ENAE
484 - Spring 2004
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("Deliverables" is tech-speak for those things you are expected to produce during the course of a contract. "Deliverables" in this context is the set of everything you have to do to maximize your educational return from this class, produce the best possible team effort on the final project, and just incidentally get a good grade in this class...)
Basic Efforts (throughout the class):
Show up to every class, and participate fully and enthusiastically. Keep the
effort focused and quantitative (remember, if you can't say it with numbers,
it's an opinion, not a fact.)
Status Reports (throughout the class):
During classes, the instructors may choose to spend
all or some of the class time receiving informal status reports on your contributions
to the project. These may be arranged ahead of time, or individuals or groups
may be selected without notice. It is expected that these status reports will
be concise, informative, and (to the extent possible) quantitative.
Trade Study Summary Review (Feb. 12):
This will be an in-class review of the status of all trade studies and preliminary
analyses relating to the design. Group by group, you should present the current
status of all design processes you are currently doing, or plan to do. Based
on your initial studies, what are the important issues? What are the options
you need to consider? How will you be analyzing and selecting between options?
This is an early opportunity to get a good picture of what everyone in the class
is doing, and a starting point for the "strawman" design of the PDR.
Preliminary Design Review (week of Mar. 1):
The class will prepare and present a formal three-hour Preliminary Design Review.
This will take place in the evening, and outside guests will be invited to attend
and participate in questioning and critiquing the class. Everyone in class will
participate by giving a portion of the oral presentation. The class will
provide collated paper copies of all vugraphs to be shown to the teaching staff
and other invited guests at the start of the oral review. The viewgraph package
as presented in the PDR will also be made available to the instructors in electronic
format for posting on the class external web site.
PDR Content: All trade studies should be completed, and results shown to demonstrate the technical underpinnings of the design selected. This presentation should include a detailed "strawman" design - that is, a design that everyone understands and works towards. It may (almost certainly will) change as the term progresses, but everyone needs to have a solid design to base ongoing analysis on.
RASCAL Written Report (Apr. 1):
The class will prepare a formal 15-page summary report for the project, adhering
to the specifications
of the NASA RASCAL (Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concept - Academic Liason)
program. This report will be submitted on time to NASA for evaluation
as part of our participation in the program. The RASC-AL competition will accept
revisions up to April 14th, but they must be minor revisions: the initial
submission on April 1 must contain the substance of the final package for judging.
RASCAL Presentation Package (Apr. 1):
The class will prepare a PowerPoint presentation package for a 30-minute presentation
at the RASC-AL conference on Apr. 29-May 1, 2003. A team of students will be
selected to travel to Florida and present the presentation at the RASCAL conference
(and, if the schedule works out, watch a shuttle launch). The RASC-AL competition
will accept revisions up to April 14th, but they must be minor revisions:
the initial submission on April 1 must contain the substance of the final package
for judging.
Critical Design Review (week of Apr. 12):
Like the PDR, but the designs should be solidifying, the subsystems should be
taking shape, all graphics getting higher fidelity, etc. This should ideally
be the completion of the design process, and the last few weeks spent getting
the final report written and formatted. This year, the process is complicated
by a formal design review to NASA at the Kennedy Space Center, currently scheduled
for April 28-May 1.
Final Report Outline (Apr. 22):
This is the outline of the final report of the class. Since there is one unified
final report, this outline is critical for making sure that all the bases are
covered, that everyone is working on the same design, etc. Each section heading
should have the name of the person who's responsible for that section, and who
will author that section in the final report. It's also important to make sure
that the contents of the outline cover all of the elements of the Work
Breakdown Structure that the instructors have given you.
RASCAL Poster Presentation (~Apr. 27):
The class will prepare a poster presentation for display at the RASCAL conference.
This will fit on (up to three) 48 inch square board(s), and will present the
results of the class design in a technically accurate and visually appealing
manner.
Final Report (May 11):
Everything is done, everything is written up in clear and correct English, graphs
are correctly created and labeled, drawings are clear and detailed (and dimensioned!),
all of the report is in a consistent format, and both hard copies and media
copies are turned in to me on time. This should be a concise, but detailed,
compendium of all of the technical work you have done over the past 14 weeks.
At the end of the class, the final report will be transferred from class computers
to a pernament web server, and formally published for the world to see.
Every year, somebody asks "How long should my part of the final report be?" There is no page requirement, and if there were two reports with the same amount of information, a three-page report, concise and well-written, will get much better grades than a rambling and "fluffy" 10-page report. Having said that, let me point out that a 14-week long 3-credit course implies 126 hours of work over the course of the term. If you can document 126 hours of work in only 3-4 pages, it seems to me that something is badly wrong...