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May 1998

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Space Operations and Support Technical Committee

4th Annual Workshop on Reducing the Cost of Space Operations

Track 4

Space Transportation - Achieving Affordable Operations

Introduction

The Space Operations and Support Technical Committee (SOSTC) of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is concerned with operations, including technology development and approaches, for missions and spacecraft both in Earth orbit and beyond, and with operations, technology developments and approaches for space transportation systems. The operations and support of systems in space, as well as the means to getting there, encompasses broad areas critical to future space enterprise.

In keeping with this charter, the technical committee (TC) sponsored a 2-day workshop in Colorado Springs, CO. on May 13 and 14, 1998. Four tracks were held to address specific areas in the field of space related operations. Track 4 addressed the space transportation side of the equation in the session "Space Transportation - Achieving Affordable Operations".

Purpose

The purpose of the workshop was to provide an interactive forum in which participants can share, discuss and be exposed to the work, ideas and experience of other professionals in a similar field, working to further the achievement of affordable space transportation. "Interactive" and "participants" are the root words, versus paper sessions at conferences where formalities, size and time usually limit interaction between presenters and attendees.

The workshop purpose also furthers the broader objectives of the SOSTC, in particular:

  • To investigate the development and implementation of operations and support for space related activity, and develop positions on operational issues needing AIAA input from a cross-section of member expertise.
  • To focus on operations technologies associated with space infrastructure, including those infrastructures associated with low and geosynchronous Earth orbit activity, and spaceports and space transportation.
  • To identify methods or standards for making operations more affordable and low cost, safer and overall more productive.

Workshop Participants

  • Edgar Zapata, NASA KSC, Lead
  • Major Andy Dobrot, Air Force Space Command, Co-Lead
  • Mike Nix, NASA MSFC, Operations and Advanced Concepts
  • Doug Morris, NASA LaRC, Vehicle Analysis Branch, Operations Analysis
  • J. Michael Snead, Wright Patterson, Air Force Research Labs
  • Dennis Poulos, Air Force Space Command
  • Bill Findiesen, Boeing, Future Systems
  • Pat Scott, Lockheed Martin Technical Operations, Fl.
  • Ted Neumann, Air Force Space Command
  • Rick Christenson, MSFC, Propulsion Laboratory
  • Dave Stone, NASA HQ, Code RT
  • Matt Schweitzer, ANSER, CO.
  • Marlowe Cassetti, Boeing, Future Systems
  • Philip Roll, Boeing, Reliability and Maintainability

Presentations and Subjects Discussed

  • Dobrot - Military Spacelift, Looking to the Future
  • Scott - Bantam Low Cost Booster, Experiences
  • Christenson - Propulsion Systems Design, Modeling Operations
  • Snead - Air Force, NASA and Commercial Cooperation in Establishing a Robust Space Infrastructure
  • Morris - Operations and Support Analysis, Models and Process
  • Nix - Operations Simulation and Analysis Modeling System
  • Scott - Lesson Learned, Lockheed Martin Launch Vehicle (Athena)

It is impossible to capture all of the issues, thoughts and ideas discussed and debated in the workshop. It is possible however and, more importantly, goes to the purpose of the workshop, to capture the common threads that pervaded the diverse topics covered. Issues of organizational culture and structure, and relations to technology investment, maturity and growth became recurring themes leading to a recognition of certain broader truths. The right questions must precede any attempt to find the right answers.

Quotable quotes:

  • MILITARY SPACELIFT: "Performance is not the issue - The need is to drive down costs and improve responsiveness"
  • A Space Operations Vehicle capable of meeting the requirements such as "timely and routine delivery of mission assets" shares much in common with the operational requirements being driven in the private sector that will eventually open up space.
  • BANTAM: As costs reduce or operational affordability goals become more ambitious, the need is ever more acute for infrastructure support such as range or spaceport fees that are also as proportionally low cost and streamlined.
  • PROPULSION SYSTEMS DESIGN MODELING: Design models exist; operational modeling for costs or time must be an integral part of a designers toolkit in the same group with models for engine and vehicle performance.
  • AIR FORCE, NASA AND COMMERCIAL COOPERATION IN ESTABLISHING ROBUST INFRASTRUCTURE: Expenditures to build space infrastructure are a requirement if we wish to invest towards enabling future economic growth. It has been done before and is done today - the railroads, airports, highways, the net.
  • OPERATIONS AND SUPPORT ANALYSIS: Investing in information that turns into knowledge is required; to define support requirements during the conceptual phase requires "better sources of information on current system's reliability, maintainability and cost of support requirements".
  • OPERATIONS SIMULATION AND ANALYSIS MODELING SYSTEM: "The role of systems analysis and modeling is to produce rigorous and consistent evaluations so as to foster better decisions" - NASA Systems Engineering Handbook, June 1995. Information on today's systems, again a requirement, for decisions that will open up space sooner, rather than later.
  • LAUNCH OPERATIONS LESSONS LEARNED, LMLV: Many lessons, too little time - Design and operations; must be tightly integrated by people in order to be truly integrated as a design of processes, organizations and hardware/software. Operations must become a part of any design for success.

Workshop Themes

Certain issues continued to arise and be debated in the workshop, notable for the relevant and broad cross section of experiences and backgrounds of the participants. Two recurring themes were:

Culture

+

Investment

Culture may be used broadly to refer to an organizations or groups more intangible characteristics or "way of doing business" as well as the type of and qualities of interactions with other groups. A government agency, such as NASA or DOD, a private enterprise, or a small business may all have extremely different goals and methods of work within their organizations as well as when working with others. Operations, in order to be fully a part of a product cycle, must be incorporated into the organizations stream of thought. Often used approaches to achieving the best product and satisfying cross cutting customer requirements such as concurrent engineering (CE) or integrated product development teams (IPDT's) fully rely on the quality of (1) communicating among people and (2) emerging products based on new understandings that pull together what may have appeared to be diverse directions. Operations in space transportation continue to be an area which is more often than not an afterthought of hardware design or organizational design. Lessons learned being a part of product improvement is one important measure of organizational culture. Investing in information as seeds toward future knowledge, integrating operations models into the routine of product developments, a need to streamline government processes that are supposed to assist business, and focusing in on the real customer requirements are not technology issues - they are issues of organizational culture.

  • Operations must be integral to product design and to organizational design.
  • Decision making that invests in future product directions without fully incorporated operations knowledge, before and throughout, can not satisfy customer requirements. Invest in knowledge and assure it's a part of decisions that will make space transportation affordable.

Investment must describe future spending by government agencies in space activity. Infrastructure cooperation and collaboration, such as between NASA, DOD and the private sector, can foster and support growth in space. Airports, early railroads, highways, space based communications systems, or information infrastructure such as the internet, are all examples of infrastructure investments lead and funded by U.S. government entities. This second workshop point requires the right collaborations and organizational systems, as made in the previous point, to assure technology and infrastructure investment decisions truly achieve the highest multiples of return on investment, such as by resulting in affordable space transportation.

  • Investment in infrastructure and collaborations in these enterprises are required to break out of the "chicken and egg" syndrome characteristic of space transportation today (need more flights to lower cost, need lower costs to create customers for more flights).
  • Space investment, assisting technology maturity, and spawning markets, on the spacecraft side of the economics is bearing fruit (the Teledesics factor). This will eventually place higher pressures on the transportation elements to improve drastically, versus continued stagnation.
  • Technology maturity is intrinsically and directly related to the reliability of current space transportation; this in turn is one step removed from dependability, the hardware state of readiness, or not, on the ground. One further step over is cost and complexity, the root of un-affordable space transportation.

Closing

Factors exist today which show great promise towards improving the state of space transportation systems - high cost, travel for a select few, not an enterprise open to all. This workshop has addressed these factors. The next question is how can this evolution be advanced and even speeded up? Public space travel, innumerable unimagined possibilities, and knowledge, are currently blocked from realization by the lack of affordable space transportation. These are endeavors the workshop participants, and likely the public, would rather see in their lifetimes, even if confident such a state would eventually be achieved. The AIAA SOSTC workshop themes identified previously, issues of operations being fully part of systems designs and technology decisions, and of needs for investment, if successfully understood and adopted by government and industry alike, will speed up the day when space transportation is on a par with boarding an airplane, or mining natural resources in one country for use elsewhere on our globe.

Operational spacecraft number in the hundreds in low Earth orbit and beyond. The making of satellites, providing satellite operations services, and the business of launch vehicles makes up 10's of Billions of dollars in economic activity today. The business of providing services to consumers, such as voice or data, dwarfs these economics at a size in the 100's of Billions of dollars per year in economic activity. One of these prior industry segments - space transportation - is the bottleneck that currently constrains space enterprises to the imaginable. Spacelines will need spaceliners that can not only be bought at the right price, but, more importantly over a life cycle, operated affordably. This means hours for ground turnaround, not months or days. Major progress on the issues identified in this workshop will be required to bring that about.

Note: As with any such activity, or workshop, the judgments expressed are those of the panel members and may not represent the official policies of member organizations.

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Website Contact: Edgar Zapata, NASA Kennedy Space Center