NASA Day 15: The Control Room
(Note: No day 14, mentor busy in meetings)
Today is an overall relaxing day. It's my last full day at the Glenn Research Center. I came in at 9:00 alone, expecting to meet Tony Doglio, my technical mentor. However, his truck broke down, so he's a bit busy at the moment. And just when I had an ounce of free time...
One of the Don Fong invited me to see the small electrical facilities and explore them in more detail. Tom Hinshaw told me I could shadow him for the day. Then Deb (who works in the same office as Tony) told me I should go see Art, who offered to let hang out with him. Brian told Cass to send me over if I get bored. And last but not least, Don Brown invited me over to building 143 to see the electrical software being tested. I had to kindly decline a lot of these invitations, and I almost felt bad... but I felt kind of proud in a way. Proud enough to know that I left a positive remark on all of them so when they found out I had free time, they all offered to let me hang out with them.
Inside building 143, I met with Debbie and Dave, two electrical engineers, however, Debbie acts more like a computer engineer, often doing the programming for testing. We sat in an office, where they were working on testing a computer simulation. It's hard to explain, but I'll try my best.
This whole environment is a test environment, not actually controlling anything. There are two servers. One server is the control server, one server is a simulator that provides data for breakers, relays, and so on. Let's call that the fakery server, since it fakes data that would otherwise come from real breakers, relays, meters, and other electrical equipment. Back on the control side, there is a client device, in this case, a computer, that connects to the control server which sends commands to the fakery server run by Debbie.
So the way it works is that Dave on the control side sends a command via his computer that goes through the control server and over to Debbie's fakery server. Debbie sees Dave sent a command through the test control server, and responds to the request by either simulating that the command is completed successfully or simulating something going wrong purposely so Dave would supposedly get an error message that says something went wrong.
If Debbie purposely simulates an error back to Dave, Dave should get an error message explaining what went wrong. However, sometimes he wouldn't get that error message. If Dave sends a command, but doesn't get a response, that should record an error message as well. If Dave sends a command to change a value and Debbie responds, another person should not be able to send a command to control the same device.
Don was here to give them literally ten or twenty scenarios purposely trying to break the system so that something would go wrong in the test system before something goes wrong in the real system with millions if not billions of dollars worth of equipment are at stake. They found about 10 or 20 things that needed to be fixed through this simulation.
If this doesn't make sense, here's another way to explain it. They are finding bugs via the operator purposely trying to break the system so that Debbie can make fixes so that it can't be broken. It's like a video game tester. Do you know those ads that say "you can get paid to play video games!" They are real jobs, but they're also boring jobs because what those people actually do (assuming it's not an outright scam) is take a controller and try to run into walls or run into objects to see if they can get through a wall. If it's possible to walk through a wall in the video game, the player writes it down, makes a note of it, and tells the programmer to fix it so when it's released, the player can't just walk through a wall. Dave is the video game player here, and Debbie is the programmer that fixes the software.
We spent a solid two, maybe three hours sitting down... but now lunch is over... time to go!
--- (after lunch)
I met Dabashi in the facilities ivision after lunch, where we talked about more electrical systems. Emily joined me at this point as we went back to buildings 5 and 64. He showed us some of the projects that he made back in 1996 when he first arrived at NASA and installed the electrical components of the systems he set up. We went into basements, and he re planned things that I've already seen. I think the biggest takeaway is the reactor in the basement of building 5: and simply put, voltage:capacitor as current:reactor. When you plug in a desk fan into your 120 volt line, your small electronics don't mind, but when you turn on a motor, it takes a huge voltage and current drop - so somehow, those two have to be regulated. I don't fully understand how it works, but it's more than a series circuit with a reactor and a capacitor attached to it.
I wrapped things up by meeting Tony before leaving. We was one of the younger expletive in the facilities division, and he was also one of the higher people in NASA's hierarchy, which surprised me. Tony, or James T. Doglio is a project manager of the project managers in the facility division. He's a civil engineer, and he makes sure that work is getting done as efficiently as it an be. Moreover, he only has a bachelors degree. He started his masters, but never finished. He doesn't have a PE license either. However, I think he's the exception, not the rule. When I asked him how a kid with an undergrad in civil engineering became the manager of the managers, he told me he worked hard and the people above him saw that.
Today was the last official day for Walsh, but there's one more day ahead of me: Plum Brook Station. Until then.
Today is an overall relaxing day. It's my last full day at the Glenn Research Center. I came in at 9:00 alone, expecting to meet Tony Doglio, my technical mentor. However, his truck broke down, so he's a bit busy at the moment. And just when I had an ounce of free time...
One of the Don Fong invited me to see the small electrical facilities and explore them in more detail. Tom Hinshaw told me I could shadow him for the day. Then Deb (who works in the same office as Tony) told me I should go see Art, who offered to let hang out with him. Brian told Cass to send me over if I get bored. And last but not least, Don Brown invited me over to building 143 to see the electrical software being tested. I had to kindly decline a lot of these invitations, and I almost felt bad... but I felt kind of proud in a way. Proud enough to know that I left a positive remark on all of them so when they found out I had free time, they all offered to let me hang out with them.
Inside building 143, I met with Debbie and Dave, two electrical engineers, however, Debbie acts more like a computer engineer, often doing the programming for testing. We sat in an office, where they were working on testing a computer simulation. It's hard to explain, but I'll try my best.
This whole environment is a test environment, not actually controlling anything. There are two servers. One server is the control server, one server is a simulator that provides data for breakers, relays, and so on. Let's call that the fakery server, since it fakes data that would otherwise come from real breakers, relays, meters, and other electrical equipment. Back on the control side, there is a client device, in this case, a computer, that connects to the control server which sends commands to the fakery server run by Debbie.
So the way it works is that Dave on the control side sends a command via his computer that goes through the control server and over to Debbie's fakery server. Debbie sees Dave sent a command through the test control server, and responds to the request by either simulating that the command is completed successfully or simulating something going wrong purposely so Dave would supposedly get an error message that says something went wrong.
If Debbie purposely simulates an error back to Dave, Dave should get an error message explaining what went wrong. However, sometimes he wouldn't get that error message. If Dave sends a command, but doesn't get a response, that should record an error message as well. If Dave sends a command to change a value and Debbie responds, another person should not be able to send a command to control the same device.
Don was here to give them literally ten or twenty scenarios purposely trying to break the system so that something would go wrong in the test system before something goes wrong in the real system with millions if not billions of dollars worth of equipment are at stake. They found about 10 or 20 things that needed to be fixed through this simulation.
If this doesn't make sense, here's another way to explain it. They are finding bugs via the operator purposely trying to break the system so that Debbie can make fixes so that it can't be broken. It's like a video game tester. Do you know those ads that say "you can get paid to play video games!" They are real jobs, but they're also boring jobs because what those people actually do (assuming it's not an outright scam) is take a controller and try to run into walls or run into objects to see if they can get through a wall. If it's possible to walk through a wall in the video game, the player writes it down, makes a note of it, and tells the programmer to fix it so when it's released, the player can't just walk through a wall. Dave is the video game player here, and Debbie is the programmer that fixes the software.
We spent a solid two, maybe three hours sitting down... but now lunch is over... time to go!
--- (after lunch)
I met Dabashi in the facilities ivision after lunch, where we talked about more electrical systems. Emily joined me at this point as we went back to buildings 5 and 64. He showed us some of the projects that he made back in 1996 when he first arrived at NASA and installed the electrical components of the systems he set up. We went into basements, and he re planned things that I've already seen. I think the biggest takeaway is the reactor in the basement of building 5: and simply put, voltage:capacitor as current:reactor. When you plug in a desk fan into your 120 volt line, your small electronics don't mind, but when you turn on a motor, it takes a huge voltage and current drop - so somehow, those two have to be regulated. I don't fully understand how it works, but it's more than a series circuit with a reactor and a capacitor attached to it.
I wrapped things up by meeting Tony before leaving. We was one of the younger expletive in the facilities division, and he was also one of the higher people in NASA's hierarchy, which surprised me. Tony, or James T. Doglio is a project manager of the project managers in the facility division. He's a civil engineer, and he makes sure that work is getting done as efficiently as it an be. Moreover, he only has a bachelors degree. He started his masters, but never finished. He doesn't have a PE license either. However, I think he's the exception, not the rule. When I asked him how a kid with an undergrad in civil engineering became the manager of the managers, he told me he worked hard and the people above him saw that.
Today was the last official day for Walsh, but there's one more day ahead of me: Plum Brook Station. Until then.
