The United States (U.S.) is charting a renewed course for lunar exploration, with the fielding of a new human-rated space transportation system to replace the venerable Space Shuttle, which will be retired after it completes its missions of building the International Space Station (ISS) and servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. Powering the future of space-based scientific exploration will be the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle, which will transport the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle to orbit where it will rendezvous with the Altair Lunar Lander, which will be delivered by the Ares V Cargo Launch Vehicle ( fig. 1). This configuration wiD empower rekindled investigation of Earth's natural satellite in the not too distant future. This new exploration infrastructure, developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), will allow astronauts to leave low-Earth orbit (LEO) for extended lunar missions and preparation for the first long-distance journeys to Mars. All space-based operations -to LEO and beyond -are controlled from Earth. NASA's philosophy is to deliver safe, reliable, and cost-effective architecture solutions to sustain this multi-billiondollar program across several decades. Leveraging SO years of lessons learned, NASA is partnering with private industry and academia, while building on proven hardware experience. This paper outlines a few ways that the Engineering Directorate at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is working with the Constellation Program and its project offices to streamline ground operations concepts by designing for operability, which reduces Iifecycle costs and promotes sustainable space exploration.

NASA is advancing a new development approach and new technologies in the design, construction, and testing of the next great launch vehicle for space exploration. The ability to use these new tools is made possible by a learning culture able to embrace innovation, flexibility, and prudent risk tolerance, while retaining the hard-won lessons learned through the successes and failures of the past. This paper provides an overview of the Marshall Space Flight Center's new approach to launch vehicle development, as well as examples of how that approach has been leveraged by NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) Program to achieve its key goals of safety, affordability, and sustainability. Figure 1. NASA is learning from the past programs like Saturn and the Space Shuttle while applying new tools and management philosophy to develop the Space Launch System.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) history is built on a foundation of can-do strength, while pointing to the Saturn/Apollo Moon missions in the 1960s and 1970s as its apex -a sentiment that often overshadows the potential that lies ahead. The chronicle of America's civil space agenda is scattered with programs that got off to good starts with adequate resources and vocal political support but that never made it past a certain milestone review, General Accountability Office report, or Congressional budget appropriation. Over the decades since the fielding of the Space Shuttle in the early 1980s, a start-stop-restart cycle has intervened due to many forces. Despite this impediment, the workforce has delivered engineering feats such as the International Space Station and numerous Shuttle and science missions, which reflect a trend in the early days of the Exploration Age that called for massive infrastructure and matching capital allocations. In the new millennium, the aerospace industry must respond to transforming economic climates, the public will, national agendas, and international possibilities relative to scientific exploration beyond Earth's orbit. Two pressing issues -workforce transition and mission success -are intertwined. As this paper will address, U.S. aerospace must confront related workforce development and industrial base issues head on to take space exploration to the next level. This paper also will formulate specific strategies to equip space engineers to move beyond the seemingly constant start-stop-restart mentality to plan and execute flight projects that actually fly.In general, U.S. aerospace entities face the same workforce development challenges -from pending retirements to a lack of new hires. Many mid-career employees have never flown hardware or operated an experiment in space, which are rewards that motivate personnel, wherever they are on their career paths. This paper surveys the current aerospace environment and posits potential solutions to the ever-present recruitment and retention challenge by equipping the industry as a whole to weather and break the start-stop-restart cycle to which it has been continually subjected to over the last few decades. To retain the top-quality engineers who form the backbone of the nation's aerospace capability, it is critical that strategic plans be followed with demonstrable action. It is also vital that the government reduce the time to market by delivering incremental products to its stakeholders, rather than an all-or-nothing approach. The recent Ares I-X mission in October 2009 is a prime example of the power of testing to train the workforce, generate technical data from real-world flight profiles, and deliver visible value to stakeholders, while blazing a path forward toward getting to first flight. AbstractThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) history is built on a foundation of can-do strength, while pointing to the Saturn/Apollo Moon missions in the 1960s and 1970s as its apex -a...

No abstract

With completion of its Critical Design Review (CDR) in 2015, NASA is deep into the manufacturing and testing phases of its new Space Launch System (SLS) for beyond-Earth exploration. This CDR was the first in almost 40 years for a NASA human launch vehicle and marked a successful milestone on the road to the launch of a new era of deep space exploration. The review marked the 90-percent design-complete, a final look at the design and development plan of the integrated vehicle before full-scale fabrications begins and the prelude to the next milestone, design certification. Specifically, the review looked at the first of three increasingly capable configurations planned for SLS. This "Block 1" design will stand 98.2 meters (m) (322 feet) tall and provide 39.1 million Newtons (8.8 million pounds) of thrust at liftoff to lift a payload of more than 70 metric tons (154,000 pounds)more than double that of the retired space shuttle program or other current launch vehicles. It dramatically increases the mass and volume of human and robotic exploration. Additionally, it will decrease overall mission risk, increase safety, and simplify ground and mission operationsall significant considerations for crewed missions and unique, high-value national payloads. In its first two missions, SLS will launch NASA's Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) on an un-crewed flight beyond the moon and back and the first crewed flight around the moon. The current design has a direct evolutionary path to a vehicle with a 130t lift capability that offers even more capability to reduce planetary trip times, simplify payload design cycles, and provide new capabilities such as planetary sample returns. Every major element of SLS has hardware in production or testing, including flight hardware for the Exploration 1 (EM-1) test flight. In fact, the SLS Orion-to-Stage-Adapter flew successfully on the Exploration Flight Test (EFT) 1 launch of a Delta IV and Orion spacecraft in December 2014. This paper will discuss these and other technical and programmatic successes and challenges over the past year and provide a preview of work ahead before the first flight of this new capability.