Assignment: A Broad Asteroid-blasting Control Problem

Directions: Please answer the question and support your ideas, then respond to a minimum of two of your classmates.

The company you work for has just won a large contract. Part of the contract involves installing a high-powered laser on a spacecraft which will target and hit a passing asteroid. Your class all graduated and found jobs with this company. Now together you must manage the design of this project through to test. What questions do you need to ask? Where will you go get those answers? What skills will you need? How will you gain those skills? What are the subsystems associated with this project? To what other systems will your system interface? How will you manage that interface and determine requirements? What are the phases and strategies which can be used in the design process through to testing? What is the test plan? How will you do the testing? Will you take the system into space before you test it? Will you test parts or the whole system?

You are to spend the week interacting with your colleagues in this course answering these questions and working through a strategy for the design and test. You are all a team. Work together. By the end of the week, you should make a final post in which you answer these questions yourself using the information you gained from interacting with your colleagues. You should also provide a preliminary block diagram of the system.

Your instructor may provide some tips along the way for you to consider or may provide some additional scope for the project at his own discretion.