Back to Top
From the Academy Director: And the Band Played On

By Ed Hoffman   Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The wisest mind has something yet to learn. —George Santayana   During the last weeks of playing baritone horn in my high-school band, I started wondering how the band would be able to continue. I looked at Marco, who […]

Read More
The Knowledge Notebook by Laurence Prusak
The Knowledge Notebook: The Limits of Knowledge

By Laurence Prusak Have you thought about why some individuals, institutions, agencies, and even countries seem to exhibit a persistent pattern of bad judgment?

Read More
In This Issue by Don Cohen
In This Issue (ASK 41)

Don Cohen, Managing Editor     In the interview in this issue of ASK, Jill Prince estimates that 90 percent of the knowledge she needs as an aerospace engineer comes from work experience—her own and that of mentors and other colleagues.

Read More
Mars Pathfinder's airbags.
Mars on a Budget

By Randall Taylor   In December 1996, a Delta II rocket launched the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft.

Read More
Photographed by an STS-131 crew member on Space Shuttle Discovery, the International Space Station is featured with Earth's horizon and the blackness of space as a backdrop.
MIDAS: Keys to Software Success

By Jeff Cline   A 1995 Standish Group survey of 365 respondents spanning 8,380 software applications showed that only 16 percent of software development projects finished on time and on budget; 31 percent were canceled; and the remaining 53 percent overran costs by an average of 189 percent.

Read More
Joe Engle during the X-15 program.
X-15: Pushing the Envelope

By Kerry Ellis   Breaking the sound barrier took guts, curiosity, optimism, and some serious risk taking.

Read More
The Space Shuttle prototype Enterprise rides smoothly atop NASA's first shuttle carrier aircraft, NASA 905, during the first of the shuttle program's approach and landing tests at Dryden Flight Research Center in 1977.
From Sketch Pad to Launchpad

By Haley Stephenson   For Tom Moser, getting the first shuttle off the ground took more than technical know-how.

Read More
A Hornet launches at sunset aboard USS John C. Stennis
A Carrier Team One Risk Management Success Story

By Dan Fontaine   An aircraft carrier is a floating city with power plants, satellite telecommunications, convenience stores, and medical, dental, and hotel facilities.

Read More
Case Study: Making Compliance Comprehensible

By Joseph A. Horvath   A pharmaceutical company finds ways to turn required documentation into tools for improving how work gets done. Because of their potential to affect human health, biopharmaceutical companies are highly regulated. Among the regulations with which they must comply are those that set standards for conducting laboratory studies, clinical trials, manufacturing, […]

Read More