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NASA NTRS2003

Off the Charts

NASA basically looked at the two options and said, "Well, propulsion...that's the old way of doing business. You guys will never get this job done if you do it that way. It's too expensive." And so we said, "Okay, let's go make this airbag thing work." The airbags idea was clearly eccentric. Off the charts. When you think of an airbag, you think of the automobile design, about twice the size of a pillow, which took many years to develop. But what we needed would have to be about 19 feet in diameter, designed to tolerate a head-on collision with a very rocky Mars surface at 60 miles per hour or more. And not just once, but multiple times, as it bounced and rolled to a stop. The only thing in common between our design and an automobile airbag was the name. Another very eccentric aspect of this was the idea of using fabrics in outer space. We were used to dealing in aluminum and titanium, but is needed to be the stuff of bulletproof vests...advanced polymer cloth. We'd worked with software in space, but not 'softgoods.'

Muirhead, Brian K.↗

NASA NTRS2003

Our Space Future: A Challenge to the Conceptual Artist Concept Art for Presentation and Education

The history of visual representation is as old as the history of humankind. The Paleolithic drawings that are found in caves present our collective need for recording our dependence on the life-sustaining animal populations. Our wishes for their fertility (and for our own) comprise much of the art we find in these prehistoric drawings. As well, the cycles of the Moon are recorded in Paleolithic art relating to women's estrus cycles that link the perpetuation of our species with the cosmos. Art became our initial way of description and a way of envisioning our future goals. At the time when pictograms began to form humanity s first written languages, we also started to use art to invoke favorable forces and ward off devastation. Another important application of visual art became the conceptualization of tools, buildings and ideas that were impossible to describe by other means. Humans have a historical tradition of considering visual images as vehicles to inspire us to pursue a different way of thinking through our ability of envisioning. Complex concepts can be described visually and have the ability to convey information on many different levels. Conceptual art is a tool that can describe wide-ranging ideas from religious insights to currently unfeasible engineering projects and visionary dreams for humankind.

Bangs, Mary C.↗

NASA NTRS2003

Small Wins

While it might not seem so radical these days to see the words 'story' and 'business' in the same sentence, that certainly wasn't the case when I set out to put together my first collection of business stories. Procter & Gamble hired me in the early 1990's as a management consultant. I participated in training programs, procedural reviews, and the like-but I wasn't satisfied with these traditional approaches. I sought to inspire significant change in the way that project practitioners approached their work, and I thought I had found the right vehicle: stories. I wanted to collect the stories of some of the most successful project managers and share them with others in the company. First, I found a sponsor with enough vision to support my idea, and then I assembled a team of eight highly successful project managers who were willing to examine the idea of writing stories about their project work. My long-term goal was to collect their stories in a full-length book.

Laufer, Alexander↗

NASA NTRS2003

Jupiter's Hot, Mushy Moon

Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. Observations by instruments on the Galileo spacecraft and on telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawai'i indicate that lava flows on Io are surprisingly hot, over 1200 oC and possibly as much as 1300 oC; a few areas might have lava flows as hot as 1500 oC. Such high temperatures imply that the lava flows are composed of rock that formed by a very large amount of melting of Io's mantle. This has led Laszlo Keszthelyi and Alfred S. McEwen of the University of Arizona and me to reawaken an old hypothesis that suggests that the interior of Io is a partially-molten mush of crystals and magma. The idea, which had fallen out of favor for a decade or two, explains high-temperature hot spots, mountains, calderas, and volcanic plains on Io. If correct, Io gives us an opportunity to study processes that operate in huge, global magma systems, which scientists believe were important during the early history of the Moon and Earth, and possibly other planetary bodies as well. Though far from proven, the idea that Io has a ocean of mushy magma beneath its crust can be tested with measurements by future spacecraft.

Taylor, G. Jeffrey↗

NASA NTRS2003

Re-Examination of a Simplified Model for Positronium-Helium Scattering

Using a local effective potential to account for electron exchange, R J Drachman and S K Houston analyzed the zero-energy scattering of ortho-positronium by helium atoms in 1970. The idea was to use the existing static-exchange results to fit the parameters of the local potential and then to use the potential in a variational target-elastic calculation. The results were remarkably good, both for the scattering length and the annihilation parameter. Recently, however, a rigorous target-elastic calculation by Blackwood et al disagreed so strongly with these old results that we have undertaken a re-examination. We find that the assumption made in the earlier work, that the direct potential is negligible compared with the exchange potential, is not quantitatively correct. But the original idea that omission of the direct potential might compensate approximately for the omission of the van der Waals potential still seems reasonable.

Drachman, Richard J.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Design by Prototype: Examples from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

This paper describes and provides exa.mples of a technique called Design-by-Prototype used in the development of research hardware at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Ames Research Center. This is not a new idea. Artisans and great masters have used prototyping as a design technique for centuries. They created prototypes to try out their ideas before making the primary artifact they were planning. This abstract is itself a prototype for others to use in determining the value of the paper it describes. At the Ames Research Center Design-by-Prototype is used for developing unique, one-of-a-kind hardware for small, high-risk projects. The need tor this new/old process is the proliferation of computer "design tools" that can result in both excessive time expended in design, and a lack of imbedded reality in the final product. Despite creating beautiful three-dimensional models and detailed computer drawings that can consume hundreds of engineering hours, the resulting designs can be extremely difficult to make, requiring many changes that add to the cost and schedule. Much design time can be saved and expensive rework eliminated using Design-by-Prototype.

Mulenburg, Gerald M.↗

NASA NTRS1999

S'COOL Provides Research Opportunities and Current Data for Today's Technological Classroom

NASA's Students' Cloud Observations On-Line (S'COOL) project, a hands-on educational project, was an innovative idea conceived by the scientists in the Radiation Sciences Branch at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, in 1996. It came about after a local teacher expressed the idea that she wanted her students to be involved in real-life science. S'COOL supports NASA's Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument, which was launched on the Tropical Rainforest Measuring Mission (TRMM) in November, 1997, as part of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. With the S'COOL project students observe clouds and related weather conditions, compute data and note vital information while obtaining ground truth observations for the CERES instrument. The observations can then be used to help validate the CERES measurements, particularly detection of clear sky from space. In addition to meeting math, science and geography standards, students are engaged in using the computer to obtain, report and analyze current data, thus bringing modern technology into the realm of classroom, a paradigm that demands our attention.

Green, Carolyn J.↗

NASA NTRS1999

Scaling features of noncoding DNA

We review evidence supporting the idea that the DNA sequence in genes containing noncoding regions is correlated, and that the correlation is remarkably long range--indeed, base pairs thousands of base pairs distant are correlated. We do not find such a long-range correlation in the coding regions of the gene, and utilize this fact to build a Coding Sequence Finder Algorithm, which uses statistical ideas to locate the coding regions of an unknown DNA sequence. Finally, we describe briefly some recent work adapting to DNA the Zipf approach to analyzing linguistic texts, and the Shannon approach to quantifying the "redundancy" of a linguistic text in terms of a measurable entropy function, and reporting that noncoding regions in eukaryotes display a larger redundancy than coding regions. Specifically, we consider the possibility that this result is solely a consequence of nucleotide concentration differences as first noted by Bonhoeffer and his collaborators. We find that cytosine-guanine (CG) concentration does have a strong "background" effect on redundancy. However, we find that for the purine-pyrimidine binary mapping rule, which is not affected by the difference in CG concentration, the Shannon redundancy for the set of analyzed sequences is larger for noncoding regions compared to coding regions.

Non-NASA Center↗

NASA NTRS2004

Transformational Systems Concepts and Technologies for Our Future in Space

NASA is constantly searching for new ideas and approaches yielding opportunities for assuring maximum returns on space infrastructure investments. Perhaps the idea of transformational innovation in developing space systems is long overdue. However, the concept of utilizing modular space system designs combined with stepping-stone development processes has merit and promises to return several times the original investment since each new space system or component is not treated as a unique and/or discrete design and development challenge. New space systems can be planned and designed so that each builds on the technology of previous systems and provides capabilities to support future advanced systems. Subsystems can be designed to use common modular components and achieve economies of scale, production, and operation. Standards, interoperability, and "plug and play" capabilities, when implemented vigorously and consistently, will result in systems that can be upgraded effectively with new technologies. This workshop explored many building-block approaches via way of example across a broad spectrum of technology discipline areas for potentially transforming space systems and inspiring future innovation. Details describing the workshop structure, process, and results are contained in this Conference Publication.

Howell, J. T.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Aspect-Oriented Programming

Computer science has experienced an evolution in programming languages and systems from the crude assembly and machine codes of the earliest computers through concepts such as formula translation, procedural programming, structured programming, functional programming, logic programming, and programming with abstract data types. Each of these steps in programming technology has advanced our ability to achieve clear separation of concerns at the source code level. Currently, the dominant programming paradigm is object-oriented programming - the idea that one builds a software system by decomposing a problem into objects and then writing the code of those objects. Such objects abstract together behavior and data into a single conceptual and physical entity. Object-orientation is reflected in the entire spectrum of current software development methodologies and tools - we have OO methodologies, analysis and design tools, and OO programming languages. Writing complex applications such as graphical user interfaces, operating systems, and distributed applications while maintaining comprehensible source code has been made possible with OOP. Success at developing simpler systems leads to aspirations for greater complexity. Object orientation is a clever idea, but has certain limitations. We are now seeing that many requirements do not decompose neatly into behavior centered on a single locus. Object technology has difficulty localizing concerns invoking global constraints and pandemic behaviors, appropriately segregating concerns, and applying domain-specific knowledge. Post-object programming (POP) mechanisms that look to increase the expressiveness of the OO paradigm are a fertile arena for current research. Examples of POP technologies include domain-specific languages, generative programming, generic programming, constraint languages, reflection and metaprogramming, feature-oriented development, views/viewpoints, and asynchronous message brokering. (Czarneclu and Eisenecker s book includes a good survey of many of these technologies).

Elrad, Tzilla↗

NASA NTRS2004

Technology Development and Demonstration Concepts for the Space Elevator

During the 1990s several discoveries and advances in the development of carbon nano-tube (CNT) materials indicated that material strengths many times greater than common high-strength composite materials might be possible. Progress in the development of this material led to renewed interest in the space elevator concept for construction of a tether structure from the surface of the Earth through a geostationary orbit (GEO) and thus creating a new approach to Earth-to-orbit transportation infrastructures. To investigate this possibility the author, in 1999, managed for NASA a space elevator work:hop at the Marshall Space Flight Center to explore the potential feasibility of space elevators in the 21 century, and to identify the critical technologies and demonstration missions needed to make development of space elevators feasible. Since that time, a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) funded study of the Space Elevator proposed a concept for a simpler first space elevator system using more near-term technologies. This paper will review some of the latest ideas for space elevator development, the critical technologies required, and some of the ideas proposed for demonstrating the feasibility for full-scale development of an Earth to GEO space elevator. Critical technologies include CNT composite materials, wireless power transmission, orbital object avoidance, and large-scale tether deployment and control systems. Numerous paths for technology demonstrations have been proposed utilizing ground experiments, air structures. LEO missions, the space shuttle, the international Space Station, GEO demonstration missions, demonstrations at the lunar L1 or L2 points, and other locations. In conclusion, this paper finds that the most critical technologies for an Earth to GEO space elevator include CNT composite materials development and object avoidance technologies; that lack of successful development of these technologies need not preclude continued development of space elevator systems in general; and that the critical technologies required for the Earth to GEO space elevator are not required for similar systems at the Moon, Mars, Europa, or for orbital tether systems at GEO, Luna, and other locations.

Smitherman, David V., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS1947

Fundamental Aerodynamic Investigations for Development of Arrow-Stabilized Projectiles

The numerous patent applications on arrow-stabilized projectiles indicate that the idea of projectiles without spin is not new, but has appeared in various proposals throughout the last decades. As far as projectiles for subsonic speeds are concerned, suitable shapes have been developed for sometime, for example, numerous grenades. Most of the patent applications, though, are not practicable particularly for projectiles with supersonic speed. This is because the inventor usually does not have any knowledge of aerodynamic flow around the projectile nor any particular understanding of the practical solution. The lack of wind tunnels for the development of projectiles made it necessary to use firing tests for development. These are obviously extremely tedious or expensive and lead almost always to failures. The often expressed opinion that arrow-stabilized projectiles cannot fly supersonically can be traced to this condition. That this is not the case has been shown for the first time by Roechling on long projectiles with foldable fins. Since no aerodynamic investigations were made for the development of these projectiles, only tedious series of firing tests with systematic variation of the fins could lead to satisfactory results. These particular projectiles though have a disadvantage which lies in the nature cf foldable fins. They occasionally do not open uniformly in flight, thus causing unsymmetry in flow and greater scatter. The junctions of fins and body are very bad aerodynamically and increase the drag. It must be possible to develop high-performance arrow-stabilized projectiles based on the aerodynamic research conducted during the last few years at Peenemuende and new construction ideas. Thus the final shape, ready for operational use, could be developed in the wind tunnel without loss of expensive time in firing tests. The principle of arrow-stabilized performance has been applied to a large number of caliburs which were stabilized by various means Most promising was the development of a subcaliber wing-stabilized projectile with driving disc (Treibspiegel) where rigid control surfaces extend beyond the caliber of the projectile into the free stream. The stabilized projectiles of full-caliber, wing-stabilized projectiles with fins within the caliber is considerably more difficult. A completely satisfactory solution for the latter has not been found yet.

Kurzweg, Hermann↗

NASA NTRS2005

Vision for Micro Technology Space Missions

It is exciting to contemplate the various space mission applications that Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology could enable in the next 10-20 years. The primary objective of this chapter is to both stimulate ideas for MEMS technology infusion on future NASA space missions and to spur adoption of the MEMS technology in the minds of mission designers. This chapter is also intended to inform non-space oriented MEMS technologists, researchers and decision makers about the rich potential application set that future NASA Science and Exploration missions will provide. The motivation for this chapter is therefore to lead the reader down a path to identify and it is exciting to contemplate the various space mission applications that Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology could enable in the next 10-20 years. The primary objective of this chapter is to both stimulate ideas for MEMS technology infusion on future NASA space missions and to spur adoption of the MEMS technology in the minds of mission designers. This chapter is also intended to inform non-space oriented MEMS technologists, researchers and decision makers about the rich potential application set that future NASA Science and Exploration missions will provide. The motivation for this chapter is therefore to lead the reader down a path to identify and consider potential long-term, perhaps disruptive or revolutionary, impacts that MEMS technology may have for future civilian space applications. A general discussion of the potential for MEMS in space applications is followed by a brief showcasing of a few selected examples of recent MEMS technology developments for future space missions. Using these recent developments as a point of departure, a vision is then presented of several areas where MEMS technology might eventually be exploited in future Science and Exploration mission applications. Lastly, as a stimulus for future research and development, this chapter summarizes a set of barriers to progress, design challenges and key issues that must be overcome in order for the community to move on, from the current nascent phase of developing and infusing MEMS technology into space missions, in order to achieve its full future potential.

Dennehy, Neil↗

NASA NTRS2005

Revolutionary Concepts of Radiation Shielding for Human Exploration of Space

This Technical Memorandum covers revolutionary ideas for space radiation shielding that would mitigate mission costs while limiting human exposure, as studied in a workshop held at Marshall Space Flight Center at the request of NASA Headquarters. None of the revolutionary new ideas examined for the .rst time in this workshop showed clear promise. The workshop attendees felt that some previously examined concepts were de.nitely useful and should be pursued. The workshop attendees also concluded that several of the new concepts warranted further investigation to clarify their value.

Adams, J. H., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS2004

Dissemination of information about the technologies of the Vision Research Lab through the World Wide Web

The Vision Research Lab at NASA John Glenn Research Center is headed by Dr. Rafat Ansari. Dr. Ansari and other researchers have developed technologies that primarily use laser and fiber optics to non-invasively detect different ailments and diseases of the eye. One of my goals as a LERCIP intern and ACCESS scholar for the 2004 summer is to inform other NASA employees, researchers and the general public about these technologies through the development of a website. The website incorporates the theme that the eye is a window to the body. Thus by investigating the processes of the eye, we can better understand and diagnosis different ailments and diseases. These ailments occur in not only earth bound humans, but astronauts as well as a result of exposure to elevated levels of radiation and microgravity conditions. Thus the technologies being developed at the Vision Research Lab are invaluable to humans on Earth in addition to those astronauts in space. One of my first goals was to research the technologies being developed at the lab. The first several days were spent immersing myself in the various articles, journals and reports about the theories behind Dynamic Light Scattering, Laser Doppler Flowmetry, Autofluoresence, Raman Spectroscopy, Polarimetry and Oximetry. Interviews with the other researchers proved invaluable to help understand these theories as well gain hands on experience with the devices being developed using these technologies. The rest of the Vision Research Team and I sat down and discussed how the overall website should be presented. Combining this information with the knowledge of the theories and applications of the hardware being developed, I worked out different ideas to present this information. I quickly learned Paint Shop Pro 8 and FrontPage 2002, as well as using online tutorials and other resources to help design an effective website. The Vision Research Lab website incorporates the anatomy and physiology of the eye, different diseases that affect the eye and the technologies being develop at the lab to help diagnosis these diseases. It also includes background information on Dr. Ansari as well as other researchers involved in the lab and it includes segments on patents, awards and achievements. There are links to help viewers navigate to internal and external websites to further investigate different ideas and hrther understand the implications of these technologies at being developed.

Dorais, Christopher M.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Instrumentation and Measurements for Electron Emission from Charged Insulators

The electron was first discovered in 1898 by Sir John Joseph Thomson and has since been the subject of detailed study by nearly every scientific discipline. At nearly the same time Heinrich Rudolf Hertz conducted a series of experiments using cathode tubes, high potentials and ultraviolet light. When applying a large potential to a cathode he found that an arching event across the metal plates would occur. In addition, when shining an ultraviolet light on the metal he found that less potential was required to induce the spark. This result, taken together with other electrical phenomena brought about by the shining of light upon metal and was eventually termed the photoelectric effect. The work of Thomson and Hertz represent the beginning of electron emission studies and a body of ideas that pervade nearly all aspects of physics. In particular these ideas tell us a great deal about the nature of physical interactions within solids. In this thesis we will focus on the emission of electrons induced by an incident electron source over a range of energies, in which one can observe changes in emitted electron flux and energy distribution. In particular, when energetic particles impinge on a solid they can impart their energy, exciting electrons within the material. If this energy is sufficient to overcome surface energy barriers such as the work function, electron affinity or surface charge potential, electrons can escape from the material. The extent of electron emission from the material can be quantified as the ratio of incident particle flux to emitted particle flux, and is termed the electron yield.

Sim, Alec M.↗

NASA NTRS2006

An Iterative Information-Reduced Quadriphase-Shift-Keyed Carrier Synchronization Scheme Using Decision Feedback for Low Signal-to-Noise Ratio Applications

In a previous publication [1], an iterative closed-loop carrier synchronization scheme for binary phase-shift keyed (BPSK) modulation was proposed that was based on feeding back data decisions to the input of the loop, the purpose being to remove the modulation prior to carrier synchronization as opposed to the more conventional decision-feedback schemes that incorporate such feedback inside the loop. The idea there was that, with sufficient independence between the received data and the decisions on it that are fed back (as would occur in an error-correction coding environment with sufficient decoding delay), a pure tone in the presence of noise would ultimately be produced (after sufficient iteration and low enough error probability) and thus could be tracked without any squaring loss. This article demonstrates that, with some modification, the same idea of iterative information reduction through decision feedback can be applied to quadrature phase-shift keyed (QPSK) modulation, something that was mentioned in the previous publication but never pursued.

Simon, M.↗

NASA NTRS2006

Towards Robust Designs Via Multiple-Objective Optimization Methods

Fabricating and operating complex systems involves dealing with uncertainty in the relevant variables. In the case of aircraft, flow conditions are subject to change during operation. Efficiency and engine noise may be different from the expected values because of manufacturing tolerances and normal wear and tear. Engine components may have a shorter life than expected because of manufacturing tolerances. In spite of the important effect of operating- and manufacturing-uncertainty on the performance and expected life of the component or system, traditional aerodynamic shape optimization has focused on obtaining the best design given a set of deterministic flow conditions. Clearly it is important to both maintain near-optimal performance levels at off-design operating conditions, and, ensure that performance does not degrade appreciably when the component shape differs from the optimal shape due to manufacturing tolerances and normal wear and tear. These requirements naturally lead to the idea of robust optimal design wherein the concept of robustness to various perturbations is built into the design optimization procedure. The basic ideas involved in robust optimal design will be included in this lecture. The imposition of the additional requirement of robustness results in a multiple-objective optimization problem requiring appropriate solution procedures. Typically the costs associated with multiple-objective optimization are substantial. Therefore efficient multiple-objective optimization procedures are crucial to the rapid deployment of the principles of robust design in industry. Hence the companion set of lecture notes (Single- and Multiple-Objective Optimization with Differential Evolution and Neural Networks ) deals with methodology for solving multiple-objective Optimization problems efficiently, reliably and with little user intervention. Applications of the methodologies presented in the companion lecture to robust design will be included here. The evolutionary method (DE) is first used to solve a relatively difficult problem in extended surface heat transfer wherein optimal fin geometries are obtained for different safe operating base temperatures. The objective of maximizing the safe operating base temperature range is in direct conflict with the objective of maximizing fin heat transfer. This problem is a good example of achieving robustness in the context of changing operating conditions. The evolutionary method is then used to design a turbine airfoil; the two objectives being reduced sensitivity of the pressure distribution to small changes in the airfoil shape and the maximization of the trailing edge wedge angle with the consequent increase in airfoil thickness and strength. This is a relevant example of achieving robustness to manufacturing tolerances and wear and tear in the presence of other objectives.

Man Mohan, Rai↗