NASA Systems Engineering / Saylor Academy SSE 101

Apologies for tardiness in posting recently. A couple of months ago, one of the online free-content university consortiums that I frequent, Saylor Academy, offered a six-week course on Space Systems Engineering. The curriculum was developed by both Saylor Engineering faculty and NASA systems engineers and managers. I had to jump at the opportunity and thus enrolled in the demanding six-week course.

Unfortunately, there was more reading, multimedia material review, and writing and content analysis involved in their undergraduate course than in any course I have ever taken at the undergraduate or graduate level. I pushed hard, relishing the challenge. However, due to my acquired disabilities (alluded to in previous postings) I was unable to continue past Week 4 coursework. In addition, the effort thwarted my usual consumption of educational material and other independent study. I spent time recuperating, reviewing course material and lectures that I have previously completed—particularly Prof. Rick Roderick’s The Self Under Siege and Michael Schermer’s Skeptic 101: How to Think Like a Scientist, both courses offered by The Great Courses catalog of The Teaching Company.

I also continued reading Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy which requires a thorough and cautiously slow examination. I left the SE course with an “A” average and did find the experience very enlightening. I gained a new perspective on the complexity and exhaustiveness of NASA mission planning. Thus, despite my failure, not everything was lost in my failure. I may be able to (hopefully) complete the remaining two units at a later date.

Prior to enrolling in Saylor Academy’s SSE course, I did have some background in the broader approach to systems generally, elaborated primarily by Prof. C. West Churchman as systems thinking, at the urging of my doctoral advisor. In fact, one of the iterations of my dissertation proposal was titled, Decision-making for Social Change in Complex Systems.

Churchman authored one of the seminal texts on the subject accessible to academics and laypersons alike. His work is titled simply The Systems Approach. Churchman was both ground-breaking and a good teacher. Noted linguist, polarizing public scholar and activist Noam Chomsky said of Churchman that he was the only person at Penn who taught him anything as an undergraduate—according to his Wikipedia page anyway.

However, my approach to systems thinking was primarily informed by my background in social and behavioral sciences at the undergraduate level and my MBA, Ph.D. in Management & Decision Science (both of which focused on organizational behavior) and philosophy M.A. study at the graduate level. This course provided me the opportunity to explore many of the same concepts from the engineering perspective in a very high-stakes environment housed in NASA’s complex bureaucracy.

My postings for this blog inevitably run many more paragraphs than I prefer or intend. Someday, I will develop the skill of writing more information with fewer words and narrower focus… hopefully…

So, I will simply conclude with some broad strokes about the content and presentation of the course. The primary text was NASA’s massive volume, NASA Systems Engineering Handbook. Lectures were delivered primarily through Saylor Academy’s YouTube channel by Project Manager Jeff Volosin, NASA Missions Engineer Mike Menzel, and nobel prize winning Cal Tech physics professor, Dr. John C. Mather. Students were involved but not required to work in a small application group to develop plans for a NASA Mars mission orbiter vehicle.

The first unit of study was dedicated to defining and exploring the precise meaning of systems engineering and the primary activities of a NASA systems engineer. According to NASA Systems Engineering Handbook, “System engineering is the art and science of developing an operable system that meets requirements with imposed constraints.” This straightforward activities that can be undertaken to meet a series of objectives and meet an overarching goal, contributing to NASA’s broader mission of exploration. If only that were true! SE is basically the board game Othello on super-charged steroids: It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.

There were warning signs of the complexity to come. Constraints is always a nice way to say tight deadlines and underfunding of a project. Then, later in the section they began to talk about stakeholders. Stakeholder interests drive many aspects of NASA mission planning. So, who are the stakeholders? Well, a couple of obvious ones are scientists of many fields, as well as, science educators. It would be nice if it stopped there but actually the NASA SE’s and PM’s must take into account the stakeholder interests of the US Federal Government, American taxpayers (who fund the agency), foreign partners, corporate interests, probably even your dog. In other words, a simple robotic exploration of the lunar or Martian surface requires not only the skills to bring together an enormous number of technical, engineering, and scientific savants, create an environment in which they can all be productive and execute the core functions of the mission in such a way as to please every man woman, child, aardvark, and all the animals on Noah’s ark—maybe even protozoa!

One of the most interesting lectures was given by Gentry Lee, a sort of irreverent genius with a presentation style all his own. If you have internet access and an interest in this kind o of thing, check out his lecture “Personal Characteristics of good Systems Engineers.

Well, I’ve rambled on long enough That doesn’t even put a dent in the near 100 pages of my handwritten notes, numerous weekly videos, and writing/analysis/writing assignments from the first four weeks of coursework. But what do I know? Maybe some of my rambling might just pique your interest enough to lead you to check out the course materials for yourself. Saylor.org Course SSE 101 is on the website Of course the academy offers many diverse courses and majors.

As always, happy learning!

***UPDATE 2/15/2015:  Well, it has taken much time, much effort, but I have finally completed the course. I received a certificate of completion from Saylor Academy and NASA. I didn't finish with the best grade but given how long it took me to complete it, I was just happy to pass both the 2 hour final and the course. 

Oculus Rift

The June issues of both WIRED and Popular Mechanics magazines (to which I subscribe) both feature the face of one guy, one lucky guy: Palmer Luckey to be specific. Luckey is 21 years old. Since his early teens he’s had one, huge overriding dream: to build the perfect virtual-reality headset. By age 19, he had developed the prototype for it, creating the first affordable virtual reality headset.

The “Oculus Rift” is billed by 3D filmmaker D.J. Roller as “the most immersive medium on the planet” replacing 5-story IMAX screens. The inventor’s original vision for the headset was to augment their gaming experience. But as the technology prepares for public roll-out the applications are extraordinarily wide-ranging: training for military pilots and soldiers, pretty much imagine the experience and it has some application to virtual reality.

Of course something this revolutionary requires funding to bring to market. The first backers were from a Kickstarter campaign that gave investors their own DIY kit and raised $2.4 million for the startup company. Recently, Facebook came calling with a bag of cash and stock worth $2 billion. Consumers can expect early versions of the headset sometime in 2015.

Given the coverage, the players, and the money involved, the Oculus Rift promises to be quite revolutionary. The only part of the story that annoys me is the details about Luckey: How he goes barefoot all of the time, wears only shirts and t-shirts. It just gets profoundly annoying to hear these quirks about tech “geniuses” trotted around. Like Mark Zuckerberg’s famous “hoodie” uniform. I can’t really put my finger on it, but something about such stories are very abrasive to me. It’s not that I care what he wears or how eccentric it may seem to the populace at large, it’s that I don’t care and I don’t believe for one moment that these eccentricities have any bearing on the individual’s ability to do his or her work.

Well, no matter what you or I may feel about the immersive technology of virtual reality headsets, they are most definitely coming. I think that the concept will re-define the way in which the individual experiences entertainment and education. I certainly would look forward to the day that I might be able to plug into Google Maps with my Oculus Rift on and walk the streets of Paris or Rome from the comfort of my own living room. Or vicariously storm Omaha beach from the safety of my couch.

Yes, the Oculus Rift and future generations of VR tech will most certainly become ubiquitous in our lives in a short time, much like the cell phone revolutionized communications. The real questions are: What will we feel like when we take the headset off and stroll down the Paris streets for real? Will everyone have a headset on for most of the day the way they can’t go for ten minutes without checking their smart phone for missed calls, text messages, social media updates, and the latest trending news story?

Oh well, there is no need to mourn reality. It has been dying a long, slow, painful death for at least a generation. It’s already on life-support, lying silent in a persistent vegetative state. I know, I just checked it’s Facebook status.

Understanding Complexity by Scott E. Page, Ph. D.

I recently completed Understanding Complexity from The Great Courses lectures produced by the Teaching Company which, as the title suggests, primarily concerns complexity science. The lectures were written and presented by Dr. Scott E. Page who has the fascinating title of “Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Political Science, Complex Systems, and Economics” at the University of Michigan. So, how does one become an expert in complexity? Page completed his BA in mathematics at the University of Michigan, then an MA in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, an MA in managerial economics from Northwestern University. He later earned a Ph.D. in Management Economics and Decision Science from Northwestern as well. I didn’t look up his dissertation but during the lecture series, he stated that his doctoral research was in game theory.

The course is divided into twelve 30-minute lectures and includes a course guide containing the professor’s additional notes and suggested further readings and resources. Since absolutely no one has suggested that I do so, I have decided to rank these source materials for SIP blog posts on a simple scale from 0 to 10, with 0 indicating I could find no redeeming value whatsoever in the course, lectures, book or other resource used as source material. On the other hand, 10 means I am prepared to form a cult based around these teachings. I would give the Understanding Complexity lectures a solid 7. 

Professor Page begins by making a distinction between system complexity and a system that is just particularly complicated. Four factors must be present to indicate that a system is complex: 1) It has a population of diverse agents that are 2) connected. They also exhibit behaviors and actions that are 3) interdependent and 4) they must demonstrate adaptation. 

One or the more insightful concepts of the course comes in the second lecture which describes evolutionary processes and the creation of diversity. In evolution new characteristics develop through mutation or sexual recombination. Since there is no intentionality in the process of evolution there is no bias for a particular search direction. Thus, evolutionary “search” takes place against the backdrop of an “evolutionary landscape.”

It is useful to think of each of the types of landscapes (simple, rugged, and/or dancing) as problems and the solution is to find the highest peak in a given landscape. Simple landscapes are like Mount Fuji—little variation of terrain, a steep slope straight up to a single peak. Rugged landscapes are like the Appalachian Mountains—there are many “local” peaks but finding the single highest peak will take some exploring and effort. Finally, a “dancing” landscape has local peaks and valleys (like its rugged counterpart) but it also changes with time. Dr. Page has us visualize being an extremely myopic hiker trying to find the global (or maximum) peak in the mountain and this serves as an allegory for evolutionary exploration. 

Now, I realize that the explanation I’ve given is neither clear nor concise but that is what’s great about Professor Page’s lecture series: He gives detailed elucidations with such clarity you almost think you understand the concepts until you start writing your blog posting and see that it was not as easy as he made it look. 

One last parting shot at communicating an idea that doesn’t seem like garbled lunacy. Emergence, in philosophy, systems thinking, and science, is how complex systems develop from numerous, much simpler component parts. An example of an emergent phenomenon from every day life can be demonstrated in the phrase “birds of a feather flock together.” Hundreds of birds follow simple, instinctive roles (maintain precise distance, stay aligned, avoid predators) and create this much larger, distinct thing: a flock. Dr. Page really got my attention when early on in the lecture series, he suggested that human consciousness might be an emergent property of the brain. No single neuron, synapse, or glial cell has any of the properties exhibited by the macro-level phenomena of human consciousness; however, the billions of these cells acting in concert do seem to be the building blocks of this emergent phenomenon that allows us to understand ourselves as a unique “I” operating at will within the world. 

The series touches on many other topics from several different domains. I think it is particularly useful for systems engineers and other engineers to keep this perspective about complexity. Unfortunately, this course is given in one of the shorter formats for Teaching Company lectures which was disappointing to me after I saw how enjoyable and applicable the series was. Part of this subject matter was germane to my dissertation in graduate school. Since then, I had lost a lot of enthusiasm for such topics and for decision science and operations research in particular. This series helped renew my interest and passion for the field. 

As always, happy learning! And keep pushing on!

Secret Warfare: The Battle of Codes & Ciphers by Bruce Norman

I recently finished reading the book Secret Warfare: The Battle of Codes & Ciphers by Bruce Norman.  It consists of 187 pages in 17 chapters.  The book used news accounts and anecdotes to tell the history of codes, ciphers, and intelligence work in general.  However, at least one-half of the book described techniques and historical narrative from the 20^th century (this book was written prior to 2000).

Cryptography was defined by the author as “the science of secret writing,” (p. 13).  It’s etymology is the Greek words kryptos (secret) and graphos (writing).  In practical terms, Norman explained, “cryptography is the art of sending messages in such a way that the real meaning is hidden from everyone but the sender and the subject.”

The cryptographer has two means by which he may accomplish his work: codes and ciphers. A code is a system of words that represents other words for secrecy and/or brevity.  A cipher is the same as a code, except, rather than operating at the level of whole words, ciphers work on single letters.  Then, there are two kinds of ciphers: transposition and substitution.  Transposition is a technique where the cryptographer, analyst, or spy “jumbles” the letters (i.e. “secret” becomes something like “resect”).  When the cryptographer uses substitution, letters are replaced with other letters, numbers, or symbols.  Finally, to build the most complex kind of cipher, the cryptographer may combine both transposition and substitution.

One of the first people to use cryptography to obtain knowledge for the battlefield was General Lysander of Sparta in 405 BCE.  Lysander had allied himself with the Persians as he fought Athens victoriously.  However, the Persians became envious of him and seemed poised to turn on him and attack Sparta.  Lysander felt he was in a bind.  A slave came with a message and Lysander read it.  Then, he asked for the slave’s belt.  Down the length of the slave’s belt was a string of meaningless letters.  He took a baton and wrapped the slave’s belt in a spiral around it, bringing the letters into alignment such that a message was revealed: The Persians were false and plotting against Lysander.  The general sailed against the Persians quickly and was victorious.

The obvious point of all of this work enciphering and deciphering is “to disguise the message in such a way that someone who has the code or knows the cipher can understand it whereas someone who does not know the secret, cannot,” (p. 14).

Julius Caesar wrote to Cicero using a substitution cipher.  Caesar would take his message and move every letter three places down the alphabet.  Today, this simple cipher would offer almost no security.  Adding a it of complexity, however, can yield a useful cipher system.  The following cipher is of Greek origin.  The letters of the alphabet are arranged into a square and numbers substituted for letters.  There are five columns by five rows, with the letters I and J put in the same placeholder.  It looks like this:

            1          2          3          4          5

1          L          B         O         S          F

2          E          V         U         G         R

3          X         A         M         C         Y

4          N         T          D         Z          K

5          W        H         I/J        Q         P

Thus, to encode the message “charge,” first write the number from the row, then the column.  So, for letter C, use 34. The full word/message: 34 52 32 25 24 21.  You can see that leaving the numbers with the same spacing, etc. makes the cipher vulnerable to being “cracked.”  Therefore, to confuse codebreakers coded messages are written in five-figure groups called code groups. Then, use zero (called nulls) to complete the five-figure group for ay remaining digits.  So, the previous message would be written:  34523 22524 21000.

Author Norman populated the text with numerous examples of codes and ciphers in various historical periods. One interesting example was from the Renaissance.  Abbot Trithemius, a Benedictine monk, wrote the first book on cryptography titled Polygraphia in 1518. Trithemius’s method was quite interesting to me.  It is a simple substitution cipher, but instead of using letters or other characters, each letter of the text to be enciphered is replaced by an entire word or phrase. There are several words or phrases for each letter and any can be used (from a pre-determined list).

Another interesting chapter discussed Captain Frederick Marryat’s development of a system of colored flags for naval signals which he called semaphore. It also discussed S.F.B. Morse’s electromagnetic telegraph and his famous alphabetic system of signals called “Morse Code.”  But perhaps my favorite cipher in the entire text was the “Pig-Pen Cipher,” which was used by Union prisoners held in Confederate prison camps during the Civil War.  With the Pig-Pen Cipher, the alphabet is written in a nine-cell diagram.

ABC	DEF	GHI
JKL	MNO	PQR
STU	VWX	YZ

Then each letter of your message indicated by drawing the section you are using plus one dot to indicate the second letter of the group, two dots to represent the third letter of the group, and no dots to indicate the first letter in the group.  Thus, the word “student” is given as:

___      ___      ___                              ____    ___

     |        * |      ** |      |___|     |_*_|     |_*_|       *  |

At least, that’s the best I can render for now.

This is just a small sample of the coding and ciphering techniques demonstrated in Norman’s book.  As I indicated earlier, it is a bit of an older book and I have several other books on codes and cryptography (some of which I may review here as I complete them). Secret Warfare is, on balance, well written and rich with historical context.  The chapters describing codes and code breaking activity during World War II are particularly enlightening.  It is amazing to realize the extent to which code breaking and code security contributed to outcomes on the battlefield.

As always, happy learning!

The Grand Design

I recently completed reading The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.  It is a relatively short read at 181 pages in eight chapters.  No previous scientific knowledge is necessary and almost no mathematics used.  The theme of the book, as implied by the title, is using current theoretical constructs from physics to answer many of the fundamental questions of philosophy: How can we understand the world?  How does the universe behave?  What is the nature of reality?  Why is there something rather than nothing?

Early on, the authors made what I considered a somewhat controversial statement: “Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.  Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.”  While I will concede that the work of most professional philosophers (operating in academia) has been reduced to making pithy remarks about minutiae in obscure academic journals, I believe that philosophy still has much to contribute to the discussion.

The authors reviewed Classical (Newtonian) Mechanics concepts and introduced basic concepts from Quantum theory and Einstein’s relativity.  The authors’ indicated that the attempt is to understand not only how but also why the universe behaves.

Hawking and Mlodinow discussed creation myths from various cultures.  According to current knowledge, our species is approximately 202,000 years old and written language is 9,000 years old.  They discussed Ionia, a Greek colony, and its influence on the development of science.  The Ionians developed a “primitive” science, which sought to uncover “fundamental laws to explain natural phenomena…”  The authors discussed ancient Greek thought from Thales to Aristotle, and then continued the path of western intellectual development through Galileo, Thomas Aquinas, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton.

Given that nature is governed by laws, the authors described three resultant questions: 1) What is the origin of the laws?  2) Are there any exceptions to the laws?  3) Is there only one set of possible laws?  Humanity traditionally answered question one by invoking God (this, however, would later be revisited).  The second question was answered definitively in the negative through Laplace’s scientific determinism, though the authors augmented this hypothesis invoking a rather vague and muddled concept of free will.  The third question was addressed as the book reached its conclusion.

Hawking and Mlodinow discussed alternative reality theories including the simulation hypothesis (which I have referred to in other posts) but settled on the concept called model-dependent realism in which they frame their investigation into the nature of reality.  Model-dependent realism does not ask if a model (of the universe) is real—only whether or not it agrees with observation.  In this manner, it is a pragmatic choice for scientific inquiry.  However, I think this choice closes the door on a number of alternative views of reality for the sake of including in the picture of the universe (or multi-verse system) only those hypotheses that are testable through scientific method.  This is fine, particularly from the point of view of two eminent physicists; however, it relegates alternatives to philosophy—a field of inquiry that the authors have previously (and perhaps conveniently) declared “dead.”

As later chapters unfold, the authors reviewed the development of quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, and string theory, working toward a “theory of everything.”  This theory of everything is a modification of string theory called M-theory.  It proposes that spacetime contains eleven dimensions (we simply cannot observe most of them due to their “size”).  One of the critical elements of the theory is that of supergravity which holds that gravity is supersymmetrical.  Supersymmetry, according to the authors’ definition is “a subtle kind of symmetry that cannot be associated with a transformation of ordinary space… supersymmetry is that force particles and matter particles, and hence force and matter, are really just two facets of the same thing.”

Finally, the authors discuss Conway’s gliders in his Game of Life and use it as an analog for considering life arising under a set of conditions (laws of nature) in a given hypothetical universe.  The set of physical laws that govern our known universe were such that they allowed the evolution of human life.  In fact, many more universes exist—each with different sets of physical laws and probably many of these do not allow the evolution of life similar to ours.  The authors argued that God is not necessary for our universe to exist and evolve intelligent life.  This is a subtle point and we should understand exactly what the authors have argued.  They did not state that God does not exist but that it is not a necessary condition for the creation of the universe.  Hawking and Mlodinow argue that if we say God created the universe (or the multi-verse) we have then deferred the question to that of “who or what created God?”

This is probably not a very good summary of The Grand Design but I have done my best to review most of the basic concepts encountered in the book.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, as I did Hawking’s previous books A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell.  While this text does not break a lot of new ground, it is rather bold in its assertions that “philosophy is dead.”  Despite extremely complex topics, Hawking and his co-author Mlodinow were able to present them in a clear and concise manner that any high school student could easily understand.  Any effort to put major issues in science (and I would argue philosophy!) into the hands of a mass audience is worthy of applause.  I would recommend The Grand Design to anyone—so check it out if have a chance.  Hey, it’s far more readable than my blog!  As always, happy learning!