Application for the President's Quality Award Program 1996
Abstract
The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) world class launch and payload processing operations Center. It is home to the Space Shuttle fleet, which transports astronaut crews and a wide variety of payloads into earth orbit and beyond and prepares for their return. KSC also provides support for launch activities at Cape Canaveral Air Station, Florida, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, and for worldwide contingency and secondary Space Shuttle landing sites. The KSC team is responsible for the preparation, launch, landing, and recovery of the Shuttle orbiters, crews, and payloads as well as the recovery of the reusable solid rocket boosters. Our accomplishments reflect our commitment to individual and collective excellence. With literally thousands of components that must operate in perfect unison during launch and orbit, the Space Shuttle is admittedly the most complex machine ever built. After more than a decade of Shuttle missions, human space flight remains an extremely risky enterprise. The astronauts, one of our internal customers, face this risk and trust the KSC team with their lives to maintain and launch this incredible space vehicle for each mission. Similarly, the KSC processes for "preparing and launching missions to earth and beyond" are among the most complex and risky in the world. The KSC team deals with this complexity and risk on a daily basis. The task for orbiter processing is illustrative of the magnitude of the work in the preparation of an Orbiter in its "hangar," the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA529949
Entities
Organizations
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration