Not your father's Space Shuttle: NASA's new approach to space exploration has implications all the way to the shop floor

Modern Applications News, March, 2007

Rocketplane Kistler knew it could create a spacecraft that flew at 18,000 mph, what it needed was a way to apply that same speed to production. Using paper-based drawings wouldn't cut it for a 21st Century reusable rocket design, so the firm turned to software to get the job done.

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While it's been the workhorse of the U.S. manned space-flight program, the Space Shuttle is nearing the end of its operational life. First launched in April 1981, the shuttle has been in service for almost 27 years. NASA plans to retire the shuttle in 2010 and doesn't plan to replace it with another winged spacecraft.

"We're From the Government and We're Here to Help ..."

Rather than build its own reusable spacecraft, NASA turned to private industry. The space agency is still involved as a major investor in the new vehicle. The new spacecraft will transfer people and supplies to and from the International Space Station--ISS--after the shuttle is retired. NASA is the big investor, at $500 million, but the actual work of developing the new craft has been awarded to two private companies: Space Exploration Technologies--SpaceX--and Rocketplane Kistler, Oklahoma City.

Jointly, these companies have been contracted under a NASA program called Commercial Orbital Transportation Services--COTS--to develop and demonstrate the vehicles, systems, and operations needed to support a facility such as ISS.

NASA hopes to become just one of many customers for this new, orbiting delivery service.

"This is the first opportunity NASA has taken to engage entrepreneurs in a way that allows us to satisfy our needs and lets commercial industry gain a foothold," Marc Timm, acting COTS program executive of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, said. "It could, and should, have profound impacts on the way NASA does business."

Those profound effects will reach beyond NASA. When private industry builds something as big, complex, and expensive as a space vehicle, the "holy trinity" of cost, schedule, and weight is in control.

Virtual Mockup

"When NASA was developing the Space Shuttle, it created a full-scale physical mockup," Dave Cochran, K-1 structures and cargo module program manager at Rocketplane Kistler, said. "There's no way we could do that today. It would take far too long and cost way too much."

Given the way NASA created the COTS program, the incentive to work as quickly and efficiently as possible--without sacrificing accuracy or safety--is tremendous.

NASA has made success the incentive of COTS. According to space agency documents

    Partners will be paid only if they succeed. Payments will be
    incremental and based upon the partners' progress against a schedule
    of performance milestones contained in each Space Act agreement.

Cochran puts it a little more bluntly: "We're burning private money. Schedule and cost control are absolutely critical."

Because working fast and keeping costs manageable are important for Rocketplane Kistler, the company adopted an advanced digital development process based on product lifecycle management--PLM--technology from UGS, Plano, TX. The technological foundation includes the UGS NX design automation system for computer-aided design along with the Teamcenter solution for managing product and process knowledge.

"The award of a NASA COTS program meant we needed a strong, dynamic design foundation as well as the ability to manage the huge amounts of data we're creating," Joe Cuzzupoli, Rocketplane Kistler's COTS program manager, said. "UGS' high-end functionality and its strong presence in the aerospace and defense market made it the right choice for us.

"The two companies that are doing the bulk of the manufacturing for us--Northrop Grumman for structures and Aerojet for the propulsion system--both use NX," Cuzzupoli said. "That was another reason we chose this solution."

Rocketplane Kistler has been using NX and Teamcenter to develop the K-1, a fully reusable, two-stage orbital launch vehicle for delivering various payloads to a wide range of altitudes and inclinations in low earth orbit.

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The K-1 is Rocketplane Kistler's vehicle that will perform the COTS mission of space station resupply. However, the company will use it for other business, too, such as the delivery of commercial, military, and government satellites to various orbits.

Instead of building a physical mockup of the K-1, the aerospace company created a virtual mockup of the vehicle in NX, with details such as wiring and tubing. The digital model of the K-1 is complete and contains about 15,000 components. The actual vehicle is about 75 percent complete. Many of the components are finished, but in different locations around the country awaiting assembly.

While the virtual model of the K-1 provided the same kind of information a physical mockup has, such as the ability to check fit and find interferences, that is just the beginning. Working digitally brings other advantages to the project, extending even to shop floor, so that it is inconceivable that something as complex as a space vehicle will ever be developed any other way.