ISRI Seminar Series

Jay Apt
Distinguished Service Professor, 
Engineering & Public Policy and Tepper School of Business

Wednesday, 19 January 2005, 12 pm, NSH 1305
NOTE, NOT THE USUAL DAY OR LOCATION!
Lunch will be provided


Failures in Space Exploration

George Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it." From Vanguard in 1958 to Genesis in 2004,
failures have been endemic to the space programs of all
nations. Despite "better-faster-cheaper" and other initiatives,
expensive space hardware turns into junk at a regular rate. We will
examine some of the failures, and both technical and root causes.

Bio

Jay Apt is Executive Director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity
Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business and the
Department of Engineering and Public Policy, where he is a
Distinguished Service Professor. He holds an undergraduate degree from
Harvard and a doctorate from MIT in experimental physics. His research
before his current interest in electric power networks included atomic
physics, lasers, and studying the planets and moons of our solar
system. He was selected as a NASA Astronaut in 1985, has spent more
than 35 days in space on four Space Shuttle missions, and performed
two space walks (one an emergency rescue of a satellite). He has been
to the Russian space station Mir, and is the recipient of NASA's
Distinguished Service medal. He received the Metcalf Lifetime
Achievement Award for significant contributions to engineering in
2002.  His book on natural and human changes to our planet, Orbit: NASA
Astronauts Photograph the Earth, has sold more than 600,000 copies in 11
languages.