F26 GIRS Seminars: Bridging the RAMS Influence Gap: Enhance Your Strategies with Aerospace Lessons Learned

📅 When: Thursday, October 08, 2026
🕐 Time: 1:00–2:00 PM PT
📍 Where: (In-Person) Engineering 6 Building, Room 580B and 💻 ZOOM

Nancy J. Lindsey, RCKTMOM, LLC

headshot of Nancy j. lindsey

Short Bio: Nancy Lindsey has spent over 40 years in aviation and aerospace performing a variety of hardware/software engineering tasks across the entire gamut of air, ground, and space system life cycles and program types including Defense Communications Satellites, Commercial Communications and Television Missions, Space-based Astronomical Observatories, On-Orbit Servicing, and Earth Science Monitoring Systems;  and US Navy out-of-controlled flight training and research. Her roles and responsibilities have varied (vendor, support contractor, systems engineer, SMA engineer, branch head, team lead, review board member, sustainment/ disposal Subject Matter Expert, Trilateral Task Torce lead, deputy R&M Technical Fellow, etc.) over the years of supporting missions —from architecture development and risk assessment through launch, operations, and sustainment. This has led her to be a published specialist in Space-Sustainment, Reliability and Safety, Model-Based, and Systems Engineering, an author of the multiple RAMS standards/guidelines, and now the Proprietor and Chief Engineer of RCKTMOM, LLC.

Mrs. Lindsey has a Bachelor of Science undergraduate degree in Computer Science & Aeronautical Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, was trained in Flight Medicine and Out-of-Controlled Flight by the US Navy, and has a Master’s of Science degree in Space Studies, from the University of North Dakota.

Abstract: Modern engineering programs increasingly depend on Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Safety (RAMS) analyses to guide technical and operational decisions. Yet even well-supported RAMS findings are often introduced too late, communicated ineffectively, or insufficiently integrated into program decision-making processes to meaningfully influence outcomes. This disconnect— often referred to as the “RAMS Influence Gap”—can allow known risks, latent failure modes, and avoidable operational vulnerabilities to persist.

Drawing on more than four decades of aerospace and NASA experience, this seminar examines how RAMS engineering can become a force of influence and move beyond compliance-driven analysis to become an active contributor to mission success, sustainment, resilience, and lifecycle decision-making. Through a series of aerospace case studies spanning military aviation, satellite systems, Earth-observing missions, and launch vehicle utilization, the session explores how system architecture trades, operational/test data (anomaly and success) integration, failure mode discovery, risk-mitigation hypotheses, unknowns, and integrated collaboration can shape critical RAMS engineering outcomes and influence likelihood.

Attendees will gain practical insight into how RAMS engineering methods are applied on real aerospace programs, why technically correct analyses are not always acted upon, and how future engineers can strengthen the impact of RAMS within increasingly complex socio-technical multidisciplinary teams and influence risk-informed decision making for system design, operations, maintenance, and protection.

Follow-on seminar----To examine how emerging digital engineering approaches—including model-based engineering, digital knowledge repositories, automation, and AI-assisted analysis—may improve the timing, efficiency, consistency, and relevance of RAMS practices.