Barcelona vs Manchester United

Steep ticket prices and metro cars packed like sardines didn’t dissuade 82,000 DC area soccer fans from taking advantage of the opportunity to see the best two soccer teams in the world play a “friendly” match at FedEx Field in Landover, Md on Saturday night.  I managed to get a relatively “reasonably” priced ticket a few days before the game and was one of the 82K in attendance.  Fan behavior at this game was nothing like what I experienced at a DC United game earlier this year (See blog from May 22).  Fans of both teams wearing team jerseys enthusiastically cheered and sang throughout the game and there was very little getting up for snacks during the course of play.  Perhaps this game drew out the more sophisticated soccer fan, or maybe it was the price of the tickets that motivated everyone to see as much of the action as they could. 

Being a friendly game, many unfamiliar numbers dotted the field in the starting lineups for both teams.  Lionel Messi, the consensus top player in the world, did not suit up for Barca since he needed rest from recent Argentina national team play.  However stars like Andres Iniesta and David Villa played most of the game for the Spanish team and they were a joy to watch.  Likewise, Man U’s most famous player, Wayne Rooney played the first half at his striker position and Portugese midfielder Nani was on the field for most of the match.  My neighbor in the seat next to me was disappointed with the absence of all the superstars, but I wasn’t.  Even the second stringers on these two clubs possess world class skill.

As in most games, Barca controlled the ball and time of possession with precision passing and trapping that looks even more impressive in person.  United’s defense was stout however, and few scoring opportunities were created.  Nani opened the scoring for the English side after 22 minutes when he found room on the left wing and shot the ball between the keeper’s legs.  The one goal lead held until halftime and Barcelona increased the pressure as the second half began.  My son and I shared several texts during the game and he pointed out Barca midfielder Thiago who is only 20 years old as a player to watch.  Several minutes later, making my son look clairvoyant, Thiago evened the score with a bullet into the upper 90 from about 25 yards out.  The partisan crowd (about 60-40 for the Spanish team) in the stadium erupted and the game opened up.  A midfield mistake by Barca at the 76 minute mark resulted in an intercepted pass and Man U had a 2 on 1 break.  Tom Cleverly fed Michael Owen who barely remained onside and the striker put the Red Devils up with a classy chip over the onrushing keeper.  The 2-1 score held to the end and while the victory pales in importance to their loss to Barcelona in May’s European Champions’ League final, it should give the English club some confidence as it prepares for the upcoming EPL season and next year’s Champions league campaign. 

Watching these two great teams live was definitely worth the effort and it’s good that the emergence of soccer as more of a mainstream sport in America now provides opportunities for soccer fans to occasionally see the world’s best players without traveling overseas.  A sellout crowd in the home of the Redskins doesn’t hurt either.

The Shuttle's Legacy, Part 3

So what’s next for NASA?  For the Orbiters, the path is clear.  Discovery will be displayed in the National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.  Endeavor will reside in the California Science Center in Los Angeles, and Atlantis will be at the Kennedy Space Center.  Enterprise, the early Orbiter test vehicle, will be displayed on the retired Intrepid aircraft carrier that is docked in New York harbor. The path forward for NASA’s human exploration program is not so clear.  The current policy, which relies on commercial companies to develop human rated launch vehicles, means that NASA will depend on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the Space Station for the next few years at a minimum.  If US companies are successful in developing this capability, then NASA can pay them for astronaut rides to the Station and eliminate the dependence on Russia.  The risk with this approach is that if the commercial companies cannot make money, they will do what all companies do; stop and do something else.  So there needs to be another reason to travel to low earth orbit, another market.  Space tourism is a very limited market right now.  To date, 7 civilians have paid between $25 and $35M for “vacations” in space courtesy of the entrepreneurial Russian Space Agency.  If US companies can reduce the price for a ride to space to a level where it is affordable for the very rich instead of the incredibly rich, then tourism may be a viable future market.  NASA cannot be the only customer for commercial launch services if this model is to work.

The very important but less publicized science side of NASA will continue on largely unaffected by the Shuttle’s retirement.  There are currently 84 active NASA science missions in phases from formulation through extended operations.  These missions fall into 4 categories: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Astrophysics, and Planetary Science.  The Hubble telescope, launched in 1990, that recently provided us with images from a 13.2 billion year old galaxy, is one of those missions.  Orbiting satellites with instruments pointed towards Earth collect data on weather, the water cycle, and atmospheric changes among other objectives.  The Opportunity rover that has been rolling along the surface of Mars for 7 years looking for signs of life is another.  Opportunity will be joined next year by a larger rover, the Mars Science Lab, that is scheduled for launch in November, 2011.  Science mission spacecraft which are launched on expendable launch vehicles provided by companies like United Launch Alliance and Orbital Sciences Corp., can travel longer and farther than manned missions because there are no human physiological restrictions.

The signature moments in the manned space program have been “firsts”.  Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space.  Alan Shepard was the first American in space.  John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.  Neil Armstrong, the first human to step on the Moon.  The Shuttle was the first reusable space plane.  What is the next “first” for NASA?  A return to the Moon would not be a “first”, but establishing a permanently occupied lunar base like the Space Station might be considered so.  Sending an astronaut to Mars would be a huge “first”, but the distance and time involved (7 months one way) may be impractical with current propulsion technology.  Perhaps we should focus on an asteroid.  A recently selected NASA planetary science mission called OSIRIS-ReX will send a spacecraft to asteroid “1999 RQ36” in 2016.  This asteroid is of particular interest because its orbit is close to that of the Earth and there is a 1 in 1800 chance of it colliding with our planet in the year 2182.  To avoid a fate like that of the dinosaurs, learning more about this dangerous little neighbor is a good idea.  Possibly a manned mission could augment what is learned about the asteroid from OSIRIS-ReX and enable us to safely alter the asteroid’s orbit sometime in the future.

The scientific value of these and other potential missions and their cost need to be evaluated by NASA, Congress, and ultimately the American people in the next decade.  There are no easy answers and in a time of large deficits, any new government program must make a compelling case for funding.  Mankind and the US economy have benefited from our investment in NASA.  Taking on the challenge of solving difficult problems has led to some of our greatest achievements as well as germinated new products and markets (cell phones, GPS devices, improved medical imaging equipment, cordless power tools, memory foam, etc.)  The difficulty now is deciding what that next challenge should be.

The Shuttle's Legacy, Part 2

Congratulations to the Atlantis crew and all members of the Space Shuttle team on this morning's safe landing at the Kennedy Space Center.

Part 2

Although the optimistic flight rate was never achieved; the most flights in one year was 9 in 1985, the Shuttle did provide regular access to low earth orbit and it enabled  construction of the International Space Station which has been continuously occupied since 2000.  It also proved out the concept of re-usability with the External Tank being the only element that is not recovered and refurbished after a mission.  The Shuttle also brought the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit, saved the observatory with the first servicing mission in 1993, and kept it functional with 4 subsequent repair missions.  The program opened up avenues of cooperation between the United States, the European Union, Russia, Canada, the Middle East, and Japan as astronauts from many different countries flew together.  That international cooperation continued on the space station.  Beyond the technological achievements, both the Shuttle and Space Station programs became effective diplomatic tools. 

During the period from 1986-2003, 87 successful missions were flown.  The redesigned SRB field joint worked perfectly and a number of other upgrades were phased in.  The SSME fuel and oxidizer turbopumps were redesigned to achieve better structural durability and thermal margins and the ET material was changed to a new Aluminum-Lithium alloy with higher strength than the baseline aluminum.  This allowed for a lighter tank and the 7500 Lbs savings equated to an almost equal amount of additional payload performance.  Achieving additional payload performance was key because the decision to locate the Space Station at an orbital inclination angle of 51.6 degrees with the Equator (necessary in order to accommodate Russian launches from Kazakhstan), meant that the Shuttle could not fly an optimal performance trajectory to the Station. 

February 1, 2003 brought the second great tragedy to the program as the orbiter Columbia, the first to fly into space in 1981, broke apart during atmospheric reentry over Texas.  The cause of the failure, a cracked wing leading edge due to foam shed from the ET during launch, is still troubling because the failure mode was not intuitively apparent, even after it happened.  The ET foam insulation is very light, almost the consistency of Styrofoam.  During the failure investigation, testing proved that the foam, when moving at a high velocity, could fatally damage even the tough carbon composite leading edge of the wing.  The wing breach on Columbia allowed super hot gas into the interior of the vehicle which precipitated its destruction.  Inherent in the practice of Engineering is the making of assumptions.  When designing a system and deciding what tests need to be run on that system, engineers must determine what the most likely failure modes are and focus their attention on them.  Judgment and experience are critical in this process.  It is impractical to test every possible scenario so intuition as to the sensitivity of the system guides the process.  Unlike in the Challenger failure, it was not intuitive that very lightweight foam shedding from the ET during launch could fatally damage the Orbiter wing.  Testing and the deaths of 8 astronauts proved otherwise.

The decision to include the Russians in the Space Station program allowed American astronauts to continue flying to the Station during the 32 months that the Shuttle was grounded after Columbia.  Shuttles resumed flying in 2006 with better process controls in place to limit the amount of foam shed from the ET during launch.  Note that NASA and the ET prime contractor, Lockheed Martin were unable to completely prevent foam from shedding during flight.  The foam application process control improvements were the best that could be done, and NASA Administrator Michael Griffin judged the risk to be acceptable to resume flights.  22 successful flights later, most of them used to complete construction of the International Space Station, and Atlantis has now concluded her mission, the 135^th and final flight of the Shuttle program.

The Shuttle's Legacy, Part 1

This is the first in a three part series of blogs to celebrate the final flight of the Space Shuttle and the end of an historic NASA program.

When the Space Shuttle Atlantis lands on or near July 21, it will mark the end of a chapter in the story of NASA, a very long chapter.  135 flights, 30 years and 3 months ago the chapter began with the successful launch of Columbia with astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen aboard.  I watched that launch from the parking lot of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center where several months before I began my career as a Mechanical Systems Engineer for United Space Boosters, a Shuttle contractor at the launch site. 

The Shuttle was the first launch vehicle that NASA flew with a crew onboard without a test flight.  It was also the first crewed launch vehicle to utilize solid fueled rockets.  Until that time, solid rockets were not considered safe for human flight because they cannot be throttled. Once they are lit, they burn until the fuel is expended.  Everything had to work that day and most things did.  A number of insulating tiles came off the Orbiter during liftoff, but fortunately not enough to compromise the safety of the astronauts during the severe thermal environment experienced during reentry.  Additional knowledge was gained with each flight, and over the course of the program, design changes were made to all of the primary Shuttle elements, the Orbiter, the External Tank (ET), and the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB), to increase the safety or the performance of the vehicle.  The redesign of the SRB field joints came too late however to prevent the loss of the Challenger and her crew on January 28, 1986.

The loss of Challenger was a psychological blow to everyone who worked on the Shuttle.  One of the program’s initial objectives was to provide routine access to space and eventually to an orbiting space station.  Between 25 and 60 missions per year were envisioned.  By 1986 it was recognized that the flight rate was never going to be that high, but after 24 successful flights, space missions were looking more and more routine.  Challenger changed that mindset.  A trip into space requires an enormous amount of potential energy and anytime you are dealing with that much power, there are significant risks involved.  After 1986, no Shuttle flight was considered routine by people working on the program.  In retrospect, the Challenger failure was very preventable.  The SRB field joint “O” ring seals had not been tested at low temperatures like that present on launch day.  The cold “O” rings allowed hot gas to escape which led to the breakup of the vehicle.  The redesign of the joint, which added heaters as well as an additional seal, was accomplished during the 33 month stand down of the program.  This was a very busy period for engineers as NASA re-certified the entire vehicle, not just the SRBs.  NASA hired many new engineers during this period including myself. 

With 30 years of flight and around 10 years of development prior, some engineers spent the majority of their careers working on the Shuttle.  Most, like me worked on it for several years before moving to other programs.  I had the privilege of working on the SRB project for the first 10 years of my career, both from the contractor side as well as the NASA side.  Later on, as an engineering manager, I played a role, albeit less direct,  in the other Shuttle elements managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center, the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) and the External Tank.

A Child's Hand

But Jesus said, "Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." -  Matthew 19:14

Jesus’ message rang loud and clear at Sunday Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Northeast DC.  My daughter was visiting me and we were capping off a great “Daddy/Daughter” weekend with worship at the largest Catholic Church in America.  I’ve been to the Basilica several times and the congregation there is a mix of ethnicities and races.  Many in attendance were visitors like us, some having traveled very long distances, but there was also a sizable contingent of people from the surrounding neighborhoods.  The Basilica may be a national pilgrimage site, but it’s also a church for the locals.

The Lord’s Prayer is a particularly reverent time of Mass for me, and the commonly followed practice of holding hands with those next to you brings a greater sense of community and fellowship.  At home in the South, most everyone in church holds hands during the prayer, but that’s not true in DC nor, I suspect, in most big cities.  The guarded shell that people in the city develop to get them through a Metro commute or a phalanx of panhandlers carries over into areas of life where it shouldn’t.  My daughter and I held hands however and I reached out my empty hand into the space next to me in a customary gesture of openness.

As I closed my eyes and prayed the Our Father, I felt a gentle tug on my finger.  A little African American girl, about two years old, who was in the pew in front of us had reached out to hold my hand.  Her mother and grandmother saw this and we all smiled with the common knowledge that a child’s purity transcends differences among people and is something to be treasured.  This little angel made me feel closer to God that Sunday and I hope she had the same effect on her mother and grandmother and my daughter too. 

Jesus was right about the children.  If only we could be more like them in matters of faith or in our relationships.