ACDC Rock

So for quite some time now I have seen the Lunar Lander as the project of choice that I see myself working on in my career in the mid-term.  I have been getting familiar with the Constellation architecture since ESAS was released, and I am hitting the workforce at the Altair sweet spot. Plus, working at Boeing, Orion is out. Ares rockets don’t really get my blood going as much as the lander either.

Sometime during fall of last year, I was perusing the AIAA library and I came upon a paper that some Boeing guys had published in conjunction with the NASA Altair Broad Area Announcement (BAA) regarding the trade space for the physical configuration of the Altair vehicle. There were half a dozen Boeing authors, and one of them happened to be in Houston.

He also happened to be Boeing’s overall project manager for Altair, so it was a fortuitous chance that I saw his name on the paper. I looked him up and headed upstairs to where his office was.

Before this time, I had approached the functional manager for Systems Engineering at Boeing Houston and asked him what types of things I should do to be qualified for the Lunar Lander project. He answered some of my questions about the USC graduate programs, and also highly recommended that I do the Space Systems Engineering Masters Certificate from Stevens Institute of technology. Boeing pays for that sort of thing, so I jumped on it and started in the beginning of October.

All this meant that when I went to the Altair Project Manager’s office in October, I have a little bit of confidence and a broad topic to write a paper on some human space system from end to end from a systems prospective. I had read his paper (I had enough time to go over it thoroughly waiting in the chair outside of his office while I waited for him on several occasions.)

At last, I had my chance to pitch myself to him; our paths had crossed (thanks to his friendly OA.) He was pleasant and trusted me enough to show me some proprietary stuff that Boeing was cooking up in conjunction with the BAA. I told him that I wanted to be involved, that I had CAD and writing experience, and that I wanted to form my space systems engineering paper to support his business goals and objectives. I don’t know how much he really expected of me, but he politely accepted to give me some guidance for my topic. He also gave me access to Boeing BAA Share Point

I was off to the races. The Share Point was chock full of sometime up to the minute data as Boeing was preparing its final BAA report outs. The Master Equipment list, Q&As between NASA and the engineers, CAD models… I was in hog heaven. I printed off a 2 inch thick binder and marked it up thoroughly. This was all research for the first part of my paper.

A month went by, and I was ready. I had really put a lot of research and analysis into the paper, and even slaved away on butchering the NASA Design Analysis Cycle 2 CAD model to illustrate the concept that I explored in the second part of my paper. I proudly presented it to the project manager and the Systems Engineering Manager when I was finished. The project manager was excited to have it. He said he would read it.

I returned a week later and he had sent it on to some of his guys who were more closely working with the topic that I had focused on; he said that they liked it and I had done some good analysis that his guys were glad to have. Later I would actually meet these people and work with them on the ACDC proposal. The project manager said that I was a good writer, demonstrated a firm understanding of NASA’s Altair procurement philosophy, and said “we will use you.” He told me he would send my paper and instructions to the proposal manager at Boeing that I should be included on the proposal team. I was so totally stoked. I called my wife and everyone in my family. It was really what I had wanted for years and years. The proposal was the first step toward working on the design of the Lander.

By this time the draft RFP was coming really soon, and the team was assembling.

After a week went by and I hadn’t heard from the project manager or the proposal producer, I got the feeling that I was dealing with busy people who weren’t particularly motivated to give me a spot on the team. I was going to have to be a little pushier. I sauntering by the project manager’s office a couple of times a day until I finally met up with him (He wasn’t in his office very often.) When I finally met up with him, he acted surprised that the proposal producer hadn’t contacted me. That really made me worried that the impetuous had seemed to fall flat, and I figured that I would take matters into my own hands as much as I could to get the ball rolling.

(To be continued…)