The Project Manager's
Corner: TMT Written Down
October 2007
All great engineering projects start by writing down what you
want to do. You cannot build it until you can write it all down.
The enormous set of documents that describe an engineering project
must begin with a small number of foundation
documents. This
set of documents, which provides the foundation for TMT design,
is now available for you to read.
Since TMT has science as its goal, the most important document describes the
science goals. The TMT Detailed
Science Case (DSC) represents the statement by our Science Advisory Committee
of the highest priority science goals and what TMT must be able to achieve to
carry out this science. Everything that we do in implementing TMT has science
as a goal and the set of science cases described is grand, is challenging, and
is sufficiently diverse that even if astronomy and astrophysics develop significantly
in the next decade, a TMT built to do this science will have great scientific
reach.
Once the science requirements are recorded, TMT system engineering has to translate
this into a set of technical and engineering guides for further design. Our document
foundation accomplishes this with three documents. The first of these guiding
documents, our Observatory
Requirements Document (ORD),
contains the highest level technical requirements that TMT must satisfy. The
delivered observatory must meet each and every requirement in this document.
But can these requirements be met? Do they lead to something that is out of reach
of current technology? How much of the required performance must be met by each
major part of the observatory? Must one part of the observatory contribute a
bit more to performance than another? The TMT Observatory
Architecture Document (OAD) describes an illustrative concept for TMT that
shows that these requirements can be met by a realizable system, and it guides
the apportionment of performance among the elements.
How an observatory carries out the science depends upon the way it is operated.
The vision for operating the facility also drives the design. The TMT Observatory
Concept Document (OCD) describes how the resulting observatory will be used
to carry out research.
This set of three documents (ORD, OAD, OCD) drives all of the design. Our team
has been working in depth to define the design and how we plan to build TMT.
This plan is described in the TMT
Construction Proposal.
In this document you can read a reprise of the science, our operating vision,
our requirements and the design and development challenges for each part of TMT.
And you can read a description of how we plan to implement TMT through construction
and early operations and commissioning. It is all there.
There remains a great deal of work ahead before we are ready for a planned start
of construction in 2009. More detailed design, completion of key R&D and
industrialization, and selection of a site and completion of the permitting process
for the site lie ahead. But before we can pour our concrete foundation we need
a documentary foundation and that is established and is available for you to
read.
Schematic history of the Universe. TMT allow
exploration of the many important science problems across all
cosmic time. Image credit: NASA/WMAP. |
