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At least 19 records

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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Potential of Medical Drones: An Analysis of Current and Future Use Cases

Modern Application of Medical-Based Drone Delivery Drones have been used advantageously by militaries for nearly a century, but their uses in civilian life are still mostly cutting-edge, if not theoretical. After a decade of bold proclamations, Amazon’s “PrimeAir” drone delivery system is still in the stage of “preparing” for deliveries, while the public awaits for start ups like SkyDrop (formerly Flirtey) to follow through on impressive promises. Despite the well-publicized disappointment so far in commercial drone delivery, medical drone delivery has already proven itself practical and cheap in several countries, and it promises to expand in the coming years. Drones are uniquely suited to make valuable and urgent deliveries to remote areas, quickly transporting medical supplies where road transportation is prohibitively slow or not available at all. Drones have been used notably to deliver AEDs for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, frequently beating first-responders to the scene; to deliver blood when there is none on hand at hospitals; to deliver vaccines to an island nation with little transportation infrastructure; and to respond flexibly to medical emergencies in a war zone. Economics make the delivery of food and other cheap goods by drone unattractive in the near-term, but the value and time-sensitivity of medical deliveries mean that drones are already saving lives in healthcare. “We believe the value of new technology is most valuable where it is clearly needed...that’s why we wanted to focus on drones delivering medicine and not delivering pizzas, ”said one executive of a drone system manufacturer. The immediate prospects for the expansion of medical drone use are many; however, they do not exist without their own drawbacks and challenges. Most obvious is the limited range of current commercially-available drones, most of which are isolated to a perimeter of roughly 18 miles. Technological know-how presents another barrier to integration of medical drones on a larger scale. Reports from the United Nations frequently cite a“skill deficit”—a prohibitively low number of qualified drone operators in low-and moderate-income countries (LMICs). Another perhaps more discreet speed bump in global drone development and usage are the various regulations on drone usage. Drone technology has developed so quickly that many states, out of an excess of caution, have nearly snuffed out the fledgling industry with regulation. There also exist significant concerns over the security of private citizens, the efficacy of medical deliveries, and the costs of drone operation. It is these last three barriers which this study will seek to overcome. Put simply, the prospect for human development in LMICs from drone-based medical delivery is far too great to disregard. As of 2020, 3.4 billion people live in rural communities, containing fewer than 5,000 people/km^2. Often lacking infrastructure, these communities are largely isolated from their more populated, urban counterparts. In drones lies the potential to reshape the geographic and developmental distinctions that divide the global population. This development must, therefore, begin first and foremost with advancement in regional well-being and life expectancy. Life expectancy makes up a key facet of human development. The United Nations relies on it as a key indicator of a state’s health. Lars Kunze of the Dortmund University Department of Economic sex plains this as a matter of physical capital accumulation. The longer people live, the more they save as opposed to spend. The more they save, the more which eventually gets invested in themselves and the community as a whole. In providing medical products via drone, it is the intention of this study to enable communities with the means and incentives for long-run savings and investment for future economic development. Through a close analysis of Vanuatu, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Ukraine—four states where drones are currently used to deliver medical supplies—this study develops a framework that LMICs in general and Mexico and particular can adopt and to use medical drones in difficult-to-reach communities for the sake of long-run human developmental initiatives.

Ryan Teoh↗

NASA NTRS1992

Generic Propellants Transfer Unit (GPTU)

The Generic Propellants Transfer Unit (GPTU) is being designed to support spacecraft liquid propellant operations at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Eastern Test Range (ETR). The GPTU will have a 500 gallon capacity and be Department Of Transportation (DOT) approved for over-the-road transportation of hypergolic propellants. The use of these containers will allow the users to increase efficiency and reduce the following costs: design/construction, transportation (to/from the launch site), propellant transfer operations, and decontamination operations. The user also acquires the flexibility of transporting to an offsite location for processing or storage without obtaining special exemptions or permits. These containers will incorporate their own quantity gaging and temperature sensing systems, and be integrated onto a transport trailer which contains work platforms and a fluid transfer system.

Cook, Christopher A.↗

NASA NTRS2023

Health and Safety Effects of Airborne Soil Dust in the Americas and Beyond

Risks associated with dust hazards are often underappreciated, a gap between the knowledge pool and public awareness that can be costly for impacted communities. This study reviews the emission sources and chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of airborne soil particles (dust) and their effects on human and environmental health and safety in the Pan-American region. American dust originates from both local sources (western United States, northern Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina) and long-range transport from Africa and Asia. Dust properties, as well as the trends and interactions with criteria air pollutants, are summarized. Human exposure to dust is associated with adverse health effects, including asthma, allergies, fungal infections, and premature death. In the Americas, a well-documented and striking effect of soil dust is its association with Coccidioidomycosis, commonly known as Valley fever, an infection caused by inhalation of soil-dwelling fungi unique to this region. Besides human health, dust affects environmental health through nutrients that increase phytoplankton biomass, contaminants that diminish water supply and affect food (crops/fruits/vegetables and ready-to-eat meat), spread crop and marine pathogens, cause Valley fever among domestic and wild animals, transport heavy metals, radionuclides and microplastics, and reduce solar and wind power generation. Dust is also a safety hazard to road transportation and aviation, in the southwestern US where blowing dust is one of the deadliest weather hazards. To mitigate the harmful effects, coordinated regional and international efforts are needed to enhance dust observations and prediction capabilities, soil conservation measures, and Valley fever and other disease surveillance.

health↗

NASA NTRS1990

A method for the reduction of aerodynamic drag of road vehicles

A method is proposed for the reduction of the aerodynamic drag of bluff bodies, particularly for application to road transport vehicles. This technique consists of installation of panels on the forward surface of the vehicle facing the airstream. With the help of road tests, it was demonstrated that the attachment of proposed panels can reduce aerodynamic drag of road vehicles and result in significant fuel cost savings and conservation of energy resources.

Pamadi, Bandu N.↗

NASA NTRS1988

A satellite system for land-mobile communications in Europe

There exists a great unsatisified demand for land mobile communications in Europe, particularly in sectors of business activity such as the road transport industry. This demand could best be satisfied by means of satellite-based private networks providing voice and data communications in a hub configuration. The potential market is estimated to encompass several hundred thousand road vehicles and the transmission capacity required would be several thousand channels. ESA is currently demonstrating the potential of satellite communications for this type of application, using a system called PRODAT. System studies are being performed with the aim of defining the architecture of a regional satellite system for Europe.

Bartholome, P.↗

NASA NTRS1974

Composite materials. Volume 3 - Engineering applications of composites. Volume 4 - Metallic matrix composites. Volume 8 - Structural design and analysis, Part 2

This volume discusses a vaety of applications of both low- and high-cost composite materials in a number of selected engineering fields. The text stresses the use of fiber-reinforced composites, along with interesting material systems used in the electrical and nuclear industries. As to technology transfer, a similarity is noted between many of the reasons responsible for the utilization of composites and those problems requiring urgent solution, such as mechanized fabrication processes and design for production. Features topics include road transportation, rail transportation, civil aircraft, space vehicles, builing industry, chemical plants, and appliances and equipment. The laminate orientation code devised by Air Force materials laboratory is included. Individual items are announced in this issue.

Noton, B. R.↗

NASA NTRS1979

A solar thermal electric power plant for small communities

A solar power plant has been designed with a rating of 1000-kW electric and a 0.4 annual capacity factor. It was configured as a prototype for plants in the 1000 to 10,000-kWe size range for application to small communities or industrial users either grid-connected or isolated from a utility grid. A small central receiver was selected for solar energy collection after being compared with alternative distributed collectors. Further trade studies resulted in the selection of Hitec (heat transfer salt composed of 53 percent KNO3, 40 percent NaNO2, 7 percent NaNO3) as both the receiver coolant and the sensible heat thermal stroage medium and the steam Rankine cycle for power conversion. The plant is configured with road-transportable units to accommodate remote sites and minimize site assembly requirements. Results of the analyses indicate that busbar energy costs are competitive with diesel-electric plants in certain situations, e.g., off-grid, remote regions with high insolation. Sensitivity of energy costs to plant power rating and system capacity factor are given.

Holl, R. J.↗

NASA NTRS1981

History of ball bearings

The familiar precision rolling-element bearings of the twentieth century are products of exacting technology and sophisticated science. Their very effectiveness and basic simplicity of form may discourage further interest in their history and development. Yet the full story covers a large portion of recorded history and surprising evidence of an early recognition of the advantages of rolling motion over sliding action and progress toward the development of rolling-element bearings. The development of rolling-element bearings is followed from the earliest civilizations to the end of the eighteenth century. The influence of general technological developments, particularly those concerned with the movement of large building blocks, road transportation, instruments, water-raising equipment, and windmills are discussed, together with the emergence of studies of the nature of rolling friction and the impact of economic factors. By 1800 the essential features of ball and rolling-element bearings had emerged and it only remained for precision manufacture and mass production to confirm the value of these fascinating machine elements.

Dowson, D.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Reducing Aerodynamic Drag Of Bluff Bodies

New method found to reduce aerodynamic drag of noncircular bluff bodies like road-transport vehicles. Consists of installation of thin, flat panels on forward side of body, facing airstream. Produces streamlining effect over body. Width of wake reduced, and vortex shedding is greatly suppressed.

Taylor, Lawrence W., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS1993

EUTELTRACS: The European experience on mobile satellite services

EUTELTRACS is Europe's first commercially operated Mobile Satellite Service. Under the overall network operation of EUTELSAT, the European Telecommunications Satellite Organization, EUTELTRACS provides an integrated message exchange and position reporting service. This paper describes the EUTELTRACS system architecture, the message exchange and the position reporting services, including the result of recent analysis of message delivery time and positioning accuracy. It also provides an overview of the commercial deployment, the regulatory situation for its operation within Europe and new applications outside its target market, the international road transportation.

Colcy, Jean-Noel↗

NASA NTRS2004

Granular Materials and Risks in ISRU

Working with soil, sand, powders, ores, cement and sintered bricks, excavating, grading construction sites, driving off-road, transporting granules in chutes and pipes, sifting gravel, separating solids from gases, and using hoppers are so routine that it seems straightforward to execute these operations on the Moon and Mars as we do on Earth. We discuss how little these processes are understood and point out the nature of trial-and-error practices that are used in today s massive over-design. Nevertheless, such designs have a high failure rate. Implementation and extensive incremental scaling up of industrial processes are routine because of the inadequate predictive tools for design. We present a number of pragmatic scenarios where granular materials play a role, the risks involved, what some of the basic issues are, and what understanding is needed to greatly reduce the risks. This talk will focus on a particular class of granular flow issues, those that pertain to dense materials, their physics, and the failure problems associated with them. In particular, key issues where basic predictability is lacking include stability of soils for the support of vehicles and facilities, ability to control the flow of dense materials (jamming and flooding/unjamming at the wrong time), the ability to predict stress profiles (hence create reliable designs) for containers such as bunkers or silos. In particular, stress fluctuations, which are not accounted for in standard granular design models, can be very large as granular materials flows, and one result is frequent catastrophic failure of granular devices.

Behringer, Robert P.↗

NASA NTRS2004

Granular Materials and Risks In ISRU

Working with soil, sand, powders, ores, cement and sintered bricks, excavating, grading construction sites, driving off-road, transporting granules in chutes and pipes, sifting gravel, separating solids from gases, and using hoppers are so routine that it seems straightforward to execute these operations on the Moon and Mars as we do on Earth. We discuss how little these processes are understood and point out the nature of trial-and-error practices that are used in today's massive over-design. Nevertheless, such designs have a high failure rate. Implementation and extensive incremental scaling up of industrial processes are routine because of the inadequate predictive tools for design. We present a number of pragmatic scenarios where granular materials play a role, the risks involved, what some of the basic issues are, and what understanding is needed to greatly reduce the risks. This talk will focus on a particular class of granular flow issues, those that pertain to dense materials, their physics, and the failure problems associated with them. In particular, key issues where basic predictability is lacking include stability of soils for the support of vehicles and facilities, ability to control the flow of dense materials (jamming and flooding/unjamming at the wrong time), the ability to predict stress profiles (hence create reliable designs) for containers such as bunkers or silos. In particular, stress fluctuations, which are not accounted for in standard granular design models, can be very large as granular materials flows, and one result is frequent catastrophic failure of granular devices.

Behringer, Robert P.↗

NASA NTRS2004

Granular Materials and the Risks They Pose for Success on the Moon and Mars

Wilkinson, R. Allen↗

NASA NTRS2022

Precious Cargo: Transporting Contamination-Sensitive Instruments & Optics

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a multi-national program with instruments and hardware supplied by companies all over the world and numerous states in the United States. In order to transport larger assemblies, like the Optical Telescope Element / Integrated Science Instrument Module (OTIS), and ultimately JWST, the Space Telescope Transporter for Air, Road and Sea (STTARS) was designed and constructed. STTARS is a massive mobile cleanroom (longer than 2 semi-trailers) that provides an ISO class 7 payload environment while being transported by road, airborne and marine vehicles. Temperature, humidity, and particle counts are controlled and continuously tracked, with fallout and NVR witness samples placed in strategic locations for confirmation. Instruments or sensitive hardware were purged continuously during transport. STTARS has 5 main components: the upper tent frame, lower tent frame, pallet, strong back and lid. After transporting OTIS to Northrup Grumman (NG), STTARS was modified to increase its height to house the JWST Observatory on its voyage to French Guiana. This new configuration was designated Observatory STTARS (OSTTARS). OSTTARS was too tall to travel by C5 aircraft, so the trip to the launch site was made by ship. Through JWST’s land, air, and sea transports, STTARS and OSTTARS kept JWST hardware exceptionally clean and safe.

James Webb Space Telescope↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Precious Cargo: Transporting contamination-sensitive instruments & optics

James Webb Space Telescope↗

NASA NTRS1999

The Goddard Three Dimensional Chemistry and Transport Model-A Waystation on the Road to Predicting the Future of Stratospheric Ozone

The Goddard 3D Chemistry and Transport Model (CTM) is an off-line model which includes a full description of stratospheric photochemistry and calculates constituent transport using winds and temperatures from the Goddard Earth Observing System Data Assimilation System. The model can be used to understand and quantify the photochemical and transport processes which produce observed constituent evolution and variability. Data from any platform - ground based, aircraft, balloon, satellite - can play a role. Since any measurement systems has its own set of advantages and disadvantages (e.g., good temporal sampling but poor spatial sampling; good spatial and temporal sampling but poor vertical resolution; high vertical resolution and spatial sampling but poor temporal sampling), using data from disparate sources and a CTM can provide a more complete picture of atmospheric processes.

Douglass, Anne↗

NASA NTRS2019

Exploration of Near-Term Potential Routes and Procedures for Urban Air Mobility

Urban air mobility is gaining interest as the need for On Demand Mobility in today's congested traffic is becoming high in metropolitan areas. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is envisioned as a concept to transport passengers and cargo safely and efficiently using innovative aircraft in the urban areas. It is expected to improve mobility for the general public, decongest road traffic, reduce transport time and reduce the strain on existing public transport networks. There exist several challenges to Urban Air Mobility (UAM) such as integration of procedures with airspace and the airport, noise levels that are acceptable to the general public, public safety, public acceptance, vehicle certification, and more. Most of the research in the United States and European skies (DLR - German Aerospace Center) related to urban areas has focused on small UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) flights (NASA's UTM (UAS Traffic Management) research) and their integration with the airspace and building safe operations in densely populated areas. Previous studies on UAM have focused on fast time simulations of the routes that are separated via a separation service and network of routes. Similarly, research in Europe has focused on the approach profile for these innovative aircraft, vertiports and battery life among others. UAM as a part of the On-Demand Mobility effort has provided some guidelines for operations as shown below: Does not require additional ATC (Air Traffic Control) infrastructure; Does not impose additional workload on ATC; Does not restrict operations of traditional airspace users; Will meet appropriate safety thresholds and requirements; Will prioritize operational scalability; Will allow flexibility where possible and structure where necessary. This paper explores potential routes and procedures in a Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) experiment that could be applied in the near-term to allow integration of UAM flights into the airspace as well as a large airport. The airspace that was explored was Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) airspace managed by the DFW East Tower in South Flow only. In addition, Dallas Love Field (DAL) and Addison (ADS) airspace were also part of the testbed. The initial set of routes investigated in this study were published helicopter routes in the DFW area. Figure 1 shows class B airspace in DFW area and the origin/destination city pairs where UAM flights flew along with helicopter routes shown in blue. The research focused on exploring procedures for integrating UAM flights into Class Bravo and Class Delta airspace. Three different communication procedures, evaluated with three different levels of UAM traffic, are shown in Table 1. The current day routes were evaluated with current day communication procedures were explored as the first condition. The current day routes were also evaluated in the second condition with reduced communications, which was assumed due to the presence of a Letter Of Agreement (LOA). The purpose of the LOA was to reduce the verbiage associated with pilots getting clearance to Class B airspace from the controllers, pre-assigning beacons codes to the UAM flights, separate routes by assigning altitudes and speeds to flights going in any one direction. Flights were expected to automatically change frequency when exiting Class B airspace, thus transition points for entry and exit points were also specified in the LOA.

Urban Air Mobility↗

NASA NTRS2005

Space Shuttle Transportation (Roll-Out) Loads Diagnostics

The Space Transportation System (STS) consists of three primary components; an Orbiter Vehicle, an External Fuel Tank, and two Solid Rocket Boosters. The Orbiter Vehicle and Solid Rocket Boosters are reusable components, and as such, they are susceptible to durability issues. Recently, the fatigue load spectra for these components have been updated to include load histories acquired during the rollout phase of the STS processing for flight. Using traditional program life assessment techniques, the incorporation of these "rollout" loads produced unacceptable life estimates for certain Orbiter structural members. As a result, the Space Shuttle System Engineering and Integration Office has initiated a program to re-assess the method used for developing the "rollout" loads and performing the life assessments. In the fall of 2003 a set of tests were preformed to provide information to either validate existing load spectra estimation techniques or generate new load spectra estimation methods. Acceleration and strain data were collected from two rollouts of a partial-stack configuration of the Space Shuttle. The partial stack configuration consists of two Solid Rocket Boosters tied together at the upper External Tank attachment locations mounted on the Mobile Launch Platform carried by a Crawler Transporter (CT). In the current analysis, the data collected from this test is examined for consistency in speed, surface condition effects, and the characterization of the forcing function. It is observed that the speed of the CT is relatively stable. The dynamic response acceleration of the partial-stack is slightly sensitive to the surface condition of the road used for transport, and the dynamic response acceleration of the partial-stack generally increases as the transport speed increases. However, the speed sensitivity is dependent on the measurement location. Finally, the character of the forcing function is narrow-banded with the primary drivers being harmonics of two CT speed dependent excitations. One source is an excitation due to the CT treads striking the road surface, and the second is unknown.

Elliott, Kenny B.↗