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Procedure tracking

Overview

The goal of this proposal is to integrate a system to track the status of procedures during a test, and to share such state over the network.

This would allow stakeholders, for example viewers of a livestream, to know the exact state of a test with minimal effort required by the test supervisors.

Use Case / Motivation

During test campaigns and rocket launches, the team uses procedures to ensure that a predefined and tested sequence of tasks is followed. This allows operators to avoid guessing what to do and enables the team to fine-tune the actions over multiple trials.

A concrete example are the launch procedures of Gemini.

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Up to this point, Skyward's procedures have been written with LaTeX and then printed on paper. This is extremely practical: it's cheap, multiple copies can be printed, no digital devices are required, the format is the same for every test operator, it's readable under the sun and notes can be taken on the fly with just a pen.

But this solution has some problems:

  • When a procedure has to be written LaTeX is involved, and both its syntax and the tables compiled into the PDF file are challenging to read.
  • After a test is over, notes taken on paper are scattered over all the multiple copies printed. Usually each member that was responsible for a portion of the procedure will updated the document with the notes and experience gained during the test.

These problems can be addressed without moving away from printing the procedure on paper. For example a different language could be used to describe the procedures, and the team can better organize to improve how amends are applied after a test.

But the inherent limitation of an analog medium such as paper is that no digital integration is possible when procedures are in use. What I mean by this is that during tests, when procedures are followed, only the paper copy is used as reference, and there is no software used to log the completions of tasks and notes.

This prevents the possibility of sharing with stakeholders (e.g. test personnel and spectators) the status of the test live.

Proposed Solution

The proposed solution would be to develop 4 different elements:

  1. A language to formally define the procedure
  2. An engine to compile the procedure into a PDF file (thus still supporting the same workflow)
  3. A network server and a set of APIs to keep track of a procedure status
  4. A widget to both write and view the status