Chris has worked in and around spacecraft and space missions since the early 2000s. Having designed and worked on several spacecraft deployable systems (solar arrays and antenna systems), Chris went to work at Wallops Flight Facility as a contractor. Here I've worked on class A missions (GPM and James Webb),a class D mission (ISS-CREAM) various sounding rocket programs, and a few aircraft missions. It was here, having to manage multiple projects and test labs, that an appreciation for cost effective tooling and MSGE started. Having to balance between schedule and cost, with various vendors not able to deliver on time and on budget. I developed various improvement plans, trying to standardized what equipment was used and what equipment needed to be developed. Between projects, I was able to save roughly 6 months of schedule, and approximately $250k for each project.
Attempting a new challenge brought me to W. L. Gore & Associates' biomedical division. Started there as a Reliability Engineer, where I found a laboratory and practices that were all out of sync. Coordinated efforts to bring all the calibration schedules into alignment, saving the company $150k per year for test equipment calibrations. Also standardized the equipment and procedures to further help being schedules to the left by 6 to 8 months per project. Also worked with the materials group to further improve their test procedures, resulting in a 2 year improvement in material properties testing, and $3M in cost reductions. I moved back into the design engineering role, supporting the heart valve teams. I helped to generate a simpler modeling method for laser patterns and frame designs. I helped to improve the tooling manufacturing in order to streamline production with the two manufacturing engineers. This resulted in a roughly 10% improvement in devices being assembled.
Having received an opportunity to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a contractor, I settled in working on MGSE for the Europa Clipper mission. Tasked with providing one work platform/stand, I was originally budgeted for $250k to provide the stand. Given the complexities involved, went with a COTS scaffold, that served additional purposes. This saved the project $200k and was delivered faster than a custom unit. With the success of the first scaffold, and setting up the procedures to obtain additional COTS scaffolding, I delivered a second unit to install the High Gain Antenna with. This second scaffold was able to save the project several months of schedule while the primary work stand was being designed and made to assemble the full spacecraft. The last piece of MGSE delivered was the TVAC Lift fixture, along with having to redesign the entire test set up work flow. Given that a separate piece of MGSE was unable to survive its' proof testing, I had to redesign the Lift fixture to use a crane operation to hand off the spacecraft to my hardware. We were able to successfully complete the redesign, manufacturing, and proof testing in under 6 weeks (through the holiday break). The project was able to maintain schedule, and successfully passed TVAC.
Recognizing that there is a need to develop cost effective MGSE, I started this firm to service those needs.
