Spacecraft Design Standards
Spacecraft Design Standards
(OP)
Hey,
Is anyone working on a set of standards for spacecraft designs? I know it may seem a little silly but I am very interested having spaceflight privatized and the one way this could be feasible if some set of standard space vehicle requirements be made.
Is anyone working on a set of standards for spacecraft designs? I know it may seem a little silly but I am very interested having spaceflight privatized and the one way this could be feasible if some set of standard space vehicle requirements be made.





RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
Good luck,
MikeVV
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
This is Cavelle .. I have switched handles due to job purposes. I have kept up with innovations in space propulsion technologies, but I have yet to see anyone work on a set of standards for various vehicle types. I think there may be a company working on modularized satelites for future launches, but as yet there are no standards for spacecrafts themselves. If anyone is interested in looking into this with me I'd be very greateful.
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
All the spacecraft manufacturers (little and big) seek such standardized products because of their economical advantages over "one-time" projects. The satellite constellations (GPS, OrbComm, Iridium, etc) make up the majority of this business.
I am interested in pursuing the concept of a spacecraft "standard" and interpret to mean a common design that has broad application to specific launch vehicles. Each launch vehicle manufacturer would be able to offer these products to potential customers and may, themselves, become integral participants in such standards. The actual drawings and specifications for these products could be created as new documents under the coordination of any organization recognized by the spacecraft community. There are many options available for this idea and further discussion is needed.
Mike Van Voorhis
MJVanVoorhis@CS.com
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
A company that pioneered this approach was SSTL back in early 80s with their modular satellites. The electronics was all stored on modular trays, these trays are then stacked and form the spacecraft primary structure. They were designed specifically for the Ariane 4 ASAP and fact flew on the first ASAP. The Ariane ASAP 5 microsatellite and minisatellite slots have become fairly standard and are also used on the PSLV (India's small/medium lift launcher) another common slot is 500x500x500mm microsatellite such as on the H-2 and some Russian ones. However the Russians adopt a much more ad hoc approach and are used to customising at very low cost, accommodating secondary payloads where possible on the launcher or primary spacecraft.
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
so why not get going.
in germany they constructed gigantic zeppeliners largeley financed by contrybutions from the people.
i know that a space project is mutch bigger but we wouldent have to confine us to one country thanks to the internet we have acces to the intire planet.
and there is also the wast possibillities for profitmaking in space (mining-manufactoring ect) this could maybee interest investors.
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
PS Beagle2 is a privately financed Mars lander currently being developed in the UK. It will fly on Mars Express (an ESA mission) so it *can* be done, but raising that amount of money is incredibly tough!
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
I believe we could be launching more missions with shorter design phases, higher inheritance (reliability), and lower cost if the industry shifted to more of a bottom-up design philosophy.
Increasing demand for more frequent launch opportunities would put more pressure on launch vehicle manufacturers (and possibly entrepenures!) to find ways to decrease the ever-restrictive costs of reaching orbit. The Telcomm industry has started the standardization push & launch vehicle providers would increase their efforts to innovate and reduce costs if the science & military sectors would follow suit.
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
For engineering standards applicable to satellite projects (engineering, management, quality assurance), see the set of european ECSS standards, available on line at http://www.ecss.nl.
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
Although following "heritage designs" is promoted, usually the mission requirments tend to tangent off what would be considered "Heritage".
This is not neccessarily the case for "standard" type goestationary communications satellites where usually the largest changes are the addition of more channels (TWTA's) and larger antenna designs.
On other, more unique missions (Mars, Outer Planets, DeepSpace Communications) the mission definition dictates that the spacecraft be dictated in design. By the unique payloads, porformance and sometimes the launch vehicle or multiple dispensing.
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
(a)it seems like most people "high up" didnt believe we could do it (we launched end of last year), and therefore didnt take into consideration any future follow-on projects, and
(b)there was insufficient public exposure/media emphasis put on the project to instigate large public support/interest.
So basically, after the successful launch and operation all of the expertise and experience developed during the project has been scattered to the winds. Personally it was fantastic experience, but it leads to the question: what was the point? Unfortunately there are extremely limited opportunities to further develop a career in Australia in the satellite/aerospace industry, and thus I find myself working in other industries, not utilising this valuable experience.
We do however have a bus/platform which now could be applied to other projects, unfortunately we dont have the customer base to make it work at the moment.
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
There are some basic questions that need to be answered to derive the level of necessary requirements.
Will the launch vehicle be manned or unmanned? What is the flight plan, sub orbital, orbital, or interplanetary? Should it survive reentry and if so should it be reusable? How safe is it (Safety Analysis)? How reliable does it need to be (Reliability Analysis)? What happens if there is a failure? How many failures can be tolerated before loss of the mission/vehicle/life?
A good source for Reliability related requirements would be to start with topic R-1 “Quantitative Reliability Requirements” in “The Rome Laboratory - Reliability Engineer’s Toolkit”, which you can find here:
http://quanterion.com/KnowledgeBase/ReliabilityToolkit.shtml
NOTE as the name implies this is a “tool kit” if you were to obtain all the documentation referenced in this document you would be looking at OVER 6 ft of bookshelf space!
Good Luck
Phillip
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
I found it here, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/jul/HQ_n03069_human_rating.html
Good luck to all those who hope to vacation on the moon, send me a postcard or something. It was nice up there until they put up all those mars themed putt-putt courses with their neon lights and astro-turf.
RE: Spacecraft Design Standards
Up to the present, it has been so extreamly expensive to design and produce spacecraft, and many spacecraft "houses" have done every thing that they could to "standardize" one or more "lines" of spacecraft designs (Lockheed Martin A2100, as an example).
But that has to be tempered with the differences in missions or in the case of communications satellites, their payload capacity and antenna configurations.
Many extra-earth missions have been based on existing communications buses (Mars Observer, which was an RCA Satcom communications bus derivitive).
Also, many missions demand that the spacecraft itself, be as mission specific as possible for reasons such as mass to orbit or escape, maximizing payload mass, etc.
So, each comapny is forced by "cost" and mostly the customer, to used a "heritage" spacecraft, but each company comes to a different conclusion as to what that might be.
There are many existing "Spacecraft Standards", but that usually referes to the design standards and processes and standardized hardware.
So again, there really isn't a reason to have a "Standard" spacecraft; mission purpose will always define the design.
Peter V