How can we achieve routine, affordable, and safe transportation to and from space? It is the goal of this site to assist in answering that question.

Enabling future space transportation systems growth requires improving multiple elements and their processes. This includes the flight vehicle, the spaceport, and the organization. It requires all of these be optimized, together. Customers, developers, designers and operators working from a whole systems perspective, building on the lessons of the past - that is our emphasis in the next generation of designs for access to space.

• Space Transportation Systems Affordability, Responsiveness, Reliability and Safety

  • Supply Chain Management and Space Transportation Systems

• Space Transportation Systems Operations
  • About Data and the 2005 NASA Authorization Act
  • Models
  • Simulations
  • Analysis
  • Tools, Surveys

• The Infrastructure as Spaceport

• Space Solar Power

• The Highly Reusable Space Transportation Study

• The 2009 Review of Human Space Flight Plans Committee Report

• The NASA Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS)

Within Reach, Within Us (video)

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Bio

NASA Kennedy Space Center

Update Log

February 4, 2010

• Developing a Robust, Adaptable NASA Human Space Flight Strategy Factoring Budgetary and Technological Uncertainty or "The Primer" to NASA & Contractor Costs, October 10, 2009 (Post-Augustine Commitee)

September 4, 2009

• The Unseen Cost: Industrial Base Consequences of Defense Strategy Choices, July 2009, by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA)

  • Download at AIA or here.

August 17, 2009

• Shuttle Shortfalls and Lessons Learned for the Sustainment of Human Space Exploration, Presented at the 45^th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, AIAA 2009-5346, 2-5 August 2009, Denver, Colorado by - Edgar Zapata, NASA, Kennedy Space Center, Florida & Daniel J. H. Levack, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Canoga Park, California & Russel E. Rhodes, NASA, Kennedy Space Center, Florida & John W. Robinson, The Boeing Company, Huntington Beach, California

August 14, 2009

• Modeling has lead to exploring the behavior of chance and events inside complex systems, by thinking of game theory, as outlined in "NASA Equilibrium, Game Theory and National Policy".

July 13, 2009

• A Review of the NASA Space Shuttle and Human Space Flight, Fixed and Variable Space Transportation System Costs (A Product in Support of the Augustine Committee)

June 10, 2009

• Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Space Transportation Systems

• "PrimeSupplier" - a software tool for improved supply chain management.

• Link to the National Space Society Space Solar Power Library, containing over 25,000 pages of documents on space solar power.

June 2, 1009

• Link to the website of J. Michael Snead, "Spacefaring America" dealing with Space Solar Power among other related topics.
  • On "The Vital Need for America to Develop Space Solar Power"

• A Space Review Article by Trevor Brown, June 1, 2009 - "SSP: A Spherical Architecture"

• Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic Security, Phase 0 Architecture Feasibility Study, Report to the Director, National Security Space Office, Interim Assessment, Release 0.1, 10 October 2007 (download, 3.6MB .pdf)

"Preventing resource conflicts in the face of increasing global populations and demands in the 21st century is a high priority for the Department of Defense. All solution options to these challenges should be explored, including opportunities from space.

^{In March 2007, the National Security Space Office’s Advanced Concepts Office presented the idea of space-based solar power (SBSP) as a potential grand opportunity to address not only energy security, but environmental, economic, intellectual, and space security as well. First proposed in the late 1960’s, the concept was last explored in the NASA’s 1997 "Fresh Look" Study. In the decade since this last study, advances in technology and new challenges to security have warranted a current exploration of the strategic implications of SBSP. For these reasons, my office sponsored a no-cost Phase 0 Architecture Feasibility Study of SBSP during the Spring and Summer of 2007."}

May 26, 2009

"The Joint Confidence Level Paradox, A History of Denial", by Glenn Butts, NASA Kennedy Space Center, and Kent Litton, SAIC/Craig Technologies (download, 3MB .pdf)

"The authors provide Historical Evaluation of Cost and Schedule Estimating Performance During NASA's Tenure as an Agency - Following which they introduce an optimum Hybrid model for more accurately calculating Cost and Schedule estimates in NASA's Complex systems engineering environment."

May 4, 2009

A brief analysis exploring the change in the U.S launcher success record relative to the rest of the world after the Shuttle and the Delta II systems are retired. This is a record of successfully attaining orbit, not spacecraft reliability once on orbit. The Bayesian "Probability of Success" or "p.o.s". is k(lv) +1/n(lv) +2 (see attached table), so that the risk of a launcher without much of a track record is accounted for and a launcher with, say, and 0 and 1 record, isn’t given a zero probability of success.

The original data, minus the graph/sorting, and the subtraction effect/analysis is credited to Ed Kyle and http://www.geocities.com/launchreport/reliability2009.txt, the "SPACE LAUNCH REPORT, ACTIVE LAUNCH VEHICLE RELIABILITY STATISTICS" as of April 29, 2009.

February 17, 2009

(Revised): The ez-NASA Model, A Tool for Strategic Insight

February 3, 2009

Counting the Links in the Supply Chain, as published January 2009 in NASA's Rendezvous Magazine.

OR - NASA internal web only - the article at Rendezvous Magazine.

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Space Station Assembly Sequence Animation