Working with Nuts Running Loose

Lee Graham, Johnson Space Center

As a deputy project manager for NASA, Lee Graham worked with the Naval Research Lab as the senior NASA manager on site. He discusses the development and delivery of the Interim Control Module (ICM), which was to provide low-cost propulsion for the International Space Station (ISS), and the challenges of changing requirements.

34 minutes running time

+ Read the related ASK story

James Webb Space Telescope Mass Challenge

Minimizing Stove-Pipe Engineering

Michael Menzel, Goddard Space Flight Center

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is being developed to see “First Light Objects” in the nascent universe. To this end, it must achieve unprecedented sensitivity, by putting the largest space telescope ever built in an orbit 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth. To do this, traditional engineering barriers between these teams, commonly referred to as the stove pipes, must be minimized.

38 minutes running time

Finding a Way

The Spitzer Space Telescope Story

Johnny Kwok, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

On August 25, 2003, a Delta II rocket carried the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) into an orbit that is the first of its kind, with an infrared (IR) telescope design that is also the first of its kind. The original plan was modified several times, and SIRTF eventually emerged with a new mission and system architecture with reduced mass that allowed the use of a Delta II rocket and a cost that was only a quarter of the high-Earth orbit design.

27 minutes running time

+ Read the related ASK story

Project Turn Around: STEREO

Nick Chrissotimos, Goddard Space Flight Center

The STEREO mission will offer a new perspective on solar eruptions by imaging coronal mass ejections and background events from two nearly identical observatories simultaneously. To obtain unique views of the sun, the twin observatories must be placed in a challenging orbit where they will be offset from one another.

35 minutes running time

Social Capital and Innovation

A Knowledge Perspective

Larry Prusak, ASK Magazine

This presentation focuses on how organizational structures and culture influence innovation in organizations. Specifically, Larry Prusak discusses how the major themes of social capital (networks, trust, norms, space) interact with each other to help bring about new ideas, services, and practices. He also uses cases and examples of how and what organizations actually do, and what managers can do, to encourage and enable these activities and opportunities.

1 hour 42 minutes running time

Korolev

How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon

James Harford, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Almost fifty years ago—on October 4, 1957—an upstart technological country like the Soviet Union took a big leap on the United States by launching into orbit Sputnik I, the world's first man-made spacecraft. The man principally responsible, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, went on to orbit the first dog, the first large satellite (the 1,317 kg Sputnik III), the first man (Yuri Gagarin in April 1961), the first three men, and the first woman. He performed the first EVA; sent the first spacecraft to hit the Moon, then Venus; and then made a Mars flyby.

35 minutes running time

The Journey of Best Buy

Learning from Challenge and Change

Johnnie Hernandez, Best Buy

Best Buy is viewed as an innovative and growing Fortune 100 company. Its mission is to give customers great experiences—whether they are shopping for consumer electronics, home-office products, entertainment software, and appliances or using those products and related services in their homes and offices. Reinvention is a constant and Best Buy has developed an approach to streamline the change process while fostering a spirit of innovation.

45 minutes running time