Here is an interview I conducted with someone in the aerospace industry who has been on the cutting edge of flight, Jerry Posey. He works with Lockheed-Martin currently. Me: What is your specific job in the aerospace industry? Mr. Posey: This should be easy for most people, but Im a multi-tasker. I am a technical manager leading groups of aerosciences, GN&C, integrated systems, structures, and thermal analysts. And I am an LM consultant for customers doing commercial ventures and NASA advanced development. This involves business development and marketing jobs. Me: What kinds of projects do you work on usually? Mr. Posey: My role on the Orion program is coordinating the efforts of people representing many different disciplines. Some of these people work directly for me, and many others I beg/borrow/steal from other teams and programs. I frequently line these same people and teams up on advanced projects and commercial contract tasks. I work with them to build integrated system plans and designs. Some being crewed spacecraft, others being integrated missions. Ocassionally, I get to work advanced technology development projects. Me: What is the hardest part of designing something that has not been designed before? Mr. Posey: Understanding what the customer really wants (good requirements up front help a lot), having an honest assessment of current technology and manufacturing readiness level (can I come up with a credible design we can actually build...?), and coordinating efforts of people geographically spread across the country or the world. Me: Is the main focus of the aerospace industry on redesigning something that works in order to make it better, or creating something completely new? Mr. Posey: In the world I work, so many talented people in love with space have devoted their careers and creativity. We stand on the shoulders of giants for much of our current development. Completely new approaches take time, money, and degrees of risk that are unfortunately unacceptable to most customers. I say unfortunate, because its WAY more fun to create completely new capabilities. Two words any red-blooded engineer loves to hear: destructive test. You havent lived until you build something, then blow it up. :) Me: What was/is your favorite project that you worked on? Mr. Posey: The International Space Station. It was great to experience working with International Partners and seeing conceptual designs translated into operational flight hardware. A close second would be working YF-22 Raptor advanced design for a US Navy carrier variant, while beating the competition in a fly-off. Me: This is a question I have to ask: what is your favorite plane of all time? or at least one of your favorites? Mr. Posey: Toss up between the F-22, and Joint Strike Fighter - which began as a single engine design concept we started working in Fort Worth with SkunkWorks as an F-22 derivative. #1 bird with a prop: P-51D Mustang. Astonishing design story for pulling off a miracle in short order in time of war.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 01:54:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015