Engineering and Politics in Space Systems: Developing a more integrated view Assignment for ESD.83: Research Seminar in Engineering Systems Prepared by Annalisa L. Weigel December 2000Annalisa L. Weigel Engineering and Politics in Space Systems ESD.83, Fall 2000 Page 2 “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it…” —A. A. Milne Introduction The origins of systems engineering in large-scale government technical endeavors can be traced back to the post-World War II development of military systems such as missiles. In the 1940s, Bell Laboratories was the first to use the term “systems engineering.” In 1950, probably the first attempt to teach systems engineering was made at MIT by G. W. Gilman. [Brill, 1999] If we look at the progress of systems engineering texts from 1960-2000, we see that all of them contained a common set of chapters. These were usually on the topics of identifying user needs, translating needs to requirements, the trade study process, system analysis methods, integration and test, and verification and validation. As systems engineering progressed into the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, more chapters were added in the new books, such as design for manufacturing, design for reliability, design for maintainability, and so on. These are what Prof. Joel Moses at MIT refers to as “the –ilities.” There are even chapters in systems engineering books on dealing with politics, policy and legal issues. But all these added chapters appear as “afterthoughts” to the systems engineering process. They are literally tacked onto the end of books, sometimes contributed by different authors than the rest of the book, and their discussion is not integrated into the core process that is presented in the book as systems engineering. This reflects that these –ilities, including policy, have not truly become integral parts of the systems engineering process yet. But perhaps there is hope. Politico-Technical Systems and the Phases of Systems Thinking This situation may be reflective of the stage of systems thinking we currently find ourselves in for the area of politico-technical systems. Politico-technical systems are those that the general public funds through taxation. The public expresses its value judgements on these systems almost solely through the political process. These politico-technical systems are further characterized by the public’s sharply limited connection to the design, construction and operation of the system. [Rechtin and Maier, 1997, p. 76] Government space projects for exploration and defense run by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) are examples of politico-technical systems. If the history of systems engineering thinking is broken down into phases [Mindell, 2000], we are currently at the end of the second phase and the beginning of the third phase in most fields of engineering systems. The first phase, which consists of recognizing that systems thinking is applicable to a problem, likely encompassed the years between World War I and World War II for politico-technical systems. An early example of this first phase of systems thinking is offered by Mindell [in Hughes, 2000, p. 27-56] as he traces an attempt by Ivan Getting to improve gunfire control through considering its parts as a system. The second phase, which consists ofAnnalisa L. Weigel Engineering and Politics in Space Systems ESD.83, Fall 2000 Page 3 applying decomposition principles and analysis techniques to systems, could be considered to have started after World War II with the introduction of what came to be called systems engineering. The NASA Apollo lunar landing program in the 1960s is a classic example of the decomposition approach to systems thinking on a complex project. The beginning of the third phase of systems thinking is now emerging. This phase thus far appears to be characterized by expanding the boundaries of the system under consideration. Users, infrastructure, control, regulation, and so on are now being included within the boundary of the system. Accompanying this expansion of system boundaries is the need to synthesize the multitude of new components and their relationships in some meaningful way that predicts or evaluates system behavior. A good example of this third phase of systems thinking is transportation systems. Previously, a transportation system was thought of as only a single vehicle – a car, a bus, an airplane. Now, a “transportation system” is thought to encompass multiple vehicles, and also the infrastructure it requires (roads, runways, airports), its control and regulation mechanisms (traffic lights, control towers, licensing), its fuel, its passengers, its pollution, and so forth. As this third stage progresses over the coming decades, perhaps the many systems engineering “afterthoughts” described earlier will become more integrated into the mainstream thinking and approach to conceiving, designing, implementing and operating politico-technical systems. The Need for Integration The focus of this paper is on integrating the technical aspects of system design with the political aspects of system design. The time is now perhaps right, as we begin this third phase of systems thinking, for this idea to really take hold and achieve broad implementation. Harvey Brooks made a call for action like this in a 1972 paper where he wrote, “If engineers are to bring systems thinking to bear on social problems, they must learn how to incorporate social and political theory into their analytical framework ab initio” [Brooks, 1972]. As a founding member of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) that very same year [Hughes and Hughes, 2000], Brooks was a strong proponent of applying systems thinking to socio-technical and politico-technical systems, especially in an international context. One wonders if, at that moment in time in 1972, Brooks really appreciated how challenging a task it would become to address socio-technical and politico-technical systems with a rigorous systems approach. This notion of closely integrating political aspects