Newton, MA—NASA's drive to explore Mars has led to one of the greatest engineering successes—Pathfinder's Rover—and one of the most embarrassing failures—Polar Lander's mistranslated metric units—in modern times.
Yes, experience builds character. But few of us make our mistakes on the world stage. And even fewer make their mistakes on the Martian stage. So what lessons has NASA learned from its "faster, better, cheaper" strategy?
Brian Muirhead was flight systems manager for the Mars Pathfinder mission, which successfully landed a rover on the Red Planet. Among other rewards, his success won him the title of Design News' Engineer of the Year in 1998. And on October 17, Muirhead will share the lessons he learned from the project, as a keynote speaker in Supply Chain Link Expo, a two-day virtual trade show created by Cahners.
With a relatively paltry budget of $150 million, and a loudly ticking time limit of three years, Muirhead's team had to complete the entire project, from initial design sketches to landing. And their work wasn't done when the spaceship touched down—their greatest challenge was to prove all the effort had been worth it, by steering the rover around the planet and collecting useful data.
NASA showed its appreciation by giving him an even harder challenge for his next job—landing the Deep Impact spacecraft on a moving comet. In July, 2005, the spacecraft will smash the 4-mile diameter Tempel 1 comet with a 770-lb copper ball, creating a football field-size crater and allowing us to peer beneath the surface.
SupplyChainLinkExpo is organized into five tracks—design, plan, source, make, and move—with pavilions, roundtables, and celebrity keynotes for each. Attendees who choose the Design Pavilion Curriculum will hear Muirhead's lessons in high-profile project management.
Other keynote speakers include: Boeing President and CEO Alan Mulally, who was general manager of Boeing's 777 project; and Handspring President Jeff Hawkins, who started Palm Computing and jump started the PDA market.
Each section will also have roundtables, like the Design Pavilion's discussions of "trends and innovations in automotive design," and "how to shorten design time." Overall, more than 7,000 attendees are expected to attend this two-day event on Oct. 17-18, listening to lectures and technology broadcasts, and browsing exhibits and interactive product demonstrations. The curious can drill down for deeper data, using a browser to watch movies, listen to audio presentations, download specs, and contact a real live rep.
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