Date:	December 16th, 2004 (Thursday)
Time:	6:00PM - 7:00PM
Place:	SAIC Main Facility
RSVP:	To Mark Biddle by COB Tuesday, December 14th

You are cordially invited to the December meeting of the Orlando INCOSE Chapter. This meeting will be our normal Holiday Social. It will be an informal gathering. We will have dinner, give away door prizes, announce election results, and discuss accomplishments from this year and objectives for the chapter for next year. If you have not had an opportunity to join in on one of our meetings before and want to meet some of the people involved, and/or if you want to understand what the chapter is all about and where it is going, then this is a perfect opportunity to do so.

This chapter is growing, and we (in collaboration with the Space Coast and Tampa Chapters) will be hosting the INCOSE International Symposium, which will be held in Central Florida in 2006. We will also be having our first full-day tutorial event in January. This is a good time to get involved, as we get ready to move into a new year, so please join us. Hope to see you there.

Date:	November 18th, 2004 (Thursday)
Time:	6:30PM - 9:00PM (Cocktails at 6:30, Dinner at 7, Speaker at 8)
Place:	Lee's Lakeside (Phone 407-841-1565)
Speaker:	Dr. Sandy Furterer, Assistant Chair and Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, University of Central Florida
Topic:	Improving the Community Through Six Sigma in Engineering Education: Preparing Engineers for the Future
Cost:	$15.00 - ASQ Members, $20.00 - Non-Members and Guests; Cash Bar
Dress:	Business casual
RSVP:	To Mark Biddle by COB Monday, November 15th

Registration

On-Line Registration is now open. In addition to Conference Registration, you can also sign up for CEU credits, order publications, or purchase extra tickets for the I/ITSEC lunches or banquet. NEW this year: Golf Registration and Golf Sponsorship options available through the on-line registration.

Conference Attendees: Click here to register now.
Exhibit Personnel: Your registration will be handled through your Exhibit Coordinator.
Exhibit Visitors: For separate registration information, please e-mail: bmcdaniel@ndia.org

Reminders to Authors/Presenters

Full directions at http://www.iitsec.org/speakers.cfm

Final Paper Editing: Authors should make any changes as soon as possible. Papers will be declared "final" at the end of September and preparations for publication will move forward.

Presentation Upload: October 8th is the target date set for your Presentation to be uploaded to the I/ITSEC web site.

Exhibits

There are a few spaces remaining. Visit http://www.iitsec.org/exhibits.cfm for latest floor plan and lists. Contact iitsec@jmkassociates.com for information.

Sponsorships

The Sponsorships program has been expanded and there are new opportunities to have your company‚s name highlighted. See details on the I/ITSEC site under "Exhibits", or contact dlangelier@ndia.org for details.

Conference Program Guides

The Conference Program has gone to print; you should receive yours in the next 10 days. If you do not receive it, or wish us to send multiple copies, please contact bmcdaniel@ndia.org.

For Additional Questions, Please Contact:

Barbara McDaniel
I/ITSEC Coordinator
bmcdaniel@ndia.org
Phone: (703) 247-2569
I/ITSEC Web Site: http://www.iitsec.org

• Date: October 21st, 2004 (Thursday)
• Time: Food served at 5:45PM, Speaker Presentation at 6:00PM
• Place: SAIC Main Building
• Speaker: Mark Biddle
• Topic: Architecture Centric Project Management

We've missed our last three INCOSE meetings (hurricanes and what-have-you) but this month we are definitely going to have one (a meeting, not a hurricane). I was going to show some panel discussions from the recent ICSE/INCOSE conference that I attended in Las Vegas, but I haven't received my copy of the DVD yet. So, I've rounded up a speaker at the last minute, and I know for sure that this person will not cancel, because it's me. The Vegas ICSE/INCOSE conference focused on synergy between systems engineering and project management. I presented a paper at the conference, on "Architecture Centric Project Management", and I plan to present this same paper at our INCOSE Orlando Chapter meeting next Thursday. Here is the abstract:

We have made significant progress this year with the INCOSE Orlando Chapter. During the next year, we hope to host our first full-day tutorial event, as well as a couple of other special events that we have not had the resources to support in the past. Also, this year we will be preparing for the INCOSE 2006 Symposium, which will be held in Central Florida. INCOSE is a world-wide organization, and it is growing. The presence of active professional organizations is an indicator of the enterprise vitality and potential of a geographical area. Central Florida has the potential to host one of the most prominent chapters within the INCOSE organization, but we need your help to make it happen. It's time to elect 2005 Officers and Chairs, so please consider volunteering your time to support the Orlando INCOSE Chapter. This is a chance for you to support your community as well as expand upon your own professional experience. We need candidates for the following officer and chair positions:

Officer Positions

• Vice President (Supports the President. Automatically becomes President the following year.).
• Treasurer (Tracks income and expenses, writes checks for Chapter expenses).
• Administrator (Makes arrangements for monthly meetings and records minutes at meetings).

Chair Positions

• Membership Chair (Tracks membership, facilitates membership drive).
• Programs Chair (Works with Chapter President to get speakers and arrange special events).
• Communications Chair (Responsible for overseeing maintenance of web page, e-mail reflectors, and for communications with other organizations)
  • Web Page administrator (Supports Communications Chair to maintain actual web page content).

Forward any nominations for officer or chair positions to me by October 31. Include the following information in the nomination:

• Name
• Organization
• Desired Chapter Position (may specify multiple positions, with preferences indicated. May hold one officer position and one Chair position if desired.)
• Phone Number
• E-Mail

After validating nominations, ballots will be distributed in early November to members for voting, and election results will be announced at the Orlando INCOSE Chapter holiday social meeting in December.

Hurricane Jeanne sitting dead center over central Florida.

Jeanne, which caused so much damage in the Carribean earlier in the week, the same hurricane that made a loop out in the middle of the Atlantic, hit just south of Stuart around 11:30pm Saturday evening. It spent all day Sunday moving west, then north, up the central part of the state at a leasurely 10-12 m.p.h. It took 24 hours for Jeanne to drop from a catagory 3 hurricane to a tropical storm. It made a side swipe at Orlando with winds reported at about 100 m.p.h. But that was nothing compared to the additional damage that the east coast suffered. As of midnight Sunday Jeanne is still churning over north Florida and south Georgia.

Of course, all this write-up about the hurricanes begs the question: What does this have to do with systems engineering? I have no idea. But if this state is to recover from four hurricanes in one season then it is going to need help from every quarter and every organization. It's going to need immediate help to repair the damage, and then it's going to need help in planning for future hurricane events in such a way that damage and disruption are minimized as much as possible. Here is an opportunity for systems engineers everywhere to make a difference with muscle and brains.

Hurricane Ivan as it moves past Granada and onwards to Jamaica. Haiti is partially hidden at the top.

It's been one week since the headline for Frances was posted (see below). The cleanup continues for both Frances and Charley. The Monday (9/6) Orlando Sentinel summarized some of the more spectacular statistics about Frances trip through Florida.

• 5 million - People without electrical power. This is more than hurricanes Charley and Andrew combined.
• 275 miles - Frances' span. It touched nearly every county on the peninsula before it was through. In fact it crossed the state not once, but twice. The first trip was east-to-west across Central Florida and the second was south-to-north across the panhandle.
• 2.8 million - Number of Floridians ordered to evacuate. This is the most in state history.
• 86,000 - Number of people who took refuge in shelters.
• 29 - Counties that set mandatory evacuation.

The economic impact to Florida continues to grow, both short term and long term. Agriculture, one of Florida's mainstays, has been heavily damaged (the grapefruit crop is reported as having been completely wiped out). The tally so far is $6.9 billion in damages from Charley and $2 to $4 billion from Frances, with the worse damage occurring where the hurricanes made land fall. Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building sustained heavy damage, as did other buildings on the facility. Thankfully the shuttles remained unscathed, but the building responsible for creating the heat tiles suffered extensive damage.

People are still buying hurricane and home repair supplies, especially generators. All the major centers (Home Depot, Lowes) sold nearly all their generators that they received on Monday by the end of the following Tuesday. People are still buying plywood, and there were long lines for the purchase of new roofing supplies. The radio stations are full of reports of people needing help and other people offering help. There are lots of crews out re-establishing phone, power, sewer, water, and cable services. There is very strong community cooperation and organization across the state and especially in those regions hardest hit by both hurricanes.

Next up is Ivan. Ivan is a category 5 hurricane that has already flattened Granada. It has the power of Charley and the size of Frances. Over the past 24 hours the five-day storm track (from the National Hurrican Center) has had it making landfall directly in the Keys and moving due north from there, to just missing the peninsula and heading due north up the Gulf coast to the panhandle. The Keys are already being told to evacuate (again). We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Hurrican Frances moving across the Bahamas before striking Florida.

Frances continues her steady implacable march torwards Central Florida. For nearly a week we've been living under the constant drumbeat of hurricane warnings and admonitions to prepare for the arrival of Frances. And no wonder; Frances comes three weeks after Charley and is three times as large as Charley, covering over 50,000 square miles with tropical force winds or higher. As of right now most schools and businesses are closed in central Florida (which includes Brevard, Orange, Seminole, Volusia, Flagler, Osceola, and Lake counties) from Friday, September 3rd, to Tuesday, September 6th. Many roads leading from the Atlantic coast to the center of the state are now one way to facilitate mandatory evacuations from coastal areas, barrier islands, and areas prone to flooding (as well as people who live in 'manufactured housing'). All the toll roads are free. There was a call today in Orange for anyone with a pickup truck to help move the downed, cutup tree refuse still lying in the streets to collection points around the county (lots and lots of big leftover oaks and snapped pines from Charley).

Here in Orlando as of Thursday gas is pretty much gone, all the plywood is gone, and if you didn't get any food by 11 am this morning then there's a good chance that what you've got is pretty much it until Frances passes through late Sunday. I loaded up around 8:30 a.m. at a local Albertsons and it was already pretty sparse. One of the funniest shopping moments was going to the bread isle and seeing everything gone - except all the healthy whole wheat. There was a nice collection from top shelf to floor of multi-grain and various wheat breads that nobody wanted to eat. Fine by me. I loaded up. I guess everybody wants to survive a natural disaster like Frances but nobody wants to eat right while they do it.

I'm now the proud owner of a Coleman power generator (5Kw steady state, enough to power a window air conditioner, the freezer and frige, lights in one room, TV, DVD player, and #2 daughter's computer and cable modem.) The pantry got restocked with enough dry goods to keep my wife and remaining daughter feed for a good solid week and I've got enough gas for the generator for nearly 80 hours of continuous operation. As I was walking my dog Max around the neighborhood this evening you could hear the sounds from multiple houses of owners cutting plywood with electric saws to board up their windows. This was right after I ran to the local Barnes and Noble to pick up two more Disk World books to read; "Sourcery" and "Wyrd Sisters". I'm old fashioned in that I'd rather read my science fiction and fantasy than see it spoiled for me on the silver screen with someone else's ideas (case in point: this summer's film "I, Robot" with Will Smith). And a book uses no power, except maybe brain power.

Considering the level of death and destruction from Charley, I sincerely wish everyone the best of luck over the Labor Day weekend. Everybody is much better prepared this time, and all we can do now is wait it out.

Due to ongoing logistical problems in Orlando (cleanup, loss of power, loss of water, etc) the August 19th meeting has been canceled and will be rescheduled for another date. Stay tuned for further announcements.

Remember that it is membership renewal time. If you are already a member, remember to renew if you have not done so already. If you have been considering joining, now is the time. Cost is $80 for regular membership, $10 for full time students. You can join on line here Note: When joining INCOSE, make sure that you select the Orlando Chapter (not Central Florida Chapter or Space Coast Chapter), so that your membership dues get appropriated accurately.

If you have questions, contact the INCOSE Orlando Chapter Membership Chair Becky Matz (matzb@saic.com or call 407-243-3795).

We are making a concerted effort to energize the Orlando chapter this year, and the chapter is growing. We hope to create an organization that not only benefits the members, both personally and professionally, but also the Central Florida business community as a whole. Please join us and help make Orlando one of the best chapters in the INCOSE organization.

The Stevens Institute of Technology in collaboration with the University of Southern California (USC) and the AF Center for Systems Engineering at AFIT presents the 3rd Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER). The conference will be located at Castle Point on Hudson, Hoboken, New Jersey, from March 23-25, 2005.

The primary conference objective is to provide practitioners and researchers in academia, industry, and government a common platform to present, discuss and influence Systems Engineering research with the intent to enhance Systems Engineering practice and education. This year's conference will focus on secure and intelligent network centric systems; and agile deployment and development in the aerospace & defense, finance & banking, IT and telecommunications, and pharmaceutical & healthcare domains.

Abstracts

We invite original research papers addressing the conception, design and architecting, development, modeling and simulating, production, operation and support of these systems; definition of metrics of performance, and improvement methods; assessment and mitigation of risks; definition of critical success factors, and best practices. The refereed research papers at the conference will be complemented with invited talks. Abstracts are invited in the following broad areas:

• Secure and Intelligent Network Centric Systems
• Agile Systems Engineering, Development, Integration, and Deployment
• Robust and Sustainable System Designs and Architectures
• Integrated Systems and Software Engineering and Development
• Application of Systems Engineering to an Extended Enterprise System
• Systems Engineering Methodologies, Practices, Methods, Tools, and Metrics
• Collaborative Engineering: Environments and Organizations

Abstracts must include:
1) A Title; 2) Full Author Name and Affiliations; 3) Complete Address for the Corresponding Author.

Doctoral candidates pursuing systems engineering related research are especially encouraged to submit abstracts. One technical track at the CSER'05 will be devoted to papers by doctoral candidates.

Please submit your abstract (not to exceed 400 words) to:
Dr. Rashmi Jain, Chair, Conference Technical Program
Associate Professor of Systems Engineering
Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology,
Castle Point on Hudson, Hoboken, N.J. 07030
Tel: 201.216.8047 or 201.216.8025

Abstracts may also be sent electronically in Microsoft Word or pdf formats to: rjain1@stevens.edu

Important Milestones:

• Submission Deadline: October 1, 2004
• Acceptance Notification and Author Instructions: November 1, 2004
• Submission of Camera-Ready Research Papers: February 1, 2005

INCOSE Orlando is holding a regular presentation on Thursday August 19th at 6pm at the SAIC building in Research Park. The presentation will provide a view into a modern global engineering department and the techniques and tools used to develop technically complex and commercially significant products and services. Food will be served starting at 5:45PM, and the speaker will present from 6:00 to 7:00PM. Please RSVP no later than 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, August 17th via email to Biddlem@saic.com or via voice mail at (407) 243-3789.

Speaker Background
Dave Berrong received a Mechanical Engineering degree from Tri State College in 1969. Upon graduating, he joined Westinghouse Power Generation designing large turbine and generators. In 1993 after a number of first line management assignments, he was made Manager of Generator Engineering for Westinghouse, and in 1999 he was named Engineering Manager for all Siemens generators worldwide. In this capacity he directs all large generator T&D and technical operations for Siemens America and Siemens AG. His department includes over 400 professionals with major offices in Newcastle, England; Muelheim, Germany; Erfurt, Germany; Fort Payne, Alabama; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Orlando, Florida.

NOTE: Raffle tickets will also be sold at the meeting. Cost for tickes is 1 ticket for $1, 4 tickets for $3, and 7 tickets for $5. Winner takes 1/2 of the raffle pot, chapter keeps the other 1/2.

The chapter is looking for a volunteer to assume the role of Communications Chair. INCOSE is a non-profit organization, so no salary is involved. This support would be strictly on a volunteer basis. The Communications Chair is responsible for the following:

• Overseeing the updating of chapter web site content. The chapter has a site manager to make the actual changes to the web site, but the Chair would provide the raw content to the site manager, as well as guidance and approval for all changes to the web site.
• Execution of the chapter publicity plan. This might include mailing of chapter publicity letters and contacting newspapers or other media sources to arrange for chapter related ads or announcements.
• Coordination of the Ambassador Networks. The Ambassador Networks are information exchange relationships between the INCOSE Orlando chapter and other organizations in the Central Florida area.

If you are interested in volunteering to support the Orlando chapter in this capacity then please contact chapter president Mark Biddle (biddlem@saic.com or call 407-243-3789).

This month we will have two speakers and a tour of the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (CREOL) facility and labs. Our guest speakers are Dr. Eric Van Stryland and Dr. Shin-Tson Wu. Dr. Eric W. Van Stryland, Director and Professor for the School of Optics: CREOL & FPCE, will introduce the systems engineering community to The School of Optics and its role as an independent academic unit of the University of Central Florida. This unit now houses two major research centers: the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (CREOL), in existence since 1985, and the Florida Photonics Center of Excellence (FPCE), founded in 2003 by the Governor of Florida. Dr. Shin-Tson Wu, IEEE Fellow, will discuss the latest research contributions on liquid crystal displays. All this, plus LEOS members will conduct tours of the labs. Open free to everyone interested in systems engineering or optics.

This meeting will be held at the UCF CREOL building, located on the UCF campus. Remember to RSVP (email) if you plan on coming so we can determine the amount of food to provide (contact Judith Feliciano at 407-356-2398 if you can't email). Please join us, and feel free to bring a guest.

The DARPA Grand Challenge is gearing up again. The next DARPA Grand Challenge will be held on October 8th, 2005. A number of teams have already announced their intent to race. The Carnege Mellon Red Team is working to finish the race they barely started this year. In addition, two central Florida schools will be in the race; the University of Central Florida and the Florida Institute of Technology. Congress has doubled the prize for the 2005 race to $2 million, double 2004's purse.

NOTE:
DARPA simultaneously announced that a "Participants' Conference" will be held on August 14, 2004 at the Anaheim Marriott, Anaheim, Calif. This informational conference is for participants, interested sponsors, and groups looking for others to help complete their teams. The conference will begin at 2 pm. For more information check the official DARPA website, www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge.

As more information becomes available it will be posted here. Time permitting a new section will be opened up on the INCOSE Orlando site devoted to robotics in general and the DARPA Grand Challenge in particular.

This month we are privileged to have Dr. Michael Macedonia, Chief Technology Officer for the US Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (POE STRI, formally known as STRICOM), as our guest speaker. The topic of the presentation will be "The Future of Simulation -- New Computational Technologies." Remember to RSVP if you plan on coming. Please join us, and feel free to bring a guest.

Unlike our previous meetings, this meeting will NOT be held at the SAIC facility. Instead, it will be held at the Partnership I Building, located on Research Parkway. You can park in the Partnership I parking lot or in the Research Pavilion parking lot (first turn past the entrance to NAVAIR Orlando and PEO STRI on the right if coming from Alafaya).

Systems Engineering is an appropriate response to the complexity emerging from the milieu of contemporary industry dynamics: innovation, competition, cycle-time-compression (aka clockspeed), functional siloism, and change acceleration. The focus of SE however has been firmly fixed on the product and its technological realization from customer requirements. However, the processes that enable the transformation of a good idea to a tangible product are themselves products, and the same systems engineering principles can and should be applied to the realization of this corporate capability.

Capturing and codifying process in some form or fashion is important for at least two reasons: first, it enables transfer of know how to newcomers; and secondly it affords a baseline to explore improvements in operations, avoiding arm waving and frustrating ambiguity.

The product realization process comprises many different processes - the systems engineering process being just one of them. Project Management, Software Engineering, Configuration Management, Quality Assessment are all functional specialisms each having their own processes providing necessary contribution to the whole. However just as the product sub-system interfaces require special attention in product design, the cohesive integration of functional processes into an end-to-end machine that delivers the desired product is critical. Much of the inefficiency of today's delivery systems occurs due to 'loss' at the interfaces. Tightly coupled processes will increase the corporate gain, and integrating processes across organizational boundaries will enable the supply chain (or value web) to dance to any tune.

This seminar will present methods and protocols for the design and integration of project processes. Case study material will be used to illustrate the analysis and design of enterprise behaviors captured in terms of a cohesive set of customer-facing, cross-functional, value-adding business operations. The methods have SSM (soft system methodology) origins and the people centric and viewpoint sensitive aspect to the methods will be as evident as the systems engineering approach: input/output analysis, phase-gate review technique, top-down decomposition (step-wise refinement), and context sensitivity capture. The methods illustrate that even if the modeling boundary is within a specific organization the interfaces to other dependent organizations are evident, thereby creating an automatic interface spec writer for organizational processes.

The author will phase the presentation and hold short facilitated discussion sessions in order to invite feedback and stimulate an interesting and lively forum.

Dr. Alison Boardman is CEO of Elipsis, Inc. The meeting will be held at the SAIC Building starting at 6:00 pm.

The INCOSE Orlando Board of Directors will meet Wednesday March 17th from 5:00PM to 7:00PM at the SAIC facility. Joe Wallace, CFRP Director, has agreed to participate in the meeting on this date. All BoD members please RSVP. If you can't make the meeting in person but would like to telecon in please let us know so we can set everything up. The meeting agenda includes a review of the Silver Award Plan and Action Items as well as discussing new business issues.

Region II is hosting a conference with ICSE on September 16 - 18, 2004, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The theme of the conference is, "Synergy Between Systems Engineering and Project Management." The conference offers an outstanding technical program with 4 tracks, exhibits and professional development tutorials. The conference website is: http://www.icseng.info and we are also listed on the INCOSE Website, Calendar.

Authors may submit papers on the following and related topics:

Model-based Systems Engineering and Project Management Systems Engineering and Project Management Cultural Challenges Value Chain in Systems Engineering and Project Management

Information and Data Challenges in Systems Engineering Innovative Systems Engineering Applications Systems Engineering Education

IMPORTANT DATES:
One-page Abstract Submission: April 26, 2004
Acceptance Notifications: May 24, 2004
Publication-ready Papers Due: June 28, 2004

SciAutonics II's vehicle covered 6.7 miles before stopping near the town of Dagget.

None of the autonomous vehicles managed to finish the race on Saturday, even after DARPA relaxed the rules.

First DARPA lowered the entry requirements so that many of the robot vehicles had a chance to qualify. Twenty-one teams attempted to qualify in trails before the main race, but just seven completed a flat, 1.36-mile obstacle course at the California Speedway in Fontana, east of Los Angeles. Some teams were allowed to compete Saturday without finishing the obstacle course.

Then DARPA reduced the race length to 150 miles. But in spite of that, the 15 entrants that made it into the main race still failed to finish. Of the 15 that attempted the race, two withdrew between qualification and the race (see DARPA STATUS BOARD.) Of the remaining 13 racers, the Red Team vehicle and the vehicle from SciAutonics LLC traveled the longest before they both stopped at around seven miles into the race (Read Team at mile 7.4 on switchbacks, and SciAutonics II at mile 6.7 two-thirds of the way up Dagget Ridge near the town of Dagget).

DARPA still claimed success. "We are an agency that takes risks, to push technology beyond what anybody thinks is possible," said Tom Strat, deputy program manager of the DARPA Grand Challenge. "One of the best ways to motivate engineers is to tell them that there's something that can't be done. And what you saw today was people taking on that challenge and saying nah, it's not impossible, I'm gonna try. Even though nobody got more than about 5 percent of the way through the course, this has made these engineers even more determined," he said.

DARPA is expected to hold another challenge, possibly in 2006. And many of the participants in this year's contest say they can hardly wait.

Other Links
(CNN) Robots fail to complete Grand Challenge (Wired) Foiled: Darpa Bots All Fall Down (c|net) Desert wins the race of robot cars	(The Register) DARPA's Grand Challenge proves to be too grand (Google News) DARPA Grand Challenge Article Search

Dr. Sam Harbaugh, Systems Engineering Leader for the Red Team, will discuss Carnegie Mellon's entry in the DARPA Grand Challenge at Florida Tech's Crawford Science Tower (7th Floor Conference Room) on Thursday April 1, 2004 from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m.

Dr. Sam Harbaugh is currently Systems Engineering Leader for the Carnegie Mellon Red Team developing an autonomous robot racing system for the DARPA Grand Challenge event. He received his BSEE, MSEE and PhD EE from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon) in his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. He has 39 years experience with real-time computer systems for process control, military and commercial applications, holds 6 patents in process control methods and control systems and has served as principal software engineer for several large real-time computer systems development projects. Sam teaches distance education courses in the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering program including a course he developed, "Engineering of Software Intensive Systems". He is a member of the Space Coast Chapter of INCOSE and was very active during its formative years.

The INCOSE Orlando web site has undergone a redesign. The site has been reorganized and brought up to date to better serve the INCOSE Orlando community. The site will continue to grow and evolve throughout 2004 and beyond. INCOSE Orlando members are encouraged to suggest improvements/additions or to report any problems to site management.

With all the current excitement over Spirit and Opportunity on Mars it's easy to forget the predicessor rover to land on Mars: Sojourner. In the book "SOJOURNER - An Insider's View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission", author Andrew Mishkin (Senior Systems Engineer: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) writes a fascinating book detailing an insider's view of NASA's Mars Pathfinder probe.

From Amazon:
Millions of viewers watched in fascination in July 1997 as the Mars "rover" Sojourner (named after Sojourner Truth) maneuvered around the Red Planet's surface like an interplanetary dune buggy, sending back pictures of rocks and boulders that were given whimsical names by mission scientists (e.g., Yogi, Scooby-Doo). Mishkin, senior systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the rover was developed, chronicles the years of trial and error to create a vehicle that would be the right size for the Pathfinder lander and could withstand the temperature extremes on the Martian surface while maneuvering around rocks without getting stuck or driving over the edge of an abyss. It takes 40 minutes for a signal to travel from Mars to Earth and back, so JPL scientists had to make the rover's navigational systems as self-sufficient as possible. The author details how software and hardware teams often clashed over the best ways to solve the problems they encountered during development. Mishkin himself discovered a potentially fatal error shortly before launch: a wrong parameter in the computer clock would have woken Sojourner in the middle of the night instead of in the morning, but the robot needed sunlight to function. Mishkin's detailed history undoubtedly will interest engineers and dedicated science techies, but readers looking for an account of Sojourner's accomplishments on Mars will be disappointed-the rover's 80 days of exploration are given one quick chapter. Nevertheless, Mishkin has written a valuable chronicle of one of NASA's only mission in the past decade to have captured the public's imagination. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

You can find this book at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.