My involvement was designing the propulsion system that takes the crew through the rift safely. Unfortunately we lost a few probes that we sent. But in losing the probes we gained a lot of data to help us design an adequate craft. The data was so complex that their current designers weren't able to find a solution. That's why I was brought in.
I had been working on the design of the new Orion rocket when suddenly they reassigned me to a new division that I had never heard of before. I had been around the block a few times, so for there to be any surprises in regards to our administration hierarchy was quite a...well, surprise.
Apparently in secret they built a new hangar north of the Kennedy Space Center. They had a small team of engineers working on the problem of traveling through the rift as safely as possible. Although several probes had traveled through, on return they always showed signs of heavy damage and were on the verge of being destroyed. We needed something safer.
I won't bore you with the details, but the structural design had to take variables on the quantum level into account in order to increase stability. It all came down to designing the craft so that the Heisenberg uncertainty would play out in our favor. And yes that was my idea.
So based on my design we completely changed how we would go about building the craft. It was strange, in all my experience at NASA we were always made painfully aware of the limitations of our budget. This was the first time that I felt like money really was no object. This parallel universe had been appraised at quite a high value, and the higher ups wanted to make sure this was done right.
Fortunately for them i was used to budget constraints so in the end they got way more out of our team then you would think was possible.
