Lessons

Five months since last posting. Here's the breakdown:

August: Started school.

First met the graduate students and fellow undergraduate students that I would work with for the next four months. Larry Bell broke down various projects that we would work on: Crew Transfer Module (CTM) for a Mission to Mars, Mars Habitat, Lunar Habitat, and Phobos Explorer. I chose, by suggestion of one of the grad students, to work on the CTM to Mars. The CTM has the following basic properties:

- Dimensions: 22 feet in diameter, and 40 feet in length

- Mass: Not to exceed 100 metric tonnes [I know, mixing English and Metric is not a good idea, but for the project, we had both kinds in use for presentation purposes]

- Crew: 6 Total

- Mission Length: About 900 days, roughly a year or so to get to Mars, a year spent at Mars, and a year to come back

Larry, and Olga Bannova, introduced us to the SICSA Lecture Series. These pdf-slide shows contain very useful information.

Lesson: Don't repeat research or designs that have already been done.

September: The month-long research period begins.

Most of this is grad students telling the undergrads what can be done, what has been done, what cannot be done, or has not been done. We spent long periods of time at the marker board. One grad student had done a lot of research into various missions types, citing much of the data in Human Spaceflight by Wiley J. Larson and Linda K. Pranke. The book is an excellent reference.

A whole month passed by, with little to show for it, although our heads felt full of information.

Lesson: Research has to end sometime, and design has to begin!

October: Design begins.

My most excellent teammates are Jill Klein and Jon Feaster. Jill works with NASA, and Jon has highly developed skills at AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max. If you have never used 3DS Max before, it's a powerful rendering program that creates simply beautiful results, and does animation, too. Even better, Max can link files created in AutoCAD. This allows the user to draw the more technical, precise drawings in CAD, and then render the same design in Max.

By now, we have adopted a "banana split"-type of design for the CTM. The reasoning for this is to allow relatively scenic views from within the CTM. The alternative is the "bolonga slice" type, which will be flexible, does not permit anyone to look at something that is further away than 20 or so feet. The "banana split" allowed views of up to 40 or so feet.

Remember, the people on board will not be able to leave the module for anything but an EVA (space walk), or to access a similar- or smaller-sized module, for about a year's time. Four of the crew members will be on Mars for about a year, while the other two will visit Phobos.

Lesson: Keep working, and learn more about using CAD and Max effectively. I already had a lot of experience with CAD. However, this project requires the use of 3D drafting and rendering. A "floor plan" is deceptive, since the CTM is tubular in shape. Most buildings have a similar ceiling height at the place where the floor meets the wall, as in the center of the room. But, in the CTM, the "ceiling" height is zero where the "floor" meets the "wall". Thinking two-dimensionally is not recommended.

November: Fleshing out the design.

During this period, Jill, Jon, and I, worked on our separate components, incorporating them into the CTM as needed. I worked on a bedroom concept. Imagine going on a trip for three years, with five other people. Unless someone dies, you won't be able to get away from any of them. You will always be within 40 or so feet of them, barring that one-year excursion to Mars or Phobos. Even then, you'll be in the Mars Habitat or Phobos Explorer. You are still in very close contact.

Rather than have coffin-sized sleep modules, I opted for expandable bedrooms. The "walls" of these sleeping spaces are flexible, more fabric-like storage containers/pockets/pouches than hard bins. If they are transparent or see-through, then the crew member can personalize their own space with their own posessions. Also, the soft surfaces and edge treatments permit greater dampening of sound. The noise on current spacecraft is supposedly an on-going concern. I don't have a link or really good source on this (Comments welcome!). That said, I think muffling the chatter or noise produced by other humans would be quite nice.

The space taken up by the larger bedrooms is removed from the lab area and storage containers. Initial designs had almost all the storage in one place, or stuffed into all nooks and crannies. My design uses storage to create a personal space.

Lesson: Keep working!

December: The Big Finish.

On the technical side, my skills in three-dimensional drafing on AutoCAD, and rendering/animation on 3DS Max, are much better than they were back in September. My team really came together, as did the other teams. The final presentation was on 14 December, and lasted from 3:30 pm through 7:00 pm. Our team went first, to ensure that the guests were awake. We got good commentary and suggestions. Some of what they said is influencing my current activities.

Lesson: Keep busy learning 3DS Max. Also, research the topic that the guests brought up as being critical to the health and safety of crewmembers: Radiation Shielding.