Manned Mars Mission on-orbit operations metric development

Abstract

This report describes the effort made to develop a scoring system, or metric, for comparing astronaut Extra Vehicular Activity with various robotic options for the on-orbit assembly of a very large spacecraft, such as would be needed for a Manned Mars Mission. All trade studies comparing competing approaches to a specific task involve the use of some consistent and unbiased method for assigning a score, or rating factor, to each concept under consideration. The relative scores generated by the selected rating system provide the tool for deciding which of the approaches is the most desirable.