NIA | Langley Professors

Georgia Tech Langley Professor

Alan W. Wilhite, Ph.D.
Director, the Center for Aerospace Systems Engineering, Modeling and Simulation

Research Interests and Specialty Areas:

"My students can't wait to come to work. They're on the forefront. They're
creating everything. The decisions we make today will affect the next 30
years. I don't think there's anywhere else in the country where you can do
these sorts of things."

Want to design a lunar rover? What about a habitat for Moon colonists? Interested in power units for spacecraft or communications gear for lunar-exploration jaunts? For Dr. Alan Wilhite, these are not questions for hobbyists, but practical issues that a new generation of engineers and scientists must face as the nation prepares for an ambitious agenda of taking humans back to the Moon, on to Mars and throughout the Solar System.

It is a task for which Dr. Wilhite has long prepared. He began his career at NASA Langley Research Center learning how to program 1960s-era computers; shortly thereafter, Dr. Wilhite transitioned to wind tunnel testing in support of the Apollo program that would culminate with an American lunar landing in 1969.

From there, Dr. Wilhite participated in tests and evaluations of the Space Shuttle, which debuted in 1981. As the field of computer simulation advanced, Dr. Wilhite was involved in modeling of supersonic and hypersonic aerospace planes, advanced rocket designs and proposed next-generation spacecraft. At Langley, he would eventually serve as chief systems engineer, and systems program manager of NASA’s High-Speed Research Program and become director of NASA’s Independent Program Assessment Office.

Today, Dr. Wilhite is the NASA Langley Distinguished Professor of Advanced Aerospace Systems Architecture in the School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and also serves as the co-director of the Georgia Tech Center for Aerospace Systems Engineering, Modeling, and Simulation. Dr. Wilhite has served as NASA’s external chair for systems engineering strategic planning and is an AIAA associate fellow, with membership on several key AIAA technical committees.

Defining Future Exploration

Under Dr. Wilhite’s tutelage, NIA graduate students participated in NASA’s Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS). The NIA was part of a distinguished national team of engineers and specialists that evaluated requirements for NASA’s proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), now known as Orion. Once the Space Shuttle is retired, planned for 2010, Orion will provide crew transport to the International Space Station.

The Study also defined the top-level requirements and configurations for crew and cargo launch systems to support lunar and Mars exploration programs, and developed a baseline exploration architecture concept to support sustained human and robotic lunar exploration operations. Key technologies were identified that enable and significantly enhance proposed exploration systems to optimize near-term and far-term technology investments.

The group led by Dr. Wilhite made recommendations for the shape of the Orion reentry vehicle and made recommendations on technologies necessary for the near-term lunar and long-term Mars exploration programs. Dr. Wilhite’s students also studied the technology requirements for Constellation, the combination of large and small systems that will provide humans the capabilities necessary to travel and explore the solar system.

Constellation will be made up of Earth-to-orbit, in-space and surface transportation systems, surface and space-based infrastructures, power generation, communications systems, maintenance and science instrumentation, and robotic investigators and assistants.

Achieving Mission Success

According to the ESAS findings, although many of the key features of proposed space-exploration architecture echo those used in the Apollo program, there will be additional innovations as the nation prepares to return to the Moon. Among them are

Double the number of crew to the lunar surface
Four times the number of lunar surface crew-hours for sortie missions
A Crew Module (CM) with three times the volume of the Apollo Command Module
Global lunar-surface access with anytime return to the Earth
Permanent human presence at lunar outposts
Demonstrator systems and technologies for eventual missions to Mars
Extensive use of in-situ lunar resources
Significantly enhanced human-safety and mission reliability

To support such goals, Dr. Wilhite and NIA students under his direction are continuing simulations of exploration-related flight performance, structures, propulsion, thermal control and cryogenics. Their comprehensive architecture of simulations includes an assessment of how payloads, cost, safety and reliability affect mission planning and mission success.

"We have a pretty exciting academic program. Our students are taught by
some fo the country's leading experts and mentored by the best in the
world. My classes essentially remodeled the Apollo program and tried to
imagine how we could reengineer it using a modern approach. We determined
the Apollo engineers were very smart people. They came up with the right
then - and it would be the right answer today."

The Center for Aerospace Systems Engineering, Modeling and Simulation

This Center supports NASA, the Department of Defense and industry, providing advanced systems engineering techniques, models, simulation, and environments to improve cost, development time, and system quality. The Center promotes excellence in the nation's systems-development efforts through research, education, creativity and innovation in

Modeling and simulation of systems and systems of systems
Robust design and engineering practices
Advanced engineering environments
Systems engineering and engineering integration

Included in the systems engineering center are methods for robust design. Stochastic processes are being developed to support optimization and sensitivity analyses. These methods are being used to model risk, system design margins, and uncertainty in engineering analyses for cost, safety, reliability and performance. Very quick, discrete event-model capability has been developed for operations simulation that includes reliability, time to repair, element crew size, and availability to pin-point system sensitivities to operations as well as design and production.

This Center also supports an advanced engineering environment to integrate geographically dispersed engineers and students into a single computational and knowledge environment. Advanced product life-cycle management tools will be incorporated to virtually model the system and integration processes for design, manufacturing, production, and operations.

Within the Center, a systems engineering modeling and simulation lab is being developed to integrate systems engineering practices across the complete system of life-cycle to develop system requirements, access design and technology alternatives, and operate the system virtually to determine the best design based on cost, safety, performance and risk.

Methodologies will be developed to create a seamless level of modeling and simulation from conceptual to detailed engineering to support of all phases of system development. An integration environment is also being developed to support industry's and NASA's state-of-the-art multidisciplinary engineering computational tools to model systems and associated technologies.

Contact Information: E-mail | (757) 325-6810