ESP Biography



RICHARD DULCE, ESP Teacher




Major: System Design and Management

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: 2024

Picture of Richard Dulce

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Not Available.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

E15508: "Lunar Lander" Design Challenge in Spark 2023 (Mar. 18 - 19, 2023)
Real life engineering design includes layers of complexity beyond always selecting the best engineering solutions. Speed to market and material costs are additional constraints levied on engineers. Through an upgraded twist on the classic egg drop challenge, students will compete in teams to build "lunar landers" from the limited material supply pool. The objective of the lander design is to keep the astronauts (eggs) safe, while optimizing the design versus tradeoffs in material cost and speed to deliver. Simulating real-life constraints in engineering design, students will be limited by a material budget, and must factor the pros and cons of material choices into their design. In an exploration of the project management triple constraint (cost, schedule, and performance), the best design must not only exceed the minimum system requirements, but maximize utility to NASA in terms of both cost and schedule.