If you could see the road ahead, you might pass up a fantastic opportunity because you're blinded by the potential pitfalls. In my case, I was testing the project management waters at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center after ten years of being a research engineer. I was an eager (but ignorant) rookie project manager (PM) and I was willing to engage in just about any project without knowing what it would entail. The assignment I accepted was to help NASA's Environment Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) Project, a partnership with a fledgling Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV) industry, to tackle stratospheric flight. I remember one of our industrial partners querying me about whether or not I understood what 1 was getting into. Like one of those bobble-head toys that have become quite popular, I nodded. But in reality, I didn't have a clue. His response was, "Hang on, it's going to be a wild ride." He was right. In retrospect, if I had clearly understood the ten years of pitfalls that were coming, I might not have "hung on." Now I can look back and say that I would not trade the experience for anything. The lows included the destruction of a number of UAVs on my watch. Later someone told me that we should not be surprised if we lost one UAV for every ten flights. We wrote many chapters in the book on what can go wrong with UAVs-and we are still writing. As you can imagine, each mishap was accompanied by an investigation. What an education!


    Zugriff

    Zugriff über TIB

    Verfügbarkeit in meiner Bibliothek prüfen


    Exportieren, teilen und zitieren



    Titel :

    Old Journey, New Heights


    Beteiligte:
    DelFrate, John (Autor:in)

    Erschienen in:

    Erscheinungsdatum :

    01.03.2005


    Medientyp :

    Sonstige


    Format :

    Keine Angabe


    Sprache :

    Englisch




    Pacific heights

    Online Contents | 1994


    Congress Heights

    Burke, J. | Tema Archiv | 1997


    Olympian heights

    Online Contents | 2006


    Toward New Heights

    B. P. Bugayev | NTIS | 1976


    Reaching new heights!

    Emerald Group Publishing | 2003