After a reorganization disbanded the DAWG, I was assigned to the integration branch, which became a catch-all for those of us with varied skillsets that didn't fit an easy engineering description but were extremely helpful to have around.  Another task I inherited during this time was tracking and reporting the Technical Performance and Technical Reference Margins for Ares I.  This involved coordination with the engineering disciplines pulling the data togther and keeping the documentation in order.  For more details, click here.

After a reorganization disbanded the DAWG, I was assigned to the integration branch, which became a catch-all for those of us with varied skillsets that didn't fit an easy engineering description but turned out to be useful.  Another one of my new tasks involved the data logbooks.  We'd started working these in the DAWG, since it turns out that not only do you need to know who has the information, but a configuration managed copy of it needs to be kept somewhere accessible to the folks who need it.  We used a document management software called WIndchill and set up drop boxes in it for the data, but someone still needed to track what was where and when.  So we had a data manager with a logbook.  I inherited this back from another contractor.  For more details, click here.

After a reorganization disbanded the DAWG, I was assigned to the integration branch, which became a catch-all for those of us with varied skillsets that didn't fit an easy engineering description but were good to have anyway.  One of my new tasks was to first support, then take over management of, the Ares I Ascent Debris Working Group and documentation.  This involved getting the stakeholders to agree on a process (which it turns out had never actually been done before), determining what data was needed and who had to provide it, and setting up a schedule to take the stakeholder data and get it analyzed against the current vehicle design.  This was then documented and incorporated into a hazard analysis and risk assessment.  For more details, click here.

CAIT was my project from the start.  We needed a way to track what analyses were being done, by whom, using what data set, and putting out which information in what format.  Given that design analysis is a complex web of overlapping data sets being used by multiple disciplines, tracking this is a must.  The Constellation Program (one level up from our Ares Project) suggested using the Task Description Sheet (TDS) from the International Space Station, since many people were already used to the form and it had most of the data fields we were looking for.  After I sent them the first 350 forms for the current Ares review cycle, it was suggested we try to automate things.

With Rebecca Farr's help and the amazing talents at AMA, Inc. (Dennis Bulgatz and Stephen Young in particular), we created the CAIT database.  I managed the project, tracked users and generally kept things running with it for six years.  For more details, click here.

I was moved in late 2005 to support a new group providing integration support for the design analysis being done on the vehicle.  The Design Analysis Working Group (DAWG) worked under Mark Prill and is one of the finest groups of people I've had the pleasure to work with.  We provided support across the engineering disciplines and had the most incredible level of teamwork.  We are all still friends to this day, and I miss very much working with them.  Mark set our standards high and we all worked hard to maintain them.  I still keep those standards to this day.  Rebecca Farr, one of the DAWG members, taught me process development and refinement, a skill that has proved useful more than once.  This was where I learned much of what I have later refined of systems engineering.  For more details, please click here.

In 2005 I was taken from the comfortable world of scientific research and thrust into the maelstrom of engineering development.  I am not an engineer.  I think like a scientist.  Turns out, this is actually an advantage when one is working systems engineering and integration.

My first task was supporting the editing and review of the Crew Launch Vehicle (later Ares I) System Requirements Document (SRD).  I learned the hard way how to write requirements, because you cannot edit that which you cannot write.  I also learned which areas of the vechicle interacted and at what level, based on how vigorously they argued over the content of each other's requirements.  For more details, click here.

The Advanced Materials for Exploration (AME) group was led by Beth Cook.  They had been funding projects looking at unique materials that could potentially be used for spaceflight applications.  I helped put together their proposal review and the technical memorandum archiving the research results they'd been funding (see Publications), as well as a booth at the National Space and Missile Materials Symposium in 2006 that was my first trip to Las Vegas (Hoover Dam is worth it, the rest of Vegas, not so much *grin*).  Good group of researchers with some excellent, if basic, research.  Basic, by the way, is scientist-speak for 'not a lot of direct applications but needed so we can do the advanced work to apply it'. For more details, click here.

The Materials Science Branch of the Marshall Space Flight Center Science Directorate was my first contracting job.  I worked all sorts of miscellaneous jobs as part of Charles Baugher's support team.  By miscellaneous, I mean "things other folks couldn't do", like conference support and documentation, library research, internet research, layout and design, and anything else we were asked to provide that involved written or digital materials and/or navigating NASA's publications or outreach processes.

I attended and supported materials science conferences, radiation shielding workshops, lunar regolith workshops, in-situ resource utilization workshops, advanced materials for propulsion and exploration workshops, in-space fabrication forums, and sadly, the materials review of the External Tank foam after we lost Columbia.  These researchers introduced me to the implications and concerns around the interactions of materials and the space environment, and helped me integrate the biological information I already had with the materials world those lifeforms by design had to interact with.  I learned a lot.  For more detail, click here.

This was both the last project I worked for Marian's lab and the first I worked for Marshall Space Flight Center. I edited the documentation for the Spacelab Accomplishments Forum, the Spacelab Science Assessment Executive Summary, and the Spacelab Science Results Study, which took over ten years and three NASA managers to get published.  They are all various iterations of a review of the 36 STS missions that used Spacelab hardware, the experiments, results, and investigators, as well as significant amounts of other data.  For more detail, click here.

I worked for a lead researcher who studied the effects of microgravity on a cellular level.  We developed hardware and experiments to tease out how gravity actually affects individuals cells of various types (bone and cancer cells, specifically).  These experiments were flown on the Space Transporation System (STS) middeck.  I worked on space shuttle flights STS-52, -54, -56, -60, -63, -67, -69, -76, -80, and -95. For more detail click here.