Beginning
The request for proposal comes from a government or prime contractor that asks how you would propose making a system that meets their requirements.
A proposal consists of:
- – a technical volume
- – a management volume
- – a quality volume
- – a cost volume
- – and a heritage volume
This takes 30 to 90 days, a lot of man-hours and money, 50 to 100,000 dollars to make a finished proposal.
Waiting
Then we wait and the customer will look through all the various proposals and decide which one is best for them. About a month later they decide that we have the best proposal. We then meet with the prime and have a kick off meeting.
The Hard Work Begins
Then we start the project. It has a number of requirements that are tied to our proposal.
These include:
- – meetings
- – testing
- – deliverables data items
- – test results
- – and flight hardware
Some of the tests are at wind tunnels, or in vacuum chambers, at NASA facilities like the Ames Research Center Wind Tunnel Division, or Glenn Research Center NASA Plum Brook Station. It is all to try to stimulate the conditions on Mars.
After all the tests are concluded, the hardware is qualified for fight. It is sent away and is integrated into the spacecraft. That can take several months.
The Zen of Waiting
Then the spacecraft is launched for its 6 to 9 month journey to Mars. Once it arrives on Mars the Lander executes a two-minute routine of sequential miracles to go from xx miles an hour in orbit to landing on Mars in a landing ellipse of interest.
All in all it is a lot of work with more than that a lot of waiting to see if the result that we test on earth will be duplicated on Mars. But when it lands and all is well. …Is that not the greatest?