What a Long, Strange (Research) Trip It’s Been
Hey Medium folks. Here’s a (very late) recap of our trip to Kennedy. The good news is that most of this was drafted flying back home to Pittsburgh, so it retains the experience pretty well. The bad news is that the information is a little outdated. We will follow this post with one recapping our research since getting back from spring break.
In February we took a trip to Kennedy Space Center. We got most of our research and interviews from this trip, and it helped us get a sense of the whole picture when it comes to WADs and how they’re used.
The Trip
We left Pittsburgh late on a budget flight that got delayed a few times. We arrived in Florida at got to our AirBnb at about 3:00 AM. We woke up at about 6:00 AM. Suffice to say, day one was a fight between absorbing tons of interesting information, and staying awake. ☕️
Any trip to a NASA center starts with badging. So, we stopped at the badging office, got mugshots, and made our way into Kennedy. We finally met our clients here in person. We spent the morning navigating the base and getting a sense of where facilities where, especially those that played a critical role in the upcoming SLS Mission. We were lucky enough to show up a week after Falcon Heavy launched.
At this point its important to note that practically everything at Kennedy is part of EGS, Exploration Ground Systems. This is a the umbrella term for basically anybody who does work that enables rockets to launch at Kennedy. This includes contractors and public servants. Many actors on both sides communicate with each other to ensure the processes here are efficient and safe, most of them aren’t on the ground torquing bolts. The Launch Control Center, for instance, monitors tons of data collected from work sites and vehicle components. This work ensures everything is homeostasis: pressures are normal, temperatures are correct, etc. As we mentioned in the last post, we’re working on WADs: Work Authorization Documents. Here in the Launch Control Center, they play a part in the process too. The data they collect is also analyzed to ensure work is matching expected results. We got a ton of info from the folks in this room. This is a relatively small but crucial team, and they coordinate in some pretty sophisticated ways to ensure operations go smoothly.
On day two, We met with people from Safety and Mission Assurance. Talked about their interpretation of WADs. Discussed Solumina and how its used to author and sequence the execution of WADs. Discussed the role QC takes on WADs and why they do it. Discussed their influence on the process of WADs and how they are trying to get an earlier look at stuff. Discussed difference between insight and oversight. Discussed how TOSC interacts with NASA, and how they have their own processes to ensure thorough work execution. A mutually beneficial. Relationship here.
We talked with a Program Manager at NASA and got introduced to the Work Control System. This is basically a bunch of software, both homegrown and procured, that NASA relies on to get work done at Kennedy. Solumina is part of a much bigger system of work control. There are issues with all software and many workarounds NASA makes to ensure Solumina is configured for them. NASA also supports many homegrown pieces of software to integrate data between applications within the WCS. Half of the WCS is basically homegrown. Learned the scope of WADs, particularly in context of SLS — 1500–2000 WADs and counting to make this mission work. Introduced to Configuration Management System and its role in work execution. Discussed benefits of WCS
Day 3:
We toured the Vehicle Assembly Building, which we got special orange badges for. This was mesmerizing of course. We went to the Columbia Room and got a briefing from a former test director. He gave us an overview not only of the disaster, but the culture and attitudes that may have led to it. There is a fear that many unknown unknowns exist in space flight. The events that led to Columbia were hard to account for other than in hindsight. There are always many theoretical disasters, and the only way to prevent them is to encourage more communication and data collection, as well as work verification. Theres a “lessons learned” initiative at NASA that even brings back Apollo 1 engineers to discuss the failures in that mission. Part of this initiative also illuminates the success stories at NASA.
We toured a crawler and saw some mega engineering. We also talked to a ground technician who experiences the shortfalls of WADs every day. This exposes ways in which process could be improved. We talked to an engineer from TOSC who writes WADs and he walked us through Solumina and the process they go through to write WADs. This gave us insight into what is a good WAD and a bad WAD from their point of view.
We wrapped up the trip by going to a test facility. Basically they unit test different parts of the SLS mission here, but they follow WADs throughout the process. We were, of course, interested in that aspect of the work. We saw a team of engineers watching the tests happen on screens in another room. It looked quite similar to a mission control room. At this test facility, many prototypes are built to demonstrate proof of concepts. These can range in fidelity based on what component needs to be tested. The culture is very scrappy here.
After this, we caught a flight home and tried to figure out how we’re going to use this research and build on it.
What Do We Do With All this Research?
Well, spoiler because this is a late post but heres the rundown:
- we transcribed all of the interviews. This was a crucial step in distilling all the information.
- we produced some visual models as part of summarizing these interviews.
- we broke the interviews into individual notes and did an affinity diagram.
- this led to us to bigger design ideas and insights
