A Comparison of Space Station Utilization and Operations Planning to Historical Experience
- Paper ID
93-iaf-522
- author
- company
McDonnell Douglas Aerospace
- country
U.S.A.
- year
1993
- abstract
Since the beginning of the Space Station Freedom program, NASA has been establishing requirements for the operation of a manned Space Station, and in particular for the operation of its science payloads. For the past several years, the Advanced Space Concepts Division at the NASA Langley Research Center has been performing studies to help determine these requirements. However, to date the results of such studies have never been reviewed in the context of historical experience. In order to validate these estimates, therefore, a number of historical and in- service space systems were used as analogs to evaluate Space Station utilization and operations planning. Study results yielded a mix of corroboration and disparity between the analogs and Space Station. In particular, detailed comparison of Space Station planned utilization with that of Spacelab identified several differences in payload resource utilization. This study further showed that the expected reliability of Space Station hardware is significantly higher than the reliability experienced historically. Finally, results showed that the estimated crew support requirements for Space Station closely match expectations from historical trends.