Pre-mission and especially during a mission, many changes were made to the payload schedule. Our mission planners used inspection software to keep track of these changes and the resources they affect using what we call the Timeline Inspector and the Resource Inspector.
The Timeline Inspector (or TLI) displayed the activities which were planned during the mission. From this display our mission planners could quickly see what payload activity the crew was doing, what non-crew activities were occurring, and what time constraints were active or in-active.
Example Crew Schedule
The Resource Inspector (or RSI) displayed the resources which were available or in-use during the missions. From this display our mission planners could quickly keep track of the resources which were available during the mission. The example below shows the usage of power (by the experiments) beginning at day 1, 2 hours.
Example Resource Usage
The schedule inspector of ESP was used to display and inspect much of the information available about a mission timeline. The inspector had two main displays: the Timeline Inspector (TLI) and the Resource Inspector (RSI). The Timeline Inspector (TLI) allows a user to look at the scheduled activities on the timeline which were generated by the automatic scheduler and graphics timeline editor. TLI also displays the orbit opportunities generated or loaded by the orbit opportunity editor. The Resource Inspector (RSI) allows a user to look at the resource usage and availabilities associated with activities which were scheduled.
TLI and RSI were dynamic; that is if the timeline was updated, the displays were automatically updated. Static and printed output are also generated by ESP.
Timeline Inspector
The Timeline Inspector Display was divided into the crew activities, the composite activities (i.e. all activities), the selected orbit opportunities (i.e. a few important orbit opportunities like Day and Night) and all other orbit opportunities.
A picture of a typical TLI display is available in GIF (22 kb) format. We used TLI on 21" screens with 1280x1024 resolution.
Crew Activities
The first division of the display was the crew activities area which shows the user what the crew is doing. The crew names were listed down the left side and each crew members activities were drawn as rectangles from start time (left side) to finish time (right side). The time was indicated with the tick marks shown at the top of the TLI display.
The user could select from two formats: unlabeled which clearly shows when the crew moves from one step of the same activity to another and labeled (as shown in the picture below) which shows touching steps of the same model joined into one rectangle labeled with the activity name.
The user could also control the display by requesting a description of any activity or by requesting that certain activities be highlighted.
Example of the Crew Activities
Selected Orbit Opportunities
The next division showed special orbit opportunities (i.e. time periods of availability or non-availability). These special opportunities included when it is Day and Night, when TDRS communication was available, and when maneuvers occurred. The user could request the exact times when TDRS was available and information on orbiter maneuvers and attitude (i.e. the orientation of the vehicle to the earth).
Example of Selected Opportunities
Composite Activities
Following this division we had the composite activities area of the TLI display which showed the user all scheduled payload activities -- even those that did not use any crew. The activity names were listed down the left side and each activities performances were drawn as white background rectangles from start time (left side) to finish time (right side). Each activities individual steps are drawn atop the white background rectangles as black rectangles also from start time to finish.
The steps of a performance have four forms -
- Full-height (centered) rectangles indicate steps that use crew. These also appeared as solid blue rectangles if highlighting has been requested.
- Full-height raised rectangles indicate steps that are monitored by crew. These also appeared as solid blue rectangles if highlighting has been requested.
- Short rectangles indicated steps that are unattended (i.e. no crew).
- Solid lines indicated that the next step has been delayed and the resource, between the steps with the solid line, was being held.
The user could request that activities which use a particular crew-member(s) be highlighted.
Example of Composite Activities
Orbit Opportunities
The last division of the display showed the remaining orbit opportunities. The names of the opportunities were listed down the left side of the display area and the opportunities were drawn as line from the start time (left of the opportunity) to the end-time (right of the opportunity). A vertical line indicates the start and end times. The user could request a description of an individual opportunity.
Example of Orbit Opportunities
Resource Inspector
The Resource Inspector Display was divided into the equipment usage/availability plots area, and resource histogram usage plots area.
A picture of a typical RSI display is available in GIF (18 kb) format. We used RSI on 21" screens with 1280x1024 resolution.
Equipment Usage/Availability Plots
The first division of the RSI display is the Equipment usage/availability plots area which shows either when a piece of equipment was used or when it was available. When the user requests to see usage, the program indicated whether none, all, or some of the resource was used using rectangles drawn from start time (left) to end time (right). An open rectangle meant some of the equipment is used and a filled one indicated all of the equipment was used. When the user requested to see availability, lines were drawn from start time (left) to end time (right) to indicate when the equipment was available.
The user could request the software show what activities were using the resources.
Example of an Equipment Usage Plot
Histogram Resource Plots
The other divisions of the RSI display show resource histogram plots. These plots show the user how much of a resource is available and how much is used. The word "divisions" was chosen, because the user can divide the display into multiple plots (up to 10 different resources simultaneously). A histogram plot is a line drawing from the start time (left) to end time (right) moving up and down relative to the y-axis. The relation to the y-axis indicates the resources usage.
The user may request the software show what activities are using the resources.
Example of a Histogram Plot
ESP Output Options
The timeline inspector was the primary tool for looking at the schedule while running ESP. Other program in the group of programs to which ESP belonged produced elaborate output for analysis and documentation -- including documents which was used by the crew during a mission. However, ESP did contains several options for producing paper output. In addition ESP could produce several files to feed to other programs.
