Search Results

In preparation for the contract award of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) produced two design reference missions for the vehicle. The design references used teams of engineers across the agency to come up with two configurations. This process helped NASA understand the conflicts and limitations in the CEV design, and investigate options to solve them.

An austere fiscal environment in the aerospace community creates pressure to reduce program costs, often minimizing or even deleting human interface requirements from the design process. With the assumption that the flight crew can recover, in real time, from a poorly human factored space vehicle design, the classical crew interface requirements have either been not included in the design or not properly funded, even though they are carried as requirements. Cost cuts have also affected the quality of retained human factors engineering personnel. Planning is ongoing to correct these issues. Herein are techniques for ensuring that human interface requirements are integrated with flight design from proposal through verification and launch activation.

This paper discusses the Portable Life Support Subsystem (PLSS) packaging design work done by the NASA and Hamilton Sundstrand in support of the 3 future space missions; Lunar, Mars and zero-g. The goal is to seek ways to reduce the weight of PLSS packaging, and at the same time, develop a packaging scheme that would make PLSS technology changes less costly than the current packaging methods. This study builds on the results of NASA's in-house 1998 study, which resulted in the “Flex PLSS” concept. For this study the present EMU schematic (low earth orbit) was used so that the work team could concentrate on the packaging. The Flex PLSS packaging is required to: protect, connect, and hold the PLSS and its components together internally and externally while providing access to PLSS components internally for maintenance and for technology change without extensive redesign impact. The goal of this study was two fold: 1.

The Advanced Integration Matrix (AIM) project at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) was chartered to study and solve systems-level integration issues for exploration missions. One of the first issues identified was an inability to conduct trade studies on control system architectures due to the absence of mature evaluation criteria. Such architectures are necessary to enable integration of regenerative life support systems. A team was formed to address issues concerning software and hardware architectures and system controls.. The team has investigated what is required to integrate controls for the types of non-linear dynamic systems encountered in advanced life support. To this end, a water processing bioreactor testbed is being developed which will enable prototyping and testing of integration strategies and technologies.

Research committed by the Langley Research Center through 1995 resulting in the HZETRN code provides the current basis for shield design methods according to NASA STD-3000 (2005). With this new prominence, the database, basic numerical procedures, and algorithms are being re-examined with new methods of verification and validation being implemented to capture a well defined algorithm for engineering design processes to be used in this early development phase of the Bush initiative. This process provides the methodology to transform the 1995 HZETRN research code into the 2005 HZETRN engineering code to be available for these early design processes. In this paper, we will review the basic derivations including new corrections to the codes to insure improved numerical stability and provide benchmarks for code verification.

Developing advanced technology through the prototype phase on a system as complex as a Portable Life Support Subsystem (PLSS) for an Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) is a time and resource consuming process. Experience has shown that most of the decisions controlling the life cycle cost of a system intended for operational use are made very early in the design process. By the preliminary design review most of the design-controlled cost drivers are locked into the design. To ensure a reasonable chance for the design to successfully meet mission requirements, it is best to choose the most promising, most likely-to-succeed technology available in the early stages of breadboard and preprototype development.

This paper will describe the ISS TransHab’s architectural design being proposed as a habitation module for the International Space Station. TransHab is a space inflatable habitation module that originally was designed to support a crew of six as a transit habitat (TransHab) to and from Mars. As an evolution of TransHab, it has transformed into the proposed alternative habitat module for the International Space Station (ISS). A team of architects and engineers at the Johnson Space Center has been designing and testing this concept to make it a reality.