The rise of software-defined aerospace – Transcript
In the latest episode of Talking Aerospace Today, Todd Tuthill and Dale Tutt discuss how software-defined aerospace products are pushing a need for a more holistic form of systems engineering, and what other industries can learn from A&D’s experience with it.
Todd Tuthill: The first episode of this podcast was published Friday, August 1. We were discussing systems engineering in the context of NASA and the Apollo 13 mission, what Mission Commander Jim Lovell called a successful failure. When we recorded this podcast, we had no idea that Commander Lovell would pass away August 7. Before we start today’s episode, we want to acknowledge the incredible contributions Commander Lovell made to manned spaceflight and offer our deepest condolences to his family.
Patty Russo: Greetings, and welcome to Talking Aerospace Today podcast from Siemens Digital Industries Software. I’m Patty Russo. I’m responsible for global marketing in A&D here at Siemens. Thank you so much for joining us. We recently started a series on systems engineering with a focus on space and an emphasis on the future of this discipline in the aerospace and defense industry. It’s so important. The series features our Vice President of Aerospace, Defense and Marine, Todd Tuthill, and our Vice President of Industry Strategy, Dale Tutt. Previously we talked about the transformation of space exploration, the history of systems engineering in aerospace, and how digital transformation of systems engineering can help companies take systems engineering beyond an isolated system model through robust integration and interoperability and next-level connectivity.
Patty Russo: We’ll pick up where we left off, so let’s begin with a question for Dale. So in that in that scenario, Dale, where does the idea and the need for integration and interoperability play into this need to change the approach or rethink the approach to systems engineering?
Dale Tutt: Well, you know, I think that the approach to systems engineering, it’s kind of interesting because Todd’s referring to what was going on with the NASA and the Apollo program, and they saw the need for that. And I think for a long time, people tended to look at systems engineering as for those big type of programs and maybe some of the big defense programs. So even though these vehicles are mostly mechanical, the failure points were fairly well understood, but they still saw a need to have some systems engineering approaches and especially for the software and electronics and so, and the avionics that would go into the to the rockets, to the satellites, even into the aircraft programs. But I think that what’s changed now is the level of complexity and level interfaces in everything.
Dale Tutt: You know, there was a time when a lot of companies saw that systems engineering for the big government programs. “We don’t need to do that. We know how to do that.” And so they would kind of just get by and they would do like the bare minimum. “Okay, I’m doing a little bit of requirements tracking and I’m going to do some verification and it’s going to work out.” But now, with the growth of electronics in software driving everything, everything is software-defined and so these companies are having to look at the electronics and codevelop the electronics with the software. It’s critical, and the amount of interfaces, the amount of interactions between all of these things, you’re looking at hundreds of thousands of operations and interactions, and so these are throughout the entire spacecraft. It’s just unmanageable.
Dale Tutt: You know, 20 years ago, you could manage it with a spreadsheet and maybe you were talking about, you know, 100 interactions or so, but mechanical systems. You understood those behaviors, and so you don’t have to worry about them. But with chips out there, with some of the semiconductors that are out there now and you start thinking about from a system safety standpoint and a functionality and a reliability standpoint, you know, some of these new semiconductor chips, they’re so powerful that they might have over 90,000 failure modes just inside of that chip.
Dale Tutt: And so you have to have an approach they can look at this in an integrated way and to be able to understand not just the normal operation of the product, but also the failure modes. And so when something breaks, then how is the system going to operate? And I would say sometimes if you really look at it, many of these systems, many of these satellites probably are more, you know, the rockets, certainly, they are defined more by how they function when in a failure mode than they do in normal operation mode, because you have to build in those levels of redundancy and the additional system. So you have to have a holistic approach.
Dale Tutt: You’ve got to look at all the digital tools. You have to be able to think about this in the context of how’s it going to be designed? How are we going to build it? And then how we going to maintain it? And then I think that, Todd used that example and, as a great example from the movie of the oxygen filters and the reality is that if you didn’t have, if you weren’t looking at how you going to actually maintain and use it in the future, you never catch those things and that’s why some of those things were never caught. So I think, just digital transformation and the systems engineering process is going to be critical for these programs as they go forward.
Todd Tuthill: And Patty, if I can amplify some of the things Dale was talking about. He talked about the parallel nature and all the things you need to consider when you develop, let’s talk about a satellite now. And let’s talk about a problem, a key systems engineering problem in space that exists today that didn’t exist, it couldn’t wasn’t imaginable in in the Apollo program. Think about how much stuff there is in low Earth orbit. Just the thousands and thousands of objects in low Earth orbit and the junk that’s there. And one of the things that anybody has to consider who’s a responsible, you know, person with space, how am I going to end the life of this spacecraft? You know, in the Apollo program, those spacecraft had very narrow life.
Todd Tuthill: They weren’t worried about deorbit and those kinds of things. But today, if you’re going to launch 5000 satellites into low Earth orbit for communication, some of them are going to fail. They’re going to have, they’re going to have end-of-life and you’ve got to design in systems to deorbit them, to bring them out of the atmosphere, to burn up probably so that they don’t damage or pollute space. You know, when you think about it, it’s really the sustainability and responsible use of space. And that’s a key systems engineering problem that has to be designed in from the very beginning of that spacecraft. It’s not something you’re going to glom on at the end, and, “Now let’s figure out once it’s on orbit how to get it down then.” These companies have to design it that way from the beginning.
Todd Tuthill: Another great example, we’ve all seen the chopsticks video. You know, the SpaceX rocket coming back and landing on the platform. There’s another example of sustainable, reusable space based on a holistic systems engineering approach to looking at the overall system and how to solve a problem of not just wasting materials, certainly it does that, but how can I go to space faster? How can I reuse these really expensive sophisticated rockets? And I come back and catch them with chopsticks on the on the launchpad. What a great idea. You know something that, again, unimaginable back in the 60s when we kicked off the Apollo program all made possible through this holistic approach to systems engineering and solving the bigger problem. Not just how do I get to space? How do we get to space faster? How do I not, you know, and sustainably use low Earth orbit?
Dale Tutt: Yeah, and I’m going to add to that. It’s, those are such great examples. I mean, you have to think about bringing them back, but I was also, as you were talking about that I was thinking about the exploration, you know, the space exploration, they’re sending the Mars Rover, and they have to reprogram it. They’re going to change the programming and they have to send up command signals to do something. They do this on satellites a lot, and you don’t really have a second chance. And so you have to design in that ability to do upgrades. I saw even where they were doing that with the Voyager which was launched, what, in the 70s? And it’s how many billions of miles away from Earth and they’re still making changes to the programming to make little tweaks to help out and to help it perform a little bit better and, you know, like, there’s no second chance.
Dale Tutt: And you know, if the programming doesn’t, and if it doesn’t boot back up, then you’re kind of done. So that to me is just another example of some of the complexity of these products when you’re in space and why it’s so critical for the systems engineering approach.
Todd Tuthill: Is there anything cooler than designing stuff that flies in space? I’m sitting here thinking, you know if you’re in middle school, you’re in high school listening to this podcast right now, study math and physics. Go get an engineering degree and go into aerospace. There is nothing cooler on the planet than designing things that fly. I mean truly. Just, it’s cool.
Dale Tutt: I think I still have stuff going into space that I designed.
Patty Russo: Though when you’re talking about, like, the cool factor, the wow factor, there’s so much today, so much different today than, you know, kind of the old school space, for example. But Dale, one of the things that you mentioned was the rover and what came to mind is the need for that remote, for lack of a better way, remote control of that Rover and the communication and the cameras. And it kind of made me think of the idea of what other industries could learn from the space industry because of, you know, you’re thinking, I immediately went to the automotive industry with ADAS and all of the complexities related to the requirements for designing in those systems.
Patty Russo: So it leads me to the question for Todd is, what can other industries learn from the aerospace and defense industry related to the software defined vehicles, for example or the need for, let’s not talk about model-based systems engineering, let’s talk about a whole new approach to systems engineering that’s holistic?
Todd Tuthill: Okay. Well, if I think about a lot of the work I did as systems engineer in aerospace, you’re not, it’s not just about the good day. The good day scenario is the day when everything works fine. That’s the easy part. And when I think about, let’s talk about automotive and let’s talk about self-driving cars. When you design A self-driving car, it’s pretty easy to design a car that can just drive itself down the street. It’s far more difficult to design that car to think about all the scenarios, scenarios you can’t even imagine that will happen. Scenarios with weather, scenarios with failures, scenarios with other bad drivers, and things that do unpredictable things.
Todd Tuthill: It’s designing for the bad day scenarios, so, you know, which goes right back to all the ingenuity and all the things that were designed into those rovers to deal with failures. It’s this idea of redundancy, which again, increases the complexity. I don’t have one sensor. I have multiple sensors. I don’t have one way to accomplish the task. I have two or three. And to design those things to work right, to work right after failures, and I think that’s what we see I think coming into the automotive industry and what the automotive industry is learning from the aerospace industry. You know from both from a safety and certification standpoint and from a complexity standpoint. Like Dale said, a lot of these things are defined by software.
Todd Tuthill: Now we talk about autonomous vehicles. Well, we talk about these autonomous satellites. We’ve been launching autonomous software-driven vehicles in aerospace since the 70s, long before we were ever doing this in, space before we were doing it even in the air or in vehicles. So there’s been I think a lot learned from that from a systems engineering standpoint, from a safety standpoint, from a test and validation standpoint in aerospace, and a lot of other industries have benefited for that. And not to mention that Apollo gave us Tang. I guess that there’s another thing maybe that other industries can learn from the aerospace industry so.
Dale Tutt: Are you considering at a high point?
Todd Tuthill: I was just, you know, she was just talking about what, what have other industries learned? You know, we talked about the big things, systems engineering. They gave us Tang too, right?
Dale Tutt: What about Pyrex dishes?
Todd Tuthill: Got that as well. Ballpoint pens, right?
Patty Russo: Hey everyone, this is Patty. I guess you could say future Patty here, just coming in with a quick correction. Turns out Tang was not invented by NASA for the Apollo program. It was invented beforehand by an entirely different company, but its use in spaceflight did lead to its rise in popularity and its association with space travel. We thought it was prudent to make a public statement in correction of our error. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Patty Russo: The interesting thing though, is that when you’re talking about systems engineering and aerospace and defense with the complexity of the most simple, we perceive today, simple products today whether it, you know, I think there’s a perception that phones we take them for granted, right? Cell phones. Technology that goes into our cars, like I said, and even in other industries like the heavy equipment industry and other industries that are now consumer products, your refrigerator. You know, Internet of Things, all of those products are potentially leveraging some of the design processes that were only used in aerospace and defense before, I’m assuming.
Patty Russo: Is that a fair statement and what do you see as far as those other industries? What can they learn from, from A&D about adopting, if they haven’t adopted traditional MBSE practices yet, about adopting some of the practices that we’re talking about, the more advanced and dynamic holistic approach to systems engineering?
Todd Tuthill: So we talked about democratized access earlier, and certainly this democratized access to space, and if people from other industries are listening to this thinking, “Oh, systems engineering? That’s just for big complex things.” That’s where it started, but I think really today we have democratized access to systems engineering and systems engineering methods and systems engineering tools. And I would say that systems engineering is for anyone designing any product at any level. Because there’s, at the end of the day what is systems engineering?
Todd Tuthill: It’s this ability to think about the holistic problem you’re trying to solve, the ability to breakdown the complexity and find the most efficient way to take things apart and put them back together and solve that problem. And I need that if I’m designing a tire for an automobile or if I’m designing a rocket engine. And all industries at any level can benefit from that now because we’re all talking about the issues of time-to-market and workforce and lower cost and systems engineering and specifically a digital transformation of systems engineering can offer that to any industry at any level today.
Dale Tutt: Yeah, I’ll add to that. We, obviously we’ve talked about the cars already and autonomous driving and the challenges with autonomous driving and that is a great example, but think about heavy equipment industry with tractors and agriculture. They’re doing more and more autonomous operations as well, and autonomous operations for, say, excavating equipment is different than for a car. A car’s driving. If you are working in a mine with excavating equipment, not only are you driving it, you’re moving it around, but then you’re also interacting with the environment around you and you’re changing the environment around it. So it it’s a different level of complexity. And so they’re looking at systems engineering. Smartphones. A lot of people just think it’s just a chip and it’s just a phone, but really they use systems engineering for developing the smartphones because they’re looking at the different ways that different people use it.
Dale Tutt: You know, some people use it primarily as a gaming tool. Some people use it for texting, they’re doing shopping, they’re doing all kinds of different things. Some people use it to record podcasts. And in some people, oddly enough, use it as a phone. All of these have different requirements and, different requirements on the processor and how this phone operates, and so they, they tend to want to optimize for the best use of all those people. So it’s systems engineering even in your phone with the battery, the chips, the antennas, everything in it. And so you can look at across the board, we’re starting to see systems engineering pop up even in designing new energy plants. Think about the recent blackout that they had in Spain.
Dale Tutt: You know, part of the problem was is they’ve switched over to the newer green energy system that the grid wasn’t set up for that. The inverters that they have in, the type of inverters. I was reading an article about this the other day, and I’m reading this and I’m thinking, “Wow, this is like a systems engineering problem.” Because you can’t just think about the power plant in this case, maybe it’s a solar farm, independent of the grid and how it’s going to operate and the types of inverters that you’re using to put the electricity out onto the grid. And so again, every industry now, there’s very few things that just, very few things that work in isolation of, you know, they’re not in isolation from the rest of environment.
Dale Tutt: And so you really have to think about how do you optimize these systems from a holistic approach, recognizing the fact that they’re part of a larger ecosystem and have to connect with other things? And so systems engineering is for everybody. It may not be at the same level as what you’re doing with in aerospace, you know, with a, with a rocket that’s going, or satellite that’s going into space, but certainly the challenges that they’re trying to solve really aren’t that much different.
Patty Russo: Yeah, for sure. A holistic approach to optimize across domains is key. Before we pull on another thread here, we’ll end our discussion for today because we are out of time. It goes so fast, right? Thank you both again, Todd and Dale for another dynamic discussion. We’ll be back soon to continue exploring systems engineering in aerospace and defense and as always, thank you to our listeners. We really appreciate you being here and we do hope you gained valuable insights today and that you’ll be back for more. I’m Patty Russo, and we’ll see you next time on Talking Aerospace Today.
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