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  • An Innovative Methodology for Allocating Reliability and Cost in a Lunar Exploration Architecture

    Paper number

    IAC-06-D1.3.09

    Author

    Mr. David Young, Georgia Institute of Technology, United States

    Year

    2006

    Abstract
    In January 2005, President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration.  This vision involved a progressive expansion of human capabilities beyond Low Earth Orbit beginning with a return to the moon starting no later than 2020. Current design processes utilized to meet this vision employ performance based optimization schemes to determine the ideal solution.  In these design processes the important aspects such as cost and reliability are currently calculated as an afterthought to the traditional performance metrics.  Cost and reliability are then used as the decision maker’s criteria to determine the ideal solution.  The methodology implemented in this paper focuses on bringing these decisive variables to the forefront of the design process.   Once reliability and cost are independent variables they can be manipulated to meet the design requirements set out by the customer.  This process will directly address the top level requirements early in the design process before the architecture design is set.
    
    To achieve this methodology of making cost and reliability independent variables in the architecture design, a resource allocation technique from the business world will be implemented.  Typically in the business world a company will have many competing products that will vie for a limited number of resources.  There exist theories on how to appropriately distribute the company’s resources even though the actual performances of the products are uncertain.  This problem is very similar to the cost and reliabilities of different components of a lunar architecture design.  There is a set amount of resources (total architecture costs and reliabilities) that must be allocated to the different vehicles that make up the lunar architectures.  Once the methodology is created it will be implemented in a lunar architecture design tool.  This tool will allow the decision maker to independently change cost and reliability goals and see the lunar architecture design change dynamically.   An optimizer is then added to the analysis to allow the decision maker to set a reliability and then optimize for lowest cost.  A similar analysis can also be conducted to set the cost and optimize for the highest reliability.  The result will be a methodology that utilizes the top level decision maker’s metrics (cost and reliability) directly to influence the lunar architecture design.
    
    Abstract document

    IAC-06-D1.3.09.pdf

    Manuscript document

    IAC-06-D1.3.09.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

    To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.