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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1985

Contractor and government - Teamwork and commitment

Procedures being implemented at NASA to improve cooperation with contractors and increase productivity are reviewed from the NASA point of view. The goals of the U.S. space program for the coming 25 years are listed, and the importance of the commercial utilization of space in these plans is stressed. Consideration is given to the ongoing American Productivity Center White-Collar Productivity-Improvement Project, the implementation of the recommendations of the 1984 NASA/Contractor Conferences in present and future contracts, and the use of incentive contracts to create situations in which both NASA and the contractor benefit from increased productivity. Future plans call for increased industry responsibility in managing and operating the STS; steamlining of Shuttle operations; advanced design-to-cost procedures, increased commonality, better NASA-contractor communications, and more use of CAD/CAM and robotics for the Space Station; and accommodation of greatly expanded private investment and exploitation of space.

Griffin, G. D.↗
NASA NTRS2002

A "Sweet 16" of Rules About Teamwork

The following "Sweet 16" rules included in this paper derive from a longer paper by APPL Director Dr. Edward Hoffman and myself entitled " 99 Rules for Managing Faster, Better, Cheaper Projects." Our sources consisted mainly of "war stories" told by master project managers in my book Simultaneous Management: Managing Projects in a Dynamic Environment (AMACOM, The American Management Association, 1996). The Simultaneous Management model was a result of 10 years of intensive research and testing conducted with the active participation of master project managers from leading private organizations such as AT&T, DuPont, Exxon, General Motors, IBM, Motorola and Procter & Gamble. In a more recent study, led by Dr. Hoffman, we learned that master project managers in leading public organizations employ most of these rules as well. Both studies, in private and public organizations, found that a dynamic environment calls for dynamic management, and that is especially clear in how successful project managers think about their teams.

Laufer, Alexander↗
NASA NTRS2007

Effective Teamwork: The EVA NBL Experience

This viewgraph presentation reviews the experience of improving the operation of the ExtraVehiclar Activity (EVA) Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory as a team of NASA employees and contractors. It reviews specific recommendations to use in turning a struggling organization around as a NASA/contractor team

Crocker, Lori↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Space Crop Production and Interdisciplinary Teamwork

As astronauts venture farther from Earth, and stay for longer periods, the space food system will increase in importance. Crop production can supplement a packaged diet to provide additional nutrients and dietary variety for astronauts. Several unique challenges exist for growth of plants in microgravity and on other planetary surfaces and solving these requires skills and abilities from different fields as diverse as microgravity fluid physics to human behavioral and psychological health. Research on the ground and tests with the Veggie and Advanced Plant Habitat chambers on the International Space Station are allowing us to understand the impacts of gravity and spaceflight on hardware, crop growth, nutritional content, food acceptability, and the importance of plants to astronauts living and working away from our blue home planet. Working through setbacks with interdisciplinary teams is critical to make progress in this challenging applied science area.

Gioia Donna Massa↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Space Crop Production and Interdisciplinary Teamwork

As astronauts venture farther from Earth, and stay for longer periods, the space food system will increase in importance. Crop production can supplement a packaged diet to provide additional nutrients and dietary variety for astronauts. Several unique challenges exist for growth of plants in microgravity and on other planetary surfaces and solving these requires skills and abilities from different fields as diverse as microgravity fluid physics to human behavioral and psychological health. Research on the ground and tests with the Veggie and Advanced Plant Habitat chambers on the International Space Station are allowing us to understand the impacts of gravity and spaceflight on hardware, crop growth, nutritional content, food acceptability, and the importance of plants to astronauts living and working away from our blue home planet. Working through setbacks with interdisciplinary teams is critical to make progress in this challenging applied science area.

Gioia Massa↗
DOE OSTI2017

Turbines, Wind Tunnels, and Teamwork: The 2017 Collegiate Wind Competition Technical Challenge

Ten college teams put their turbines to the test at the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2017 Collegiate Wind Competition Technical Challenge, held April 20–22 at the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC). The competition showcased a wide variety of turbine designs and highlighted the competitors’ brilliance, agility, and ingenuity. College students weren’t the only future wind energy experts at the NWTC that weekend: elementary and middle school students tested their turbines—crafted creatively from materials like soda bottles and aluminum foil—in the Colorado KidWind Challenge.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS2005

Team Performance and Error Management in Chinese and American Simulated Flight Crews: The Role of Cultural and Individual Differences

This report describes results of a study conducted for NASA-Langley Research Center. This study is part of a program of research conducted for NASA-LARC that has focused on identifying the influence of national culture on the performance of flight crews. We first reviewed the literature devoted to models of teamwork and team performance, crew resource management, error management, and cross-cultural psychology. Davis (1999) reported the results of this review and presented a model that depicted how national culture could influence teamwork and performance in flight crews. The second study in this research program examined accident investigations of foreign airlines in the United States conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The ability of cross-cultural values to explain national differences in flight outcomes was examined. Cultural values were found to covary in a predicted way with national differences, but the absence of necessary data in the NTSB reports and limitations in the research method that was used prevented a clear understanding of the causal impact of cultural values. Moreover, individual differences such as personality traits were not examined in this study. Davis and Kuang (2001) report results of this second study. The research summarized in the current report extends this previous research by directly assessing cultural and individual differences among students from the United States and China who were trained to fly in a flight simulator using desktop computer workstations. The research design used in this study allowed delineation of the impact of national origin, cultural values, personality traits, cognitive style, shared mental model, and task workload on teamwork, error management and flight outcomes. We briefly review the literature that documents the importance of teamwork and error management and its impact on flight crew performance. We next examine teamwork and crew resource management training designed to improve teamwork. This is followed by discussion of the potential influence of national culture on teamwork and crew resource management. We then examine the influence of other individual and team differences, such as personality traits, cognitive style, shared mental model, and task workload. We provide a heuristic model that depicts the influence of national culture and individual differences on teamwork, error management and flight outcomes. The results demonstrate the usefulness of the model for future research.

Davis, Donald D.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Human Factors in Training - Space Flight Resource Management Training

Accidents and incidents show that high workload-induced stress and poor teamwork skills lead to performance decrements and errors. Research on teamwork shows that effective teams are able to adapt to stressful situations, and to reduce workload by using successful strategies for communication and decision making, and through dynamic redistribution of tasks among team members. Furthermore, superior teams are able to recognize signs and symptoms of workload-induced stress early, and to adapt their coordination and communication strategies to the high workload, or stress conditions. Mission Control Center (MCC) teams often face demanding situations in which they must operate as an effective team to solve problems with crew and vehicle during onorbit operations. To be successful as a team, flight controllers (FCers) must learn effective teamwork strategies. Such strategies are the focus of Space Flight Resource Management (SFRM) training. SFRM training in MOD has been structured to include some classroom presentations of basic concepts and case studies, with the assumption that skill development happens in mission simulation. Integrated mission simulations do provide excellent opportunities for FCers to practice teamwork, but also require extensive technical knowledge of vehicle systems, mission operations, and crew actions. Such technical knowledge requires lengthy training. When SFRM training is relegated to integrated simulations, FCers can only practice SFRM after they have already mastered the technical knowledge necessary for these simulations. Given the centrality of teamwork to the success of MCC, holding SFRM training till late in the flow is inefficient. But to be able to train SFRM earlier in the flow, the training cannot rely on extensive mission-specific technical knowledge. Hence, the need for a generic SFRM training framework that would allow FCers to develop basic teamwork skills which are mission relevant, but without the required mission knowledge. Work on SFRM training has been conducted in collaboration with the Expedition Vehicle Division at the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) and with United Space Alliance (USA) which provides training to Flight Controllers. The space flight resource management training work is part of the Human Factors in Training Directed Research Project (DRP) of the Space Human Factors Engineering (SHFE) Project under the Space Human Factors and Habitability (SHFH) Element of the Human Research Program (HRP). Human factors researchers at the Ames Research Center have been investigating team work and distributed decision making processes to develop a generic SFRM training framework for flight controllers. The work proposed for FY10 continues to build on this strong collaboration with MOD and the USA Training Group as well as previous research in relevant domains such as aviation. In FY10, the work focuses on documenting and analyzing problem solving strategies and decision making processes used in MCC by experienced FCers.

Bryne, Vicky↗
NASA NTRS2009

Enhancing Team Performance for Long-Duration Space Missions

Success of exploration missions will depend on skilled performance by a distributed team that includes both the astronauts in space and Mission Control personnel. Coordinated and collaborative teamwork will be required to cope with challenging complex problems in a hostile environment. While thorough preflight training and procedures will equip creW'S to address technical problems that can be anticipated, preparing them to solve novel problems is much more challenging. This presentation will review components of effective team performance, challenges to effective teamwork, and strategies for ensuring effective team performance. Teamwork skills essential for successful team performance include the behaviors involved in developing shared mental models, team situation awareness, collaborative decision making, adaptive coordination behaviors, effective team communication, and team cohesion. Challenges to teamwork include both chronic and acute stressors. Chronic stressors are associated with the isolated and confined environment and include monotony, noise, temperatures, weightlessness, poor sleep and circadian disruptions. Acute stressors include high workload, time pressure, imminent danger, and specific task-related stressors. Of particular concern are social and organizational stressors that can disrupt individual resilience and effective mission performance. Effective team performance can be developed by training teamwork skills, techniques for coping with team conflict, intracrew and intercrew communication, and working in a multicultural team; leadership and teamwork skills can be fostered through outdoor survival training exercises. The presentation will conclude with an evaluation of the special requirements associated with preparing crews to function autonomously in long-duration missions.

Orasanu, Judith M.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Rocketdyne - Lunar Ascent Engine

The ascent engine was the last one from the moon, and I want to focus on the idea of redundancy and teams in regard to the engine. By teams, I mean teamwork - not just within Rocketdyne. It was teamwork within Rocketdyne; it was teamwork within Grumman; it was teamwork within NASA. These were all important elements leading to the successful development of the lunar excursion module (LEM) engine. Communication, rapid response, and cooperation were all important. Another aspect that went into the development of the ascent engine was the integration of technology and of lessons learned. We pushed all the above, plus technology and lessons learned, into a program, and that led to a successful result. One of the things that I like to think about - again in retrospect - is how it is very "in" now to have integrated product and process teams. These are buzzwords for teamwork in all program phases. That s where you combine a lot of groups into a single organization to get a job done. The ascent engine program epitomized that kind of integration and focus, and because this was the mid- to late-1960s; this was new ground for Rocketdyne, Grumman, and NASA. Redundancy was really a major hallmark of the Apollo Program. Everything was redundant. Once you got the rocket going, you could even lose one of the big F-1 engines, and it would still make it to orbit. And once the first stage separated from the rest of the vehicle, the second stage could do without an engine and still make a mission. This redundancy was demonstrated when an early Apollo launch shut down a J-2 second-stage engine. Actually, they shut down two J-2 engines on that flight. Even the third stage, with its single J-2 engine, was backed up because the first two stages could toss it into a recoverable orbit. If the third stage didn't work, you were circling the earth, and you had time to recover the command module and crew. Remember how on the Apollo 13 flight, there was sufficient system redundancy even when we lost the service module. That was a magnificent effort. TRW Inc. really ought to be proud of their engine for that. (See Slide 2, Appendix I) We had planned for redundancy; we had landed on the moon. However, weight restrictions in the architecture said, "You can t have redundancy for ascent from the moon. You've got one engine. It s got to work. There is no second chance. If that ascent engine doesn't work, you re stuck there." It would not have looked good for NASA. It wouldn't have looked good for the country. There was a letter written that President Richard Nixon would read if the astronauts got stuck on the moon, expressing how sorry we were and so forth. It was a scary letter, really. The ascent engine was an engine that had to work. (See Slide 3, Appendix I).

Harmon, Tim↗
NASA NTRS2018

Addressing Human Error in International Space Station Flight Control Teams: Advances in Ground Training for Science Operators

In flight control, as with any human in the loop system, operator error is an inevitable reality. On the International Space Station (ISS) where crew time and physical resources are precious and often irreplaceable, operator errors can result in significant, irreversible consequences. Flight controllers at the Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) located at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama know this reality well. At the POIC, operator errors can be caused by a variety of factors, from poor hardware or software design to environmental factors such as time pressure or fatigue. The most difficult errors to address, however, are those which result from ineffective teamwork.Academic research in teamwork has resulted in the identification of many factors which make cross-functional teaming difficult, including leadership, trust building, and communication challenges. These factors, especially when combined with the challenging environmental factors flight control teams must contend with daily, make the goal of minimizing operator errors in payload operations challenging to achieve. To address such teamwork errors, trainers at the POIC have drawn best practices from high reliability industries such as commercial aviation, healthcare, and nuclear power plants, as well as from our sister ISS control center in Houston, Texas, to develop and institute a new training program focused specifically on teamwork skills.This training program, called the Team Skills Curriculum, is based on the concept of Crew Resource Management (CRM) which was developed by NASA in the 1970s for the commercial aviation industry in response to a series of aviation disasters resulting from ineffective teamwork. CRM was later tailored by the Johnson Space Center (JSC) for use in astronaut and flight control training. The result, called Space Flight Resource Management (SFRM) was formally introduced into manned spaceflight training in the late 90s. SFRM has evolved over the years, but the focus has remained on helping operators develop the skills needed to work as part of an effective team. Using these concepts as well as the latest research in cross-functional teaming and data on specific errors occurring at the POIC, trainers in the integrated flight control training branch created a custom training program for both new and certified payload operations specialists.

Harris, Samantha S.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Addressing Human Error in International Space Station Flight Control Teams: Advances in Ground Training for Science Operators

In flight control, as with any human in the loop system, operator error is an inevitable reality. On the International Space Station (ISS) where crew time and physical resources are precious and often irreplaceable, operator errors can result in significant, irreversible consequences. Flight controllers at the Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) located at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama know this reality well. At the POIC, operator errors can be caused by a variety of factors, from poor hardware or software design to environmental factors such as time pressure or fatigue. The most difficult errors to address, however, are those which result from ineffective teamwork. To address these teamwork errors, trainers at the POIC have drawn best practices from high reliability industries as well as from our sister ISS control center at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, to develop and implement a new training program focused specifically on teamwork skills. This training program, called Team Skills Training, is inspired by modern and historical training programs developed by NASA and is specifically tailored to the needs of the payload operations flight control team at the POIC. The program consists of training for both certified and trainee flight controllers, and covers team skills topics such as situational awareness, leadership, and communication skills. To maximize effectiveness, the program uses novel instructional techniques which extend beyond the classroom to encourage students to apply what they have learned to their day to day work. Minimizing operator errors in flight control is an endeavor which requires constant vigilance and continuous improvement. At the POIC, Team Skills Training is an important step in this journey.

Harris, Samantha S.↗