SAWE International Conference and the coming year

The SAWE International Conference just held by the Hampton Roads chapter was very nice and informative. Thanks to all (Corporate Partners and Company Members, host committee, individual participants, etc…) involved in making it happen.

I enjoyed both the Aerospace and Marine sessions as it allowed me to maximize my technical intake having to choose between many topics of interest. It would be nice if the SAWE can continue to offer multiple tracks at these conferences. That means individuals writing papers. Start forming your ideas now as I’d wager the content at this conference spurred many to the thinking “how can I use this experience to write about an experience of my own”.

I also enjoyed getting reacquainted with my fellow SAWE-ers in person. Whether being invited to a meal, chatting about life / work / SAWE in the hospitality suite, or enjoying one of the outings together like the dinner cruise, there are always smiling faces there to greet you, and even wish you well on your journey forward once the conference is done. As new Executive Director Bill Boze states, face to face interactions provide lasting memories.

Best Wishes as we approach our American holiday Memorial Day. I’m going to take the time to recharge, spend time with family, and maybe even grill an award winning hamburger. Afterwards, I will get back to the business of SAWE.

My Executive Vice President membership and projects team will be in touch with your chapters. We need to kick off the remainder of the year focusing our efforts on the goals of building up your chapters through membership and project support. This will support goals of your region as well as goals of the society laid out by new President John Hargrave.

I look forward to a prosperous 2019-2020 SAWE year.

Sincerely,

Clint Stephenson, SAWE Executive Vice President

Wednesday Conference Highlights

The day started with an open forum on weight control. The forum was very interactive with a lot of great points across the industries. Conversation included how we, mass property engineers, see things differently and we need speak up on mass properties, how smaller companies or subcontractors may need the support to ensure they are going in the right direction, remembering that smaller companies likely don’t have a mass properties engineer, incentives vs. penalties, cost of a pound or the value of a pound, and tying weight to performance. Lot of other great points and conversations occurred. These forums are great for everyone to see all the different point of views across the industries and across companies big and small.

Dan Otlowski of Space Electronics started off Aerospace Session 1 with a presentation on measuring weight and CG of manned spacecraft. Damian Yanez presented to the group the Welcome to SAWE presentation he has worked on. The presentation goes into detail the benefits to SAWE for both new members and potential corporate sponsors. This is open for members to use and chapters — great way to try and reel in new members! Amanda Cutright, NASA Langley Research Center, finished out the morning with a presentation on the Ascent Abort 2 for the Orion spacecraft. We do not want have crew members launched without the ability to abort. AA-2 is the next flight test in the exploration systems development program.

The afternoon Aerospace Session started with Dudley Cate, NAVAIR (retired) provided a presentation on weight and design data for WWII era aircraft. I am personally looking forward to being able to read this paper! Larry DiSano, Ensinger, finished the session with a presentation on Thermoplastic Composites for small parts.

We can’t say it enough, thank you to all our vendors who presented throughout the week!

S&P Day

Today is Standards & Practices Day. Each of the following industries is holding meetings: Airline Affairs, Ground Vehicles, Marine Industry, Military Aircraft, Missiles and Space, and Offshore Industry.

The day started with an overview from Andy Schuster. Just a reminder of the comment tracking for S&P public review on the SAWE website. Documents are often posted for the public review from members of the society. Even if a document is not posted for a review, you can document a comment and when the document is under its 5 year review the comment will already be documented. The site to do this is http://sawe.org/rp

Incoming VP S&P, Doug Fisher, discussed his goals for his term and how he hopes we can and will be successful.

Monday Conference Highlights

We started off the conference with opening speaker, Dawn Schaible, Director of Engineering at NASA Langley Research Center. She provided insight to NASA Langley’s past, present, and future. She overviewed NASA’s planned return America to the moon in 2024. This will include America’s first woman to step foot on the moon.

Anne Weiss and Rosemary Smith followed up with a rousing and eye opening presentation on how learning is changing for children. We need to reimagine learning and we need to inspire the future STEM students

The Statistics Session 1 had great presentations by Doug Fisher, Manuela Bucci, and David Hansch. Manuela was presented with honorary mention for her paper with Colin MacFarlane.

Bill Boze, John Hargrave, and Yi-Ling Tam presented after lunch on the Mass Properties Certification SAWE is working towards. They reviewed the benefits for SAWE and its members, market survey results that have helped build their roadmap, and a notional model. If you want to be involved in the certification process, please contact Yi-Ling

Anjie Emmett started off the afternoon statistics session. Having worked on the abort system for the Orion space crew module, she discussed applying the law of propagation of uncertainties. Robert Hundl followed with an overview of evaluating Center of Gravity Envelope using a probabilistic approach. He went over Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel and how we can use these for sensitivity studies as well as providing us with a sense of risk.

I ended the day with Nick Marickovich’s presentation on his journey on the Appalachian Trail and how backpack weight effected this. Great presentation!

I would love to hear how the other sessions went and your thoughts on the day and the presentations!

International Space Station sighting at Norfolk conference

There are some prime opportunities to see the International Space Station go overhead during the upcoming conference. Saturday morning and night, it will reach a max height of a whopping 80+ degrees overhead. Check out the link below for your opportunities.

https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/view.cfm?country=United_States&region=Virginia&city=Norfolk#.XN21JJWWy9E