Von Neumann’s War

“So, from this slide and from the documents you just signed we see that this information is classified and compartmented. The mission will be referred to from here on as Top Secret codename Neighborhood Watch and our bird will be called Percival, for Percival Lowell who first searched for signs of extraterrestrial life on Mars. I needn’t remind y’all of the rules here for compartmented programs. If there are security questions, we’ll have the special security officer available after the briefing.

“With the basic stuff now out of the way, let’s talk about how we’ll do this mission. Each of you here was chosen for your particular talents involved in either spacecraft design or rapid and large-scale systems engineering and integration. You may or may not be the best in the world at your specific talent, but you are good or you wouldn’t be here — the time pressure of our situation also indicates that you were available and perhaps others were not. I mention this for a reason. You are the folks who will do this job. Whether you are the best person for it or not in somebody’s mind, or your own, doesn’t matter. You’re here; it’s your job.

“Each of you will be the team leader for a subsystem or mission task and your particular assignment as we see it now is listed in your specific briefing folder in front of you. You can also see your names listed in front of the headings in the work breakdown structure for each element of the WBS. It will be up to you to put your team together. We’ll discuss the aspects of that later this afternoon. For now let’s talk about the mission.

“Starting with the project timeline first, I’ll go over the rough draft we have put together thus far. Feel free to jump in here and offer input whenever you think of it.” Roger glanced around the room.

“We’ll talk pre-launch activities first.” Roger picked up the laser pointer and slide changer from the podium and began to pace the stage slowly. “Prior to launch, the mission team will be busy planning the aspects of the mission timeline, conducting numerous hardware and software science readiness reviews, preliminary design reviews, and critical design reviews, which will lead to building the spacecraft and its instruments, and finally delivering the spacecraft to the Cape for system integration into the launch vehicle, then launch. During the design and build portion of the pre-launch efforts let’s try to make use of as many commercial and government off-the-shelf items as possible. COTS and GOTS might help us reduce our build time.

“The next phase is launch. Our launch phase begins, as you can see from this next slide, once Percival transfers from external power to the internal power on the launch pad. This phase will last until the spacecraft is declared stable, healthy, and ready to accept control commands.

“Percival will launch in August — that’s right, your ears aren’t deceiving you, that’s four and a half months away, folks — from Space Launch Complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. We’re fortunate in that our launch window occurs within Earth’s northern summer and that Mars is not that far away at launch date. The spacecraft will use a Boeing Delta IV Heavy with eight solid strap-on boosters. Dr. Tom Powell will discuss the throw weight and trajectories in a splinter working group later.” Roger pointed to Tom sitting in the front row. Tom stood and waved in acknowledgement.

“Uh, excuse me?” a man in the audience said, raising his hand. He was clean cut and wearing a jacket and tie, in comparison to some of the engineers present who had turned up in polo shirts bearing the names of their firms. The guy was definitely “big corporate” and Roger made a guess at his identity right away.

“Yes?” Roger paused.

“I’m Dr. John Fisher with Lockheed Martin. Did you say a Delta IV Heavy, common booster core, with eight solid strap-ons?”

“That’s correct,” Roger nodded.

“Uh, that’s never been done before, to my knowledge,” Dr. Fisher said. “Can that be done? I mean, structurally speaking, can you stick eight strap-ons onto the common booster core tubes?”

“If you’ll read your spot on the work breakdown structure, Dr. Fisher,” Roger said, smiling just a bit, “you will see that it’s your job to figure that out. It has to be done, therefore it will be done.”

“I, uh…” For some reason, Dr. Fisher’s face seemed pale.

“If nuthin’ else, thar’s always Bondo an’ duct tape,” Roger said in his deepest, slowest, drawl, eliciting chuckles from some of the people who knew him and a suddenly firmer demeanor from Fisher.