WRC Industry Day Transcript 2.pdf

So there's one I knew in Canon Jim. Thanks.

Uh, no question, Jeff.

But I wanted to let you know, and I was telling Alex on the bus. You guys did a hell of a job setting this up.

Very informative.

Thank you very much.

Couldn't appreciate it anymore.

Thanks, Jim.

Yep.

I'm gonna put them in performance per appraisal.

Alright.

Let's see.

Monitoring the chat.

Nothing else on the chat.

So umm, I guess if there's no other questions really, I guess my there's one.

But I was gonna do my parting thought.

Steps in today.

I and and again I want to echo.

Thanks for the for the tour and hospitality and everything.

Joe Potevano from Maries Corporation, again just one follow up from this morning.

Is that really how it works?

Or I mean is is there a?

We have a a test director's office where we have a scheduling tool that that all PM's put their schedules on and then from that we defined conflicts and a lot of it does happen on the floor ad hoc because you know when a when a project comes in they they usually have a launch date that they want, so they'll project it and we'll project it on our mission and say, well, we probably got an issue.

An issue so but if we gets down to that, you know if a project slips into somebody else's, then we really do work through the it's picked up by our test director or or I mean we all sit together.

So and then we we worked to deconflict the the issues.

Well, that was kind of a question is how did the PM's know there's a conflict?

Do you notify them when something pops up on the range schedule?

That, hey, you two guys need to talk to each other.

Yeah, absolutely.

So actually it's where the teamwork comes in between the

PMS and also the contractor itself, because you have the technicians and the operators down the contract, they they look at the schedule going on their projects and then there are usually internal meetings in and a lot of times the operator is working both projects.

So it's easier to identify at that level.

Hey, we may have a potential conflict with the equipment itself or there's a maintenance period coming up and we may not have the equipment available.

So that starts flowing up to the PM and then we start walking down the hall and saying, hey, you have Project AI, project B, we have a conflict.

And can we work something out?

Can I use different resources, whether it be personnel or equipment resources themselves?

So it may seem ad hoc and on the fly, but we try to do that at that level before it gets elevated to the range schedule and we have to get more official take off from leadership, whether it be Jeff or even up to the Center director itself.

OK.

Hi Tom.

I from areas on the eastern range, I'm just kind of curious.

The new entrances that you're talking to in the future that you don't recognize?

How many launches they'll have?

Would they utilize those two pads that are NASA pads sitting out there?

That seem like they're not being you.

I think the the question I get is from the eastern range.

We're all pointing towards Wallops, but where do you put the new entrance that come out?

Where would you cite them?

Good, right.

We've got those two flat pads, so they're always an option when when looking at new new launch vehicles coming in as well these these Mars pads are the Virginia space pads are supposed to be multi use.

So they they and it can indeed be set up to be multi use as well.

So there's there's an option we can we can S is where we gotta go, right?

We can't really go too far north or our launch an area S on the island so the flat pads are are are particular interest for for people for sure and many you know in many of the activities are these rapid response.

So they've got their own own own strong back of their own transporter and everything and they just would go to a flat pad and and and launch, you know, set up and launch there.

So yeah, I think ABO was the only one that came to us that really could utilize a flat pad.

Everybody else, the multi use thing go over with them because they wanted their own. Obviously.

Yeah, it's interesting how Virginia space.

You know, they've got all these pads that you know, they got the rocket lab pad for electron.

They're gonna build a neutron pad right in that same complex that you saw, and they've got the enteries pad there.

So, so everybody, you're right.

So it's it'll be interesting how how we could do that.

Online we have.

Will you make the recording from the morning session available?

The recording in the chat appears to be on the NASA

SharePoint site which is accessible, which is not accessible to everyone.

We will have to see if we can.

We can.

Ohh, I'm getting the thumbs up, so yes we will do that afterwards and we have a question in the room.

OK, this Robert Jones from Trident.

Armstrong how much time is heads up is getting for mission support.

If you schedule like for next Friday, when will it be schedule and be available to notified?

That's how long did it tell me?

Then repeat that again.

OK, give me example.

See Send mission is scheduled next Friday and you guys know it.

When will it be?

No to every support areas that that mission is required to support.

How how much advance notice.

Yeah, we'll know that weeks out because we, you know, most the way most missions go here the last six weeks of the mission or the last month is where they start getting very heavy into to operations and and getting to the pad rocket lab.

You know they they've rolled out about 10 days early.

Aunt Terri's rolls out three days early.

So so a lot of the real intense operations happen within the last two, two weeks to to a month.

So we would know at least 6 to 8 eight weeks out that we've got conflicts that that we would have to work.

So I think your question was more towards when would when would the operators and maintainers know when their assets that they're working on are not required for an actual mission.

Also, if there's a safety requirement, there are certain periodicities for those as well.

For instance, if it's a new, if an has an FTS, I think there's

180 day requirement, so 330 days for a new system for those requirements.

So that would be kind of a heads up too.

You know the range that this is coming and we would start lining up what kind of assets you need from the requirements document we how do we deal with weather slips and equipment failures on the Rockets and stuff like that slipping?

So that's when a rocket launch comes in.

Usually they schedule a primary and then so many backup days and then we would we would put that into the schedule.

You go past that backup day, then there's a lot of negotiations have to go on to actually extend it past that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

I can't hear chief of the range Jeff would make that deconfliction if it, if it got to that level like we talked about earlier, we try to deconflict as low as possible.

Sorry, one thing to add to that is the first part of your question about when do you know about missions?

It depends on the type of mission.

I like the sounding rocket.

Some customers, like Rocket Lab, they have gold dates for the next year, but they're hard.

Some of the US missions they come in here really hot and heavy really quick, and it's a like a 30 day turn around and and we go do it tomorrow kind of thing, but they're they're a little later on the support structure.

It's a little easier to do most other missions coming from other like duty ranges or DoD entities.

They have a projected schedule that is at least a notional milestone that we know.

We know that that's going to exist.

And yeah, the exact date might wiggle a little bit, but that's usually how it works, meaning you're not going to get notified tomorrow.

You have a significant notice period of time.

I'll example even on the task order process.

Currently is roughly 30 days to get awarded and you have to have that in hand before you doing work.

Anyway, I was answer your question.

Yes, Sir.

A Ryan Simmons from Troy 7, do you use the UDS process for every mission out here?

Universal Documentation System, EDS, right that you're talking about.

Yeah.

So for those US missions and.

Flexible we we try to hold to a standard, but we have we're variable with it, with a flexibility on the documentation system.

So we're we're quite flexible as maybe you know as we go into the future and we start start getting a whole lot more misses, we may have to become more standardized so that we so it's a more efficient process, but we try to be very flexible with our customers nowadays.

Yeah, Paulsen, with RJ next as General Raymond's mandate for no flight termination ground based on DoD ranges comes to fruition in the very near future.

Are you anticipating and are you also marketing that this range has a full commander struck ground capability and you anticipate that to be remain in the future either within this five year contract or beyond?

In other words, will you continue to have ground base command?

I think the answer that's yes, if you, uh, Doug talked to it earlier.

Now we're getting the hard questions.

We haven't marketed ourselves like that, but that that that probably will be an attractant for some missions that don't want to do a FTS and want that sort of flexibility.

So and the T&E community, I mean in the Range Commanders

Council, we hear a lot about from the team and community about the concern about going to FTS and some cases in their in their benefit.

Have options.

That I miss is saying, hey, we have not marketed ourselves.

Somebody forgot an umbrella up here.

Joe Padovano again, I I want to follow up in a little bit because the commercial launchers are absolutely going to autonomous flight safety just to get away from the cost of the command destruct hardware, which implies that as you increase your launch rate, you're gonna have few and fewer missions using that command destruct capability.

Yet you still gotta maintain it, and it's gonna, you know, the the rust and the corrosion control and all that sort of thing.

I mean, that's where the eastern and Western ranges have gone because they don't want to pay to maintain the ground based assets.

I'm just.

I'm just curious, where's the break point that says yeah, we need to keep it for the for the near term, but at some point it's not cost effective to maintain, especially as the technology improves on the FSS and and people get more comfortable with that concept.

I think the goals and and the direction that is given by NASA and our missions will probably lead to that, and I think at some point in time it'll be an easy decision, right?

I we're not there, we'll probably hold on to what we have, but I think it's some point in time we'll get guidance and direction on our missions and if our missions go to FAFSA and we get away from the experimental and and that type thing.

And I think it opens a window and it is very blatant that, OK, it's time to get rid of that, that infrastructure and and you know what really drives it is to cost, you know, if it starts to cost us a huge amount of money, you can believe that's gonna drive the decisions too, right?

Let's see anyone online if you have anything you can put it in.

I guess it was kind of just the last call online.

If there's any questions, please put it in the chat.

Raise your hand.

Or going once and twice in the room.

One more, one more.

RFTS systems here.

EFT SFTS.

Efts is in hands flight termination system.

It's a a tone type system.

I wreaked told FDS is a earlier version of it.

Right now we're in the in the hopefully towards the end of our upgrade for our command destruct system.

And it's right now just scoped as an Irig, not ETS, but we don't see honestly customers asking for FTS or requiring it right now.

And so we've we've been able to operate with Irig, you know, classical irig tones for a long time without a problem and continue to do so.

So yeah, we don't we we will have the ability to go to efts if we see the requirement and have the funding to do it.

But right now we don't.

And we had it initially scoped in our current upgrade, but umm descoped it because nobody was asking for it.

Nobody required it.

OK.

Thank you.

All right.

There's no more questions going once going twice.

Terry, do you have anything you wanna say?

Otherwise, I'll close with my parting thought.

And just keep the questions coming and we welcome meetings while we still are able to do them.

And just important again about the proposal, we're going to revise the RFP, but it will state that box is required.

No faxing, no facsimile, fax or mail.

It'll be electronic.

Thank you.

Yep, and that was pretty much my parting thought is everyone has my information because you all are RSVP today.

If you're interested in continuing to have a capabilities briefing or want to reach out to us, please send me an email and CC Terry and we will try our best to set up any sort of meetings from now till the final RFP is released.

So otherwise, I thank you all for coming today.

I hope you enjoyed it and hope you all have safe travels home like.