2. Systems Engineering/Systems
Thinking
• Significant role in the vast majority of scientific
and engineering advances over the centuries
• James Burke, in “Connections”, describes the
connections, via systems thinking, between
simple efforts and needs (read “requirements”)
and technological advances
– From weather prediction to rocket engines
• Today, the trades and “connections” via systems
thinking, are required to a truly universal degree
in Constellation Program efforts
3. Weather to Atom Bombs
• Lightning rods – Franklin 1752
• Fashion hit in 1770’s
• Weather observation - 1861
• Cloud colored rings, noted while observing light above a mountain at
the Cambridge Observatory, C.T.R. Wilson - 1894
• Used X-rays to produce clouds in a test chamber…droplets
coagulating on ions separated via the radiation – 1896
• Edward Appleton working with Wilson on lightning flashes and
cause of crackle when lighting occurred during radio transmissions –
1925
• Robert Watson Watt uses Appleton’s discovery of radio to locate
storms and eventually bouncing radio signals off of the ionized layer
of atmosphere, known as the Appleton Layer, to patent Radio
Detection and Ranging device, RADAR – 1935
• Meanwhile, Ernest Rutherford took the pictures of Wilson’s
experiments showing the streaks of droplets and, working in the field
of atomic physics, observed the pictures as depicting the scattering
of subatomic particles of alpha radiation
• Discovery of the atom – 1912
• Atom Bomb dropped on Hiroshima - 1945
4. Ben Franklin didn’t just change how we look
at electricity and lightning…he changed
fashion!
5. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - A powerful electrical storm
created an eerie tapestry of light in the skies near Space Shuttle
Launch Complex 39A in the hours preceding the launch of
Challenger on mission STS-8 at 2:32 a.m. EDT today.
Lightning makes a dramatic background and slows the rollout of space
shuttle Discovery for STS-128 to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy
Space Center in Florida.
6. The battle of
Fleurus with the
balloon
l'Entreprenant in
the background
Chandler, David, editor. Napoleon's Marshals. New
York: Macmillan, 1987. ISBN 0-02-905930-5
9. The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting
from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki
rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air
from the hypocenter
The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima
after the dropping of Little Boy
http://www.defenselink.mil/multimedia/about.html.
10. Refrigeration to Rocket Engines
• John Gorrie helped understand the need for cold, patented the first ice-
making machine – 1851
• James Harrison and Thomas Mort develop refrigeration systems to be used
to ship meat from Australia to head off famine in England – 1873
• More importantly perhaps, Harrison experimented initially with refrigeration
in breweries.
• Raoul Pictet produced a small amount of liquid gas for the first time – 1877
• A Frenchman, Jules Violle, worked out a way of isolating liquid gas from its
surroundings using a vacuum but a Scotsman names Sir James Dewar
perfected it silvering both internal and external to the tank – 1890
• American Robert Goddard was second man to take interest in the
technology – 1930’s
• German Herman Oberth noticed the fuel system potential and one of his
assistant’s, Werner von Braun, helped include pumps, a navigation system,
and a combustion chamber – 1940’s
12. Page from a U.S. patent application. U.S.
Patent number 872,795, issue date 1907-
12-03
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=872795] Picture of Sir James Dewar, the scientist
13. German rockets (A) and Meillerwagen trailers (B) were quickly spotted at Peenemünde in June 1943; but the long
object pointing out to sea from the airfield--seen on the same photograph--was wrongly interpreted as 'a length of
pipe' connected with offshore dredging operations. Only in December was it realised that this structure (C) and the
adjacent one (D) were prototype flying-bomb catapults. All A 4 rockets were test-fired either from the elliptical Test
Stand VII (E) or from its triangular foreshore.[2]
Irving, David (1964). The Mare's Nest, p50,64a,65,67,69,265, London: William Kimber and Co. NOTE: The image in The Mare's Nest depicts a wider area
including the shoreline and part of the Luftwaffe area.
14. Launch of a V2 in
Peenemünde; photo taken
four seconds after taking off
from test stand, Summer
1943
Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), Bild 141-1880
15. To the present day…Systems
Engineering and
Systems Thinking for something
new…from suits
