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Informal Seminar by J.D. Reeves |
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Date: September 21, 2005
Time: 12:00pm
Location: NIA, Rm 137
Additional Information: Presentation (PPT)
Life Cycle Analyses of Manned Exploration Architectures
J.D. Reeves, NIA
Defining an architecture to transfer humans back to the surface of the moon, or any similar robotic or crewed exploration mission, is a challenge that inherently has multitudes of design decisions that must be properly resolved. Whereas figures of merit such as mass delivered to the lunar surface and the number of crew days allowed are examples of discriminatory variables among various architecture options, they are insignificant if the architecture itself is not safe and affordable. Crew safety and affordability are the two fundamental criteria that ultimately define the feasibility of a particular architecture or mission since all other characteristics such as performance and schedule are usually functions thereof. However, crew safety and affordability are always the most difficult measures to quantify and evaluate due to lack of historical precedence and dynamic modeling techniques.
Life cycle analysis incorporates the evaluation of crew safety and affordability with various other metrics such as maintainability, reliability, and costs associated with the unreliability of the systems themselves. Numerous computational tools are utilized such as development and production cost models, reliability analysis tools, and economic evaluation tools. Discrete Event Simulation, a probabilistic process flow analysis tool, incorporates all of the related life cycle metrics in order to generate discriminatory figures of merit.
This seminar will describe the tools and methodologies associated with architectural life cycle analysis, and will relate the major metric drivers to such analyses since it is paramount that future design decisions be made with low life cycle cost considerations in mind.
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