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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 451 records · Page 25
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Autonomous Fueling System for Heavy-Duty Fuel Cell Electric Trucks

The motivation for this project stemmed from the challenges associated with rapidly refueling heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell electric trucks (FCETs). Current manual refueling processes for fast refueling involve large, heavy equipment (e.g., hoses three times heavier than standard) and pose ergonomic risks and potential for equipment damage. The goal was to develop and test an autonomous fueling system to improve ergonomics, enhance safety, increase equipment durability through design improvements, and potentially speed up the fueling process. This project aimed to add to the understanding of autonomous systems in the context of heavy-duty hydrogen refueling, evaluating the technical effectiveness of potential concepts. A successfully developed system would benefit the public by facilitating the adoption of zero-emission heavy-duty transport, reducing reliance on manual labor for a physically demanding task, and potentially improving the safety and efficiency of hydrogen refueling infrastructure. The major accomplishment during the project's active period was the completion of the system-level architecture task. This involved establishing a detailed list of system requirements covering interfaces, environmental conditions, regulatory compliance, industry standards, safety, security, performance capabilities, and optional features. Five key use cases for the autonomous system were also identified. However, due to internal restructuring at Nikola, the necessary resources could not be allocated to continue the project. Consequently, Nikola opted to discontinue the project. The award was mutually terminated by Nikola and the DOE.

08 HYDROGEN↗
NASA NTRS1986

Interaction between workload and training - Converging evidence from psychophysiology and performance measurement

Traditionally, the domains of mental workload and training have been studied in isolation even though they share many common characteristics. The present paper integrates findings from psychophysiological and performance-based studies which address both of these issues. By augmenting traditional indices of skill acquisition such as RMS error scores, reaction times, and accuracy measures with psychophysiological measures such as the event-related brain potential, it is shown that workload effects can be assessed throughout the training process. More specifically, it is argued that the development of skill and the effects of workload on the human operator can be modeled within the framework of resource theories of attentional allocation. Also described is how converging evidence from psychophysiological and behavioral studies can be used to examine subtle changes in operator strategies during training.

Kramer, Arthur F.↗
NASA NTRS1991

An integrated decision support system for TRAC: A proposal

Optimal allocation and usage of resources is a key to effective management. Resources of concern to TRAC are: Manpower (PSY), Money (Travel, contracts), Computing, Data, Models, etc. Management activities of TRAC include: Planning, Programming, Tasking, Monitoring, Updating, and Coordinating. Existing systems are insufficient, not completely automated, manpower intensive, and has the potential for data inconsistency exists. A system is proposed which suggests a means to integrate all project management activities of TRAC through the development of a sophisticated software and by utilizing the existing computing systems and network resources. The systems integration proposal is examined in detail.

Mukkamala, Ravi↗
NASA NTRS1992

NASA Discovery Program Workshop

The purpose of the workshop was to review concepts for Discover-class missions that would follow the first two missions (MESUR-Pathfinder and NEAR) of this new program. The concepts had been generated by scientists involved in NASA's Solar System Exploration Program to carry out scientifically important investigations within strict guidelines -- $150 million cap on development cost and 3 year cap on development schedule. Like the Astrophysics Small Explorers (SMEX), such 'faster and cheaper' missions could provide vitality to solar system exploration research by returning high quality data more frequently and regularly and by involving many more young researchers than normally participate directly in larger missions. An announcement of opportunity (AO) to propose a Discovery mission to NASA is expected to be released in about two years time. One purpose of the workshop was to assist Code SL in deciding how to allocate its advanced programs resources. A second, complimentary purpose was to provide the concept proposers with feedback to allow them to better prepare for the AO.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1993

Columbus system support for telescience operations

With the given constraints of the space environment, the telescience concept aims at providing a space mission user with optimum flexibility and responsiveness for spaceborne investigations. The concept includes automated system management functions, which allocate and monitor planned resources and time windows, within which the investigator can perform his science interactively responding 'on-line' to experimental data. During the telescience operation, the user is given the capability to send telecommands to the payload from the User Home Base with transparency to the rest of the system. Any violation of the 'booked' time and resources will be detected by the system and reported back to the user for appropriate action. Ultimately, the system will react to maintain the integrity of the system and its payload. Upon completion of the telescience session, the system management function reverses the system configuration and deallocates resources automatically.

Lytton, David W.↗
NASA NTRS1994

A volatile organic analyzer for Space Station: Description and evaluation of a gas chromatography/ ion mobility

A Volatile Organic Analyzer (VOA) is being developed as an essential component of the Space Station's Environmental Health System (EHS) air quality monitoring strategy to provide warning to the crew and ground personnel if volatile organic compounds exceed established exposure limits. The short duration of most Shuttle flights and the relative simplicity of the contaminant removal mechanism have lessened the concern about crew exposure to air contaminants on the Shuttle. However, the longer missions associated with the Space Station, the complex air revitalization system and the proposed number of experiments have led to a desire for real-time monitoring of the contaminants in the Space Station atmosphere. Achieving the performance requirements established for the VOA within the Space Station resource (e.g., power, weight) allocations led to a novel approach that joined a gas chromatograph (GC) to an ion mobility spectrometer (IMS). The authors of this paper will discuss the rational for selecting the GC/IMS technology as opposed to the more established gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) for the foundation of the VOA. The data presented from preliminary evaluations will demonstrate the versatile capability of the GC/IMS to analyze the major contaminants expected in the Space Station atmosphere. The favorable GC/IMS characteristics illustrated in this paper included excellent sensitivity, dual-mode operation for selective detection, and mobility drift times to distinguish co-eluting GC peaks. Preliminary studies have shown that the GC/IMS technology can meet surpass the performance requirements of the Space Station VOA.

Limero, Thomas F.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Airport Financing and User Charge Systems in the USA

This paper examines the financing of U.S. public airports in a turbulent era of change, and projects toward the future. It begins by briefly outlining historical patterns that have changed the industry, and airport facilities in particular. It then develops basic principles of public finance as applied to public infrastructure, followed by the applicable principles of management. Following that, the current airport financing system is analyzed and contrasted with a socially optimal financing system. A concluding section suggests policy reforms and their likely benefits. The principles of finance and management discussed here are elementary. However, their implications are radical for U.S. airport policy. There is a great deal of room to improve the allocation of aviation infrastructure resources. The application of these basic principles makes it evident that in many cases, current practice is wasteful, environmentally unsound, overly costly, and inequitable. Future investments in public aviation capital will continue to be wasteful until more efficient pricing systems are instituted. Thus, problem in the U.S. is not one of insufficient investment in airport infrastructure, but investment in the wrong types of infrastructure. In the U.S., the vast majority of publically-owned airports are owned by local governments. Thus, while the federal government bad a great deal of influence in financing airports, ultimately these are local decisions. The same is true with many other public infrastructure issues. Katz and Herman (1997) report that in 1995, U.S. net public capital stock equaled almost $4.6 trillion, 72% of which ($3.9 trillion) was owned by state and local governments, most of it in buildings, highways, Streets, sewer systems, and water supply facilities. Thus, public infrastructure finance is fundamentally a local government issue, with implications for federal and state governments in the design of their aid programs.

Bartle, John R.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Design Rules for Life Support Systems

This paper considers some of the common assumptions and engineering rules of thumb used in life support system design. One general design rule is that the longer the mission, the more the life support system should use recycling and regenerable technologies. A more specific rule is that, if the system grows more than half the food, the food plants will supply all the oxygen needed for the crew life support. There are many such design rules that help in planning the analysis of life support systems and in checking results. These rules are typically if-then statements describing the results of steady-state, "back of the envelope," mass flow calculations. They are useful in identifying plausible candidate life support system designs and in rough allocations between resupply and resource recovery. Life support system designers should always review the design rules and make quick steady state calculations before doing detailed design and dynamic simulation. This paper develops the basis for the different assumptions and design rules and discusses how they should be used. We start top-down, with the highest level requirement to sustain human beings in a closed environment off Earth. We consider the crew needs for air, water, and food. We then discuss atmosphere leakage and recycling losses. The needs to support the crew and to make up losses define the fundamental life support system requirements. We consider the trade-offs between resupplying and recycling oxygen, water, and food. The specific choices between resupply and recycling are determined by mission duration, presence of in-situ resources, etc., and are defining parameters of life support system design.

Jones, Harry↗
NASA NTRS2006

CCSDS Time-Critical Onboard Networking Service

The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) is developing recommendations for communication services onboard spacecraft. Today many different communication buses are used on spacecraft requiring software with the same basic functionality to be rewritten for each type of bus. This impacts on the application software resulting in custom software for almost every new mission. The Spacecraft Onboard Interface Services (SOIS) working group aims to provide a consistent interface to various onboard buses and sub-networks, enabling a common interface to the application software. The eventual goal is reusable software that can be easily ported to new missions and run on a range of onboard buses without substantial modification. The system engineer will then be able to select a bus based on its performance, power, etc and be confident that a particular choice of bus will not place excessive demands on software development. This paper describes the SOIS Intra-Networking Service which is designed to enable data transfer and multiplexing of a variety of internetworking protocols with a range of quality of service support, over underlying heterogeneous data links. The Intra-network service interface provides users with a common Quality of Service interface when transporting data across a variety of underlying data links. Supported Quality of Service (QoS) elements include: Priority, Resource Reservation and Retry/Redundancy. These three QoS elements combine and map into four TCONS services for onboard data communications: Best Effort, Assured, Reserved, and Guaranteed. Data to be transported is passed to the Intra-network service with a requested QoS. The requested QoS includes the type of service, priority and where appropriate, a channel identifier. The data is de-multiplexed, prioritized, and the required resources for transport are allocated. The data is then passed to the appropriate data link for transfer across the bus. The SOIS supported data links may inherently provide the quality of service support requested by the intra-network layer. In the case where the data link does not have the required level of support, the missing functionality is added by SOIS. As a result of this architecture, re-usable software applications can be designed and used across missions thereby promoting common mission operations. In addition, the protocol multiplexing function enables the blending of multiple onboard networks. This paper starts by giving an overview of the SOIS architecture in section 11, illustrating where the TCONS services fit into the overall architecture. It then describes the quality of service approach adopted, in section III. The prototyping efforts that have been going on are introduced in section JY. Finally, in section V the current status of the CCSDS recommendations is summarized.

Parkes, Steve↗
NASA NTRS2003

Optimizing technology investments: a broad mission model approach

A long-standing problem in NASA is how to allocate scarce technology development resources across advanced technologies in order to best support a large set of future potential missions. Within NASA, two orthogonal paradigms have received attention in recent years: the real-options approach and the broad mission model approach. This paper focuses on the latter.

NASA technology portfolio real-options risk-based ↗
NASA NTRS1999

Experimental Results of LightSAR Mision Planning Using a Market-Based System

The allocation of scarce spacecraft resources to multiple users has always been a difficult process. This difficulty arises from the fact that there are never enough resources to meet the stated requirements of the scientific investigators who compete to acquire their desired data sets.

LightSAR Mission Planning Market-based systems↗
NASA NTRS2012

Colonel Blotto Games and Lancaster's Equations: A Novel Military Modeling Combination

Military strategists face a difficult task when engaged in a battle against an adversarial force. They have to predict both what tactics their opponent will employ and the outcomes of any resultant conflicts in order to make the best decision about their actions. Game theory has been the dominant technique used by analysts to investigate the possible actions that an enemy will employ. Traditional game theory can be augmented by use of Lanchester equations, a set of differential equations used to determine the outcome of a conflict. This paper demonstrates a novel combination of game theory and Lanchester equations using Colonel Blotto games. Colonel Blotto games, which are one of the oldest applications of game theory to the military domain, look at the allocation of troops and resources when fighting across multiple areas of operation. This paper demonstrates that employing Lanchester equations within a game overcomes some of practical problems faced when applying game theory.

Collins, Andrew J.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Evidence Report: Risk of Inadequate Human-Computer Interaction

Human-computer interaction (HCI) encompasses all the methods by which humans and computer-based systems communicate, share information, and accomplish tasks. When HCI is poorly designed, crews have difficulty entering, navigating, accessing, and understanding information. HCI has rarely been studied in an operational spaceflight context, and detailed performance data that would support evaluation of HCI have not been collected; thus, we draw much of our evidence from post-spaceflight crew comments, and from other safety-critical domains like ground-based power plants, and aviation. Additionally, there is a concern that any potential or real issues to date may have been masked by the fact that crews have near constant access to ground controllers, who monitor for errors, correct mistakes, and provide additional information needed to complete tasks. We do not know what types of HCI issues might arise without this "safety net". Exploration missions will test this concern, as crews may be operating autonomously due to communication delays and blackouts. Crew survival will be heavily dependent on available electronic information for just-in-time training, procedure execution, and vehicle or system maintenance; hence, the criticality of the Risk of Inadequate HCI. Future work must focus on identifying the most important contributing risk factors, evaluating their contribution to the overall risk, and developing appropriate mitigations. The Risk of Inadequate HCI includes eight core contributing factors based on the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS): (1) Requirements, policies, and design processes, (2) Information resources and support, (3) Allocation of attention, (4) Cognitive overload, (5) Environmentally induced perceptual changes, (6) Misperception and misinterpretation of displayed information, (7) Spatial disorientation, and (8) Displays and controls.

Kritina Holden↗
NASA NTRS2019

NASA's Role in Gas Turbine Technology Development: Accelerating Technical Progress via Collaboration Between Academia, Industry, and Government Agencies

Given the maturity of the gas turbine engine since its invention and also considering the limited and flattened level of resources expected to be allocated for NASA aeronautics research and development, we ask the question are NASA technology investments still needed to enable future turbine engine-based propulsion systems? If so, what is NASA’s unique role to justify NASA’s investment? To address this topic, we will first review the accomplishments and the impact that NASA Glenn Research Center has made on turbine engine technologies over the last 78 years. Specifically, this paper discusses NASA’s role and contributions to turbine engine development, specific to both 1) NASA’s role in conducting experiments to understand flow physics and provide relevant benchmark validation experiments for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code development, validation, and assessment; and 2) the impact of technologies resulting from NASA collaborations with industry, academia, and other government agencies. Note that the scope of the discussion is limited to the NASA technology contributions with which the author was intimately associated, and does not represent the entirety of the NASA contributions to turbine engine technology. The specific research, development, and demonstrations discussed herein were selected to both 1) provide a comprehensive review and reference list of the technology and its impact, and 2) identify NASA’s unique role and highlight how NASA’s involvement resulted in additional benefit to the gas turbine engine community. Secondly, we will discuss current NASA collaborations that are in progress and provide a status of the results. Finally, we discuss the challenges anticipated for future turbine engine-based propulsion systems for civil aviation and identify potential opportunities for collaboration where NASA involvement would be beneficial. Ultimately, the gas turbine engine community will decide if NASA involvement is needed to contribute to the development of the design and analysis tools, databases, and technology demonstration programs to meet these challenges for future turbine engine-based propulsion systems.

Suder, Kenneth L.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Space Station Freedom restructure impacts on technology experiment accommodation

This is a follow up to NASA Technical Memorandum (TM) 102766; it provides an overview of the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology (OAST) Space Station Freedom (SSF) Technology Development Payload Program, reviews the OAST SSF resource requirements, and contrasts the requirements with the resources that are available to OAST since the restructure of SSF. A discussion of the issues as well as conclusions and recommendations, is provided. It is concluded that, even after adjustments to the OAST traffic model to reflect restructure, some resources will be inadequate even at the 20 percent allocation level. It is also concluded that bartering resources among U.S. users and international partners, and increasing the level of automation may be viable solutions to the resource constraint problem. The final conclusion is that, to facilitate the performance of technology experiments on SSF, OAST should fund SSF experiments and update its traffic model as soon as possible, and should provide technical and programmatic assistance to technology experiment developers.

Avery, Don E.↗
NASA NTRS2004

High Speed Networking and Large-scale Simulation in Geodynamics

Large-scale numerical simulation has been one of the most important approaches for understanding global geodynamical processes. In this approach, peta-scale floating point operations (pflops) are often required to carry out a single physically-meaningful numerical experiment. For example, to model convective flow in the Earth's core and generation of the geomagnetic field (geodynamo), simulation for one magnetic free-decay time (approximately 15000 years) with a modest resolution of 150 in three spatial dimensions would require approximately 0.2 pflops. If such a numerical model is used to predict geomagnetic secular variation over decades and longer, with e.g. an ensemble Kalman filter assimilation approach, approximately 30 (and perhaps more) independent simulations of similar scales would be needed for one data assimilation analysis. Obviously, such a simulation would require an enormous computing resource that exceeds the capacity of a single facility currently available at our disposal. One solution is to utilize a very fast network (e.g. 10Gb optical networks) and available middleware (e.g. Globus Toolkit) to allocate available but often heterogeneous resources for such large-scale computing efforts. At NASA GSFC, we are experimenting with such an approach by networking several clusters for geomagnetic data assimilation research. We shall present our initial testing results in the meeting.

Kuang, Weijia↗
NASA NTRS1994

Galileo mission planning for Low Gain Antenna based operations

The Galileo mission operations concept is undergoing substantial redesign, necessitated by the deployment failure of the High Gain Antenna, while the spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter. The new design applies state-of-the-art technology and processes to increase the telemetry rate available through the Low Gain Antenna and to increase the information density of the telemetry. This paper describes the mission planning process being developed as part of this redesign. Principal topics include a brief description of the new mission concept and anticipated science return (these have been covered more extensively in earlier papers), identification of key drivers on the mission planning process, a description of the process and its implementation schedule, a discussion of the application of automated mission planning tool to the process, and a status report on mission planning work to date. Galileo enhancements include extensive reprogramming of on-board computers and substantial hard ware and software upgrades for the Deep Space Network (DSN). The principal mode of operation will be onboard recording of science data followed by extended playback periods. A variety of techniques will be used to compress and edit the data both before recording and during playback. A highly-compressed real-time science data stream will also be important. The telemetry rate will be increased using advanced coding techniques and advanced receivers. Galileo mission planning for orbital operations now involves partitioning of several scarce resources. Particularly difficult are division of the telemetry among the many users (eleven instruments, radio science, engineering monitoring, and navigation) and allocation of space on the tape recorder at each of the ten satellite encounters. The planning process is complicated by uncertainty in forecast performance of the DSN modifications and the non-deterministic nature of the new data compression schemes. Key mission planning steps include quantifying resource or capabilities to be allocated, prioritizing science observations and estimating resource needs for each, working inter-and intra-orbit trades of these resources among the Project elements, and planning real-time science activity. The first major mission planning activity, a high level, orbit-by-orbit allocation of resources among science objectives, has already been completed; and results are illustrated in the paper. To make efficient use of limited resources, Galileo mission planning will rely on automated mission planning tools capable of dealing with interactions among time-varying downlink capability, real-time science and engineering data transmission, and playback of recorded data. A new generic mission planning tool is being adapted for this purpose.

Gershman, R.↗
NASA NTRS1989

A two-phase methodology for technology selection and system design

A two-phase methodology that can be used to guide R&D managers in the evaluation and selection of competing technologies is presented. Deterministic multiattribute utility theory is used in the first phase to rank the technological alternatives; the example presented involves the evaluation of electric and hybrid passenger vehicles. In all, 39 individuals from eight automotive firms were interviewed to assess their risk preferences and attitudes toward the vehicle design. In the second phase, the decision-maker must allocate a fixed amount of resources to different projects for the technology selected, some of which may be undertaken in parallel, to maximize a given measure of performance. When parallel funding is pursued the best outcome is chosen. The problem is formulated as a probabilistic network and solved heuristically using Monte Carlo simulation. Results are presented for two decision-makers and three budget options. In each case, the heuristic finds the optimal allocation of funds.

Bard, Jonathan F.↗