of these young companies that are starting up They're taking what NASA has done in the past and they're using the life cycle as kind of a starting point But a lot of them are morphing it and changing it to work in a more cost-competitive Environment and an environment again where they want to be nimble get to market before somebody else does capture a bigger market share So so I think that's that's going to be part of it, too Is that it's time goes by the engineering process that the key tenets will remain the same But it will be morphed and changed if you went to work for a SpaceX you weren't to work for Virgin Galactic You'll see the basic premises underneath of developing something and getting it to to an operational product But you'll also notice they'll probably make a lot of changes to adapt to their environment where they want to Streamline things and maybe get to the market quicker. I will add one thing that just over time in order to Manipulate the processes like development of requirements and configuration management of requirements There have been many software tools that have been developed I know doors is one that we've used at NASA So the advent of these types of automated tools really helps Streamline the effort of tracking requirements communicating requirements controlling them and so I see a future where there's more tool accessibility to make the processes easier and also do the streamlining We're not all doing it. Hey, I'm like they did in the Apollo program Right. Yeah, so like so fits good examples that for configuration management on the mission that I'm with Now we have a configuration control database here at Goddard So whether you're building the spacecraft that orbital sciences or you're building the instrument up at MIT You come to Goddard We have one configuration control database that everyone has access to remotely you can get all the current documentation And then there's an automated system that keeps track of when documents are updated when a new release has been made emails Automatically go out to people. So so I think it now with a very distributed environment Distributed system is that somebody has an old copy of a document and they're building the instrument to that old copy of the document While the person somewhere else building the spacecraft the other side of the interface is building to the newer version of the document And when you get the two together, they don't plug together So so yeah, I think there's a lot of tools like that that are really helping us stay more under control And and really are an aid where you don't have to have people doing a lot of that kind of work So Thanks, guys. So Excuse me, so we probably have time for just one more question And this was something that someone asked on Tuesday to dr. Mather and Mike. I think it's a really good question though. So I'll pose it to you too as well But I've been asked if you could just pass on, you know, one piece of advice for your successors who are gonna continue to tackle complex space systems Projects, what would that that one thing be? Maybe Lisa you can start with that one You know, I think it's get to know your colleagues and really value what they have to offer I I'll give you an anecdote when I was teaching at University of Texas all the assignments you guys do I made students do in teens because What do you do in? The aerospace world will we work in large teams small teams We're always working together and one of my students said no, I want to do these assignments by myself I was homeschooled. I can do everything on my own and I said look. Do you think we launched the shuttle? Do I get to launch the shuttle by myself, you know You're gonna graduate and enter the aerospace industry You need to work as a team and you need to understand why all those team members are valued Because you cannot know it all and together Your thoughts your ideas your your work effort is much more valuable And that's how you get to your positive end products that we have at NASA and look at Jeff And I've had a history over over 25 years Knowing each other or working on similar projects and look when this opportunity to do the the sailor course came up I can call Jeff up, and he's still one of my valued colleagues, and I have Hundreds of valued colleagues across the agency. I thought I was the only one So That's that's my advice is you know just and you learn from your colleagues So you don't have time to keep taking courses and staying on top of things But you know my getting to work with a John Mather in my career I learned so much and you know, we still have a relationship and we can still move things forward And so it's it's really Networking but keeping those networks active and valuing what those people in the network have to offer So let's see. I guess from my side. It would be Definitely always have passion for what you're doing if you find that you're in an area where it's becoming drudgery And you're you're feeling like this isn't the right thing for you Switch to something you think you have passion for because it's the only thing that's going to keep you going for a long career Is that you really believe because there's going to be these really bad days and these really times where you're like Oh my gosh, NASA's going nowhere You know you get down the dumps and but it's like you have this passion and this thing that you believe that You've got to be part of this that there's some good outcome. That's going to come out of it Even when you're going through the dark days. So and then the other thing about it too is that You know not not only having passion for it But being you know I lemmings are cute right they're very cute But don't be a lemming either right so I find that in a big organization like NASA where you've had all this history You know when Lisa and I were working on trying to go back to the moon and Mars All the Apollo folks would come back and say you got to do it the way we did it because we were very successful And I'm like oh my goodness gracious I mean I have tons of respect for those people and I and what they did was incredible in their day But I think that you can't and you can't in this industry be a limit You can't assume that if you just listen to what people did before or what people are telling you It's the right thing to do So it's like the Mars sample return that I was talking about before yeah, there's a JPL baseline But that doesn't mean that your creativity can't say no I don't think that a rover picking up samples in a one kilometer zone for all the money We got to pay to send it there. It's the right first not Mars sample return I think we need all the rice cap cap samples I think we need you know samples from a diverse part of the geology of Mars So so I think that's the that's the biggest thing is if you want to be in this field You can't just follow along and you have to have some sense of you know You're always constantly learning you're out there finding out about new things I'm actually taking a couple MOOCs myself right now to learn from other engineers and scientists about new things Happening in the solar system. So you're always out learning but then you're kind of taking all that data and coming up with your own ideas and opinions So as as much as the learning from others and listening to others and making sure you hear those voices is critical I think it's also critical kind of develop your own sense of you know What what do you think should be done and then to be passionate enough to argue about that so I've had probably 15 jobs this might sound bad. I'm trying to gauge how bad this will sound 15 jobs in the last almost 30 years But but there have been times where I've stopped working at a job I've quit because I feel like I a don't have passion for it or B Don't believe in what the team is doing and so I think you always have to be ready to do that to say You know I never do that until I feel like I've exhausted all options But but I always feel like you always have to have that sense of you know I believe and I have passion and and I want to see the team succeed But that you know you have to figure out how to how to make that How to drive that course so so you have 15 jobs in 20 that in almost 30 years But but they've been great jobs and I know all the people from all those jobs and and to Lisa's point I still network with all those people we go out the lunch and and all that and I've learned a ton from those people so But so the the path of system engineering and how you follow it. It can be very circuitous at times I have been a life-support engineer I've been a strategic planning person worked on the NASA strategic plan done humans to Mars studies and and all the Specifics of that worked on this small project out here So yeah, I don't know that there's even to pass on anything about what path to take It's kind of like you just kind of evolve as you go through and you figure out What's the next best thing for you to apply your knowledge? But then to drive yourself to learn more and then and it's something you have some passion for something you really believe in That's great. Well. Thank you so much to both. I guess to kind of just wrap up. I Know a few people have asked about the part two for the course and that's something that myself and Lisa and Jeff and The other members of our team that have worked to put this this course together for you that you've all been taking Well, we're gonna be meeting up and talking about that in the next, you know one or two months or so here And so that'll be It's TBD for now, but we will definitely Hopefully, you know, well, it's something we need to talk about and see where we all going With that but even if it doesn't happen like Lisa mentioned her course that the spacecraft We can post a link to that over this video afterwards But that has all the material that you could ever want for continuing your spaces in the engineering knowledge to definitely go there and Continue diving deeper into these subjects and even other topics that you might have interest in do that and also Jeff at least I want to convey all the thank yous that we've gotten from students to you too specifically for all the work that you've put into this course It seems a lot of people are very much appreciative of your efforts Hopefully it was well worth it to you to Jeff even though I'm you just learned that, you know You're not Lisa's only valuable colleague. So hopefully it wasn't a small experience, you know Get over it. I guess so But hey, so so David I want to thank you guys too because Sailor's been fantastic to work with so you and and zev in particular have been a great help Us and turning you know when we looked at Lisa's course, how do you teach it online? I think we just thought you just teach it just the way she had laid it out And that is exactly not what you do So it's you guys have been very helpful in kind of guiding us on how you turn that into something That's digestible in the form that you needed for what you're doing. So and the other thing I'll just one one small thing is I hope every student that's taken this course knows what was important that happened this week And that was if you saw on the news Mars opposition occurred And so I didn't use the word opposition in unit six But we were talking about sending humans to Mars and long stay versus short stay We talked about that sometimes Mars is on the same side of the Sun as the earth and that the two are you know There's the Sun and then the earth and then Mars all in a line And that's when Mars is closest and that's when you'd like to get there with the shortest amount of Most amount of propellant so that just happened here this week and when you put that in perspective So if you saw on the news that Mars opposition occurs Occurred this week that meant that Mars was on the opposite side of the earth from the Sun So it was Mars opposition, but the other thing to think about is Just a number of months ago the Maven spacecraft as well as the mom spacecraft from India Both took off to go to Mars. They specifically took off close to now because of that Mars opposition So so I would encourage all the students who are taking this class to then take what you're learning and then try to Look for this stuff in the news or whatever to put it in better context, you know from what we learned in the class That's great All right, well then I guess that about wraps this this last hangout up So everyone just focus on the Mars down for a turn and get those turned in by Friday and that'll wrap up this course so Lisa and Jeff. Thank you so much for taking the time out today. Thanks. Thank you. Bye