NOVEMBER 2017 VOL. XLVI, No. 5 Published by and for the AIAA Long Island Section, Note from the Chairman P.O. Box 491, Bethpage, NY 11714 OFFICERS: A&D Conference Chairman: Dave Paris (516) 458-8593 [email protected] Congressman Tom Suozzi is organizing a conference Vice-Chair: Greg Homatas (718) 812-2727 [email protected] for aerospace and defense contractor companies on Secretary: Nick DiZinno (631) 252-3440 [email protected] December 4. The purpose of this event is to help unite Treasurer: W. Glenn Mackey (631) 368-0433 [email protected] COUNCIL MEMBERS: the strong base of Long Island aerospace and defense Anthony Agnone, Joseph Fragola, Muhammad Hayan, suppliers with prime national contractors. If your Peter Kontogiannis, John Leylegian, Ron McCaffrey, company would like to send a representative to this Emil a Schoonejans, Jason Tyll, and Gerry Yurchison conference, please contact a member of the ADVISOR: Dan Katzenstein FLIER EDITORS: congressman’s staff. The staff will send a formal Dave Paris, [email protected] invitation letter. See the letter from Congressman W. Glenn Mackey, [email protected] Suozzi on page 4. FLIER PUBLISHER: John Leylegian, (718) 862-7279, [email protected] Mike Florio, Congressman Suozzi’s Chief of Staff SECTION WEBSITE: wrote: “Since taking office in January, Congressman https://info.aiaa.org/Regions/NE/Long_Island/default.aspx Suozzi has made a concerted effort to support and Webmaster: Nick DiZinno bolster our cluster of local suppliers and help them EVENTS CALENDAR better promote their expertise. This is an important event for us and we would very much appreciate if you November 15, ASME/ISA Meeting, Building Water, could pass this invitation along to the appropriate Steam and Gas Thermal Energy Monitoring. contacts in your company and help ensure that a See page 3 for details. representative attends the event. We expect over 200 suppliers to attend and believe this will present new November 16, 15th Annual Air and Space Gala, business opportunities for all attendees.” To sign up, Cradle of Aviation Museum. For details, see page 6. please contact either: November 17, Astronaut/Engineer Dr. Charles Cindy Rogers: [email protected] Camarda. Houston NASA …You Have a Problem! 631-923-4102 At Hofstra. Details on page 2. Conor Walsh: [email protected] Mike Florio: [email protected] Dec. 4, Defense and Aerospace Industry Supply 202-225-3335 (office) 516-320-9213 (cell) Conference, Details in letter from conference organizer, FLIER publisher Third District Congressman Tom Suozzi on page 4. We congratulate our long-time FLIER publisher Dr. John Leylegian on his appointment to Engineering April 13-14, 2018, AIAA Region I Student Department Chair at Manhattan College. However, Conference, Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York. John will no longer be able to mail the FLIER. We Information on page 5. need someone to step up and take over this effort. Otherwise, we might not be able to continue to send Please send any suggestions for meeting topics or paper copies. To assure that you continue to get the speakers to: FLIER, please send me your e-mail address. Dave Paris, 516-458-8593 [email protected] Dave Paris, 516-458-8593 [email protected] FLIER 1 NOVEMBER 2017 AIAA Section Meeting Co-sponsored by Hofstra’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, IEEE(AES) and IISE Friday, November 17, 2017 Dr. Charles Camarda NASA Astronaut, retired & NASA Senior Advisor for Engineering Development at NASA’s Langley Research Center Houston NASA …You Have a Problem! Location: Breslin Hall, First Floor, Room 103 RESERVATIONS REQUESTED Hofstra University South Campus RSVP BY Nov. 16, 2017 to: [email protected] Hempstead, NY 11549 or 516-458-8593 Time: 6:00 PM Social Time 6:30 PM Pizza Cost for Pizza: $7 Members and Guests 7:00 PM Presentation Free, for Students The real causes of the Challenger and Columbia tragedies were more the fault of a dysfunctional culture of the Agency than the proximate, technical causes attributed to O-Ring/SRB joint blow-by and bi-pod foam release and subsequent shuttle wing leading edge impact. The warning signs for both tragedies were evident in both cases, yet the technical teams responsible for critical subsystems failed to understand the important cross-disciplinary failure of the integrated system. In addition, the sociological and behavioral causes which led to both tragedies were never fully recognized or appreciated by key Agency and Shuttle Program leaders and, hence never adequately addressed or corrected. In addition, reductionist systems engineering processes and procedures used to decompose the complex system into simpler sub- problems were not adequate to predict the anomalous emergent behaviors typical of non-deterministic, complex systems. Dr. Camarda will highlight a disturbing trend of NASA toward reduced emphasis on use-oriented, applied research over the past 25-30 years which has eroded the technical capability to not only predict key failure mechanism and root cause behaviors of anomalies which can lead to critical failures, but once realized, the inability to rapidly solve such problems and prevent future failures. He will also highlight ideas for using a system-of-systems, rapid concept development, and a “Team-of-Teams” approach to build a resilient, adaptive network of key subject-matter-experts to rapidly assess and mitigate potential failures before they become critical. Dr. Camarda was born in Queens, and upon graduation from Brooklyn Poly with a BS in Aerospace Engineering, began work at NASA’s Langley Research Center (LaRC). He earned an M.S. from GWU in Mechanical Engineering and a Doctorate in Aerospace Engineering from VPI. He was Head of the Thermal Structures Branch at LaRC in 1996 when he was selected to be an Astronaut. He flew as a mission specialist on the return-to-flight mission of the Space Shuttle in 2005 following the Columbia tragedy. He has served as Director of Engineering at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Deputy Director for Advanced Projects for NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center (NESC), and NASA’s Senior Advisor for Innovation. He is an inventor, author, educator, invited speaker and guest lecturer on subjects related to engineering, engineering design, innovation, safety, organizational behavior, and education. He holds 9 patents, and over 20 national and international awards for technical innovations and accomplishments. He is an AIAA Assoc. Fellow and was a 2017 Cradle of Aviation Hall of Fame inductee. Directions: Breslin Hall is on the South Campus of Hofstra University in Hempstead. Take Meadowbrook Parkway Exit M4, west onto Hempstead Turnpike (Route 24). After about 1 mile, turn left onto California Ave. opposite the North Campus entrance. After ¼ mile, turn right into parking lot. Breslin Hall is 0.1 mile ahead, the last building on the right. For directions and campus map: http://www.hofstra.edu/directions FLIER 2 NOVEMBER 2017 FLIER 3 NOVEMBER 2017 FLIER 4 NOVEMBER 2017 OCTOBER MEETING REPORT Gerald Sandler was our featured speaker at the October 18 AIAA section meeting held at the Bethpage Public Library. He retired from Northrop Grumman as a Corporate Vice President and President of Northrop Grumman Data Systems and Services Division. His subject was “Apollo Lessons Learned.” Gerry talked about the Apollo Program and shared his perspective gained during his time as the Grumman Apollo/Lunar Module Program Manager. He discussed the optimization requirement to balance weight, performance, and reliability. Of the three mission designs considered, the least weight (lunar orbit rendezvous) option was chosen. He told us that the weight split between the Command/Service Module (CSM) and the Lunar Module (LM) determined that the CSM got what it needed and the LM got what was left. It was an exciting time to be working at Grumman. The engineers were all young and didn’t understand what couldn’t be Gerry Sandler with Wisdom Lane Middle done. So they did it. The company policy allowed engineers to School Earth and Space Club students go directly to the experts with their questions. Management was not an obstacle. This created a “pure technical operation” that encouraged communication and resulted in a mission-oriented sense of urgency. There were no politics in meetings where each manager explained why things were not done and then how they would get done. Astronauts attended these meetings. At the time, it was not understood that lessons had to be learned from mistakes made or else the mistakes would be repeated. Mistakes led to the Apollo 1 tragedy. Pure oxygen was used in the Command Module to save weight and the hatch latches were on the outside because of problems with the Gemini capsule. NASA HQ missed the dangers because of a lack of systems engineering there. Communication was also a problem. Grumman did not know of the hydrogen venting from the Saturn S-IVB stage, and Grumman had informed NASA about the oxygen danger, but the warning did not get to upper management at NASA. Apollo 8 went around the moon without a LM because the LM1 and LM2 delivered to the cape had many problems due to the weight restrictions, and were therefore not flight-ready. The problems were found at the cape, where testing techniques were different from Grumman’s. For LM3, Cape engineers came to Grumman to run tests. The CIA told NASA that the Apollo 8 mission had to launch to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. That turned out to be wrong: the USSR was nowhere near ready. Had the Apollo 13 problem occurred on Apollo 8, the crew would have been lost. The planned landing site for Apollo 11 turned out to be strewn with boulders. Mission 11 success was due to Neil Armstrong finding a landing site without boulders.