NASA Switches Gears

[Music]

hey everybody

coming to you live from nasa’s jet

propulsion lab in pasadena california

right behind me is mission control i’m

going to let you take a look

because on february 18th we’re going to

attempt to land

nasa’s next rover to mars it’s going to

be the most sophisticated rover ever

sent to the red planet

it’s even going to have a helicopter on

so jpl is an amazing place where people

are creating robotic missions that

explore the universe

they also create satellites that orbit

the earth and help us understand this

planet that we live on

but today i’m going to talk about

something a little bit closer to home

it’s going to be about a team of space

engineers that invented a copic 19

ventilator in just 37 days and all

started

when these two people bumped into each

other at the jpl cafeteria

it was right before the very first

shutdown when the pandemic started

they started to talk about work but then

they started to talk about what coveted

might do in the united states

and that there might be a shortage of

ventilators and they started to ask the

question

a really powerful important question

is what i’m doing right this moment the

most important thing

that i could be doing well they went

home everything got shut down

but dave couldn’t get that question out

of his head

in fact that weekend he assembled the

team

he found some funding and on monday

afternoon they ended up having a doctor

come to jpl who had been working on

ventilators for decades

told them all about ventilators what

worked what didn’t work

and what was really specific to coveted

now you can imagine that this group of

engineers are asking themselves are we

the right people to be making

ventilators well after talking with the

doctor more

they started to realize that yes you

know ventilators

are things that are sensing and

responding

to bodies human bodies in our case

we create instruments that sense and

respond to other bodies

like mars or jupiter

ventilators need to be able to work in

really harsh environments

well we create things that go to outer

space the ventilators also they just

like

have to work because if they don’t work

someone might die

in our case we send things to other

planets and when they get there we can’t

go there and fix them so we have a

culture

of testing and testing to prove

ourselves

that everything can work before we send

them

now uh ventilators they’re really

complicated

and they are really expensive there’s

lots of different parts and they can do

a lot of different types of things

so the team decided that they were

instead of doing a complicated

ventilator they were going to do

something that was specific just the

covered 19

and that would make it less expensive

use less parts

and if a bunch of these were in the

hospital they could the people on

that have coveted could be using them

and we could save the really expensive

sophisticated ventilators for those

people who really really needed them

and so what they ended up doing is that

they made

a set of criteria and the criteria

was do no harm don’t use any ventilator

pieces

that are in the supply chain of current

ventilators

make sure that we use as few parts is

really necessary

make sure that we can get those parts

anywhere in the world because we want

people in lots of different countries to

be able to make these same things

and then make it easy to use because if

it’s not easy to use

people just aren’t going to use it well

i was sitting at home because i wasn’t

part of this project and i’m

you know just kind of working from home

and then i got this really

unusual email by way of dave van buren

asking me if i’d like to be a team

culturalist

i’d never heard of a team culturalist

before i actually lead a team

of artists and designers and we we help

people think through their thinking

but i thought you know what i’m going to

do anything to help let me go in

and be of help and so this is jpl

it’s a really big place but they only

led around 200 people

on lab and only a few of those were

people working

on the ventilator but this this is what

i um what i came to when i first got

there there’s flashing lights

handwritten signs all over the place

a line on the ground and

and a sign up sheet and um

you know it’s really strange and i

realized that the people on the on the

project were

in different rooms and they couldn’t see

each other and so i scavenged

cameras and computers and uh cables from

all the computers and people that were

working at home

to be able to set up a system so

everyone could see each other

and in the process i realized that you

know

um this is a really important moment

there are people that are

uh this is really a historically

important moment and so

i need to be taking pictures of all

these different moments and so i was

able to get pictures of all these

special moments when

when things first started to work but

also when things didn’t work

and i was able to send it to the rest of

the team because really only about 20

percent of the team was really

at jpl the rest were at home working and

not really

feeling connected to what was going on

so this was a really great way for them

to feel like they were part of the team

now everything was going super fast and

just an example the chief engineer said

hey we need an

interface for this ventilator that’s

going to be super easy for doctors to

use

and uh could you get it done by 6 a.m

tomorrow

and so our team called up a whole bunch

of doctors all over the country at 8 00

pm

we got together with them got done at 10

pm asking them a bunch of questions

and literally a designer ended up

spending all night

uh working on this and by 6 am he had an

interface done now this was just par for

the course

for what the engineers were going

through because they were trying to

create something they’d never

thought of before and uh you know trying

to get all the parts to work get the

software to work with parts

but the entire time we’re working with

various doctors

and the person in the middle is dr

graves and he’s the person who first

told the team about what a ventilator

was

the person in the computer next to him

is the

person who uh his name is dr levin he’s

at mount sinai hospital

in new york and that was the center the

epicenter

of covid at the very beginning and he

would literally come out of the icu

in his smocks and get on the webcam and

start to

critique what we were creating so 37

days

after they first learned what a

ventilator was

they stayed up the entire night and in

the morning they had finally finished

their first prototype working prototype

of the ventilator

they had to hurry up and package it up

because then they’re gonna send it

to new york to dr levin at mount sinai

hospital where they tested it

on this human testing case where they’re

able to see whether or not the

ventilator worked and it worked

everyone was super excited but they’re

even more excited today

because there are 27 organizations all

around the world

that are creating these things whether

they’re in nigeria

in brazil in india in dozens of other

countries

and it all started with that simple

powerful question is what i’m doing

right now

the most important thing i should be

doing

i’m gonna leave you with this little

video and perhaps you might need a

tissue

thank you

we are designing an easy and rapidly

mass manufacturable ventilator device

and it is

a crazy project

this crisis is unprecedented in our

lives

and and requires precedent action

i’m so amped up i mean it really the

adrenaline rush

it’s exciting but it’s exhausting i

think we all just want to do everything

we can

to try to help

[Music]

i would say the biggest personal

challenges that

i have myself is uh i don’t have time to

sleep

i think what jpl brings to the table is

extraordinary talent

it also brings to the table tremendous

innovation

the third thing it brings to the table

is tremendous focus

the other thing that i felt i see it in

our team and that is a call to duty

i have this talent i’m an engineer or a

scientist

i can do something

[Music]

we have the potential to save human

lives people that we might know

our neighbors our families and that

intensity um

amazing it’s amazing and as stressful as

this has been for everybody in the last

couple of weeks

um not one of us can stop

[Music]

you