My name is Bala Ramamurthy. I was hanging out with Jeremy Glassenberg in Palo Alto, CA and he told me "Hey, I'm on this team participating in the Lunar X Prize contest!" Intrigued, I went on to meet Fred and Sean, and in talking to them, realized that this would be an interesting project where I could contribute to the skills-pool. A mechanical engineer by trade, professionally, I am Systems Engineer working with a consulting firm that is involved in a number of interesting projects with NASA. I have worked on a bunch of projects for the (late) Constellation program- Crew Safety and Vehicle Integration for Ares I, Ares V; reentry heatshield design for Orion; subsystem design, systems engineering for the Altair Lunar Lander; strategic analyses for the lunar program; physics analysis of cryogenic engines, propulsion systems. I am also the tech director for the AIAA in the Bay Area.
What I would like to do here- I am really interested in bringing together engineering systems to perform as an integrated whole to meet the design and mission objectives. From my many conversations with Apollo LEM engineers, the fact that they had a vital, dedicated systems engineering component, with a deep familiarity of how everything worked separately and as an integrated system, was a big contributor to their great success. One great advantage we have is that we are not shipping fragile humans
to the moon, allowing us to take on risk in some areas and potentially come up with inventive mass-saving strategies- landed mass translates to propellants which translates to cost! At a very 'de minimus' level, we would be landing a communications system and something to do a little lunar site seeing with, and from this point we would have to work out backwards what the strategies are to accomplish this, considering all the limitations and constraints. I am keen on working with the subsystem leads to see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together- how the subsystems are assigned mass, objectives- what systems "drive" the overall requirements; how system requirements translate down from the basic objective, etc. I am still getting up to speed on the work you guys have done so far...Well, I hope to get in touch with hardware and software leads and teams on the forum soon.
...to the Moon!
Bala