powered by SignMyGuestbook.com

Get your own diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

Recent News...

Just for Pope Gregory...

Finding the nativity

An accelerated rate

To tell the secrets of my prison-house

House and a shelf

2004-03-10 - 9:26 p.m.

Soul of all the people

Stick a parking stamp on me, cause I feel validated.

This week is the next huge design review for my project. (Read that as 9 hours of powerpoint slides a day for 3 days straight to convince people we deserve the money to build this thing.)

My team did a hell of a job before, during and after the review.
Our headquarter rep made us cookies.
Our science team told the reviewers to stop worrying about my subsystem cause Theo would never let us fuck this up..
Our lead scientist bought us ice cream.


One of the coolest things about this project team is that we are, actually, a team. We work and fight, well, like a family.

Senior project engineer: It�s true, there�s a small risk we�d have to change that part of the design. But, frankly, I�d be more worried that the Mechanical team would kneecap me in the parking lot if I changed anything that late in the schedule.

Me, when they asked about the risk the senior project engineer would change my requirements: I�m confident our excellent working relationship with the Mechanical team would persuade them to help us kneecap the senior engineer in the parking lot.

For all the griping and sniping we go through to prepare for this milestone, it's been a great experience. Today, I got to present my team�s design today. I should say, I led the presentation, with my team interjecting from the floor, handling the questions seamlessly.

People think engineering is a dispassionate profession, all about numbers and facts, but I can tell you � after almost fifteen years of engineering � it is all about the people.


As I say goodbye to this LEM, I feel like a parent of centuries past saying goodbye to their child as they embark for the New World. To some people that might sound like I�m stretching the point. A LEM is not a child, it�s a machine, and a machine doesn�t have a soul. We may yell at our toasters and give names to our cars, but in the end even a LEM is just a collections of wires and circuits and nuts and bolts. I don�t know, but I think each LEM does have a soul: It�s the soul of all the people who built her, designed her, first dreamed of her.

- Tom Kelly, Grumman Aerospace, lead designer of the Lunar Excursion Module, a series of spacecraft best known to history by its most famous instance: LEM-5, which is better known as �Eagle,�

Houston, this is Tranquility Base. The Eagle has landed. - Neil Armstrong, July 20, 1969.

Scribble to Theo

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other DiaryLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!