Research Paper1Space and spacecraft technology .docx

Research Paper
1
Space and spacecraft technology
EE 460
Tarek Mamlook
Mamlook 1of 11
Technology has been part of our lives and it helped us enrich
our lives and create a better place to live in
and ensured a safer environment. The advanced technology
helped us achieve a lot of great invention and guided us to look
into the sky . We started looking into visting other planets and
install new technologies in space that helped make our lives
much easier . But to get to space we need to manufacture space
crafts that will carry us to new heights and enable us to reach

new things . To manufacture a space craft there are a lot of
techniques and specifications that need to be considered and
met , in addition the techniques changed over time .
A space craft is
a special kind of vehicle equipped with a lot of equipment that
make it functional in space . “Every space craft has to have
some essential system some of those systems are
the
Spacecraft structures
, Electrical power systems Attitude control systems ,Command
and data handling systems
,Thermal control systems ,Propulsion systems .Those system
should be fit together in able to work as one unit so the space
craft can do the job it asked to do ..
Space craft have a big , unique structure that includes a lot of
parts and pieces for example
some space crafts have parts that can be divided in two groups :
the primary and secondary . the primary ones
are mainly used to transmit loads and the secondary
are independent but must support the primary parts . we can say
that
those parts should have some features like low power
consumption , adapt easily to the pressure and other space
element so the space craft can hold up to do it object precisely
and with ease and away from problems.

“.(
http://www.au.af.mil
,).
Example of parts that forms the
space craft structure are the payload door , the delta wings , the
vertical stabilizer
, side hatch in addition to all the electronics and the
compartments and the equipments
to help ensure a
good quality of
life for those who will mount it to go to space for some time
and here is a picture viewing a space craft structure:
Mamlook 2 of
11
Now when it comes to manufacturing those space crafts there
are a lot of things to consider you have to look into the
objective of the space craft what is its purpose , there are a lot
of purposes for it and so there are a lot of kinds
there is the

space craft that lands , there is the one that hovers , it could be
manned or unmanned
, there is really a lot of types that really needs different
manufacturing technique , so a good tip to take can be to write
down some requirements and go over the budget and the
features it should have before starting the manufacturing
process .
Being prepared
and really knowing
what we want, means we
can choose the correct techniques
to manufacture the correct
space craft which ultimately
reflects
on the time we save and the budget that is satisfied .
Space crafts have gone through a lot of changes to improve
performance and one thing was the decrease in weight ,also
those space crafts are being equipped with material that are
stronger and can withstand and last in the space environment
like never before and also be undetectable or at least hard to
detect.
The technique of manufacturing a space craft differs depending
on a lot of elements but the core technique are same. If we look
at the manufacturing technique used on the CST-100 this was a

space craft designed by boeing for NASA . to manufacture it ,
the company used light material and reduced the storage space
.So for the storage space it only manufactured specific number
of seats for the passenger to meet the budget and for the control
system , existing systems, Did not manufacture a new system
from scratch, were used to operate
the space craft , it also designed the interior of the craft and
manufactured the technology part of it in a way that ensured an
easy access to all systems and the ability to control the craft
with just very simple and easy training in their facilities , some
of those systems included radiators, forward heat shield and the
craft was divided into two compartments the crew half and the
craft systems and the fuel place in the other half , this project
had a very limited budget since the customer only needed the
product to go up to space to get to other space stations , it was
like a transportation tool to get to space facilities so everything
had to be right on the size and did not include very fancy
equipments
.the design had very limited things it can do , it was able to
carry only 7 people and the unfiled seat of those seven can be
taken off an replace with cargo , it was manufactured in a way
that It cannot stay for more than 200 days with power given to it
on a consistent basis . the manufacturing technique were very
constrained and somewhat limited because the resources need
very small in particular the money.(
NASA.GOV)
In the process of manufacturing crafts there are always some
challenges that face the technologies input into such product ,
for instance , NASA is
constantly evaluating its technologies it uses to only choose the
best one that will do the job with no problem and/or more
efficient .To do that the NASA appointed a committee for that

job , so the committee started by categorizing technologies into
3 that are :
Technology Readiness Level (TRL),
Tipping Point,
NASA Capabilities.for technology Readinessliness level: A
TRL scale is used to test the current state of the technology in
place , but the TRL should not
Mamlook 3 of 11
be used
alone to determine the
technology prioritized of usage.for the Tipping point:it is just a
scale to check if a small twist in the already existing
technologies would cause a
big advancement into the technology which make it more
important to use .for the NASA capabilities : it is a
measurement that helps decide if the technologies in NASA can
help the research on going in other places .
Every piece of technology has an objective that changes
depending on some factors and those objectives are extremely
important to meet if the technology involved in things going to
space , NASA has a lot of objectives to its technology , some of
those objectives are keeping and lengthen the human work
farther than the lower Earth orbit and also look for life and any
interesting activities in other planets and objects other than the
earth.The first objective s concerned with the method that will
be applied to insure the total safety of the crew and passengers
that will be on the space craft ,so this objective contains more

than the seat built and the oxygen tanks , this objective includes
Maintaining
the life of those abroad it felt very safe , the advancing
technology in that will help to make the space a
commercial destination in the future for ordinary people who
have money and got board of the entertaining
destination on earth. For the other objective it is mainly
concerned with the detailed study and the deep understanding
of the planets and the objects around us which will enable more
discoveries and may find evidence of some life in the future .(
NASA .Gov)
space craft technological development has started long time ago
, one space craft
, the space probe has been created in early 20
th
century .
it carried machines and equipments to space , beyond the earth
orbits, and it was unmanned so it did not carry people into space
, it helped discover more facts and increased information about
orbits and objects far into space , there was many of this space
crafts depending on the goals of it . Always to make the project
successful the space craft designers and engineers should be
able to answer some
question like how far can the space craft go and where can it get
you , how safe does it get you to there , and how can it get you
back .

Space probe is uniquely engineered
, it is consists of
the work of a lot of systems together there is the craft itself and
the place where it is launched and the launching equipments , it
is a state of art how those system are compactable with each
other and how they work perfectly with each other .
This kind of space crafts has helped enrich te knowledge over
the years about new things in space and so new technologies
with the same concept has emerged for example NASA has
lately came up with a new project that help figure out the reason
for a series of probe failures that have gotten to space without
really being able to achieve some goals and were very expensive
.There was a lot of failures around mars .Exampe of such crafts
were
the mars polar lander and the the mars orbiter these were a huge
blow to the system and the expectation after those two took a
big blow.
Mamlook 4 of 11
But some of the adjustment made by the program (the discovery
program ) which included less expenses and more expeditions
gave everybody a lift when one probe was able to get near mars
and do its job , so new ways of approaching such planet and so
there is new planning in the future of
sending
more missions and space crafts to gain more in depth insight
into possible finding a much bigger evidence of possible life on
mars and other places and so NASA had planned some new
probs to go there .

Some of those probes
are
Mercury orbiter, a
Pluto
mission, a Venus environmental satellite. Many countries
started following the united states in that it has launched some
space crafts that will explore and maybe get back to earth . For
a start
it will on a limited scale since doing that is very costly but at
the same time very valuable.
(
The Gale Encyclopedia of Science
,2004)
Going back to
space technology aspect of space crafts , well there are many
things that the space craft should be equipped with
a lot of essential things but since there is the weight limitation ,
companies and organizations that
need to satisfy that yend to use micro technology .space micro
technology is very big part of what NASA and other space
programs do , there devices should be power efficient and able
to withstand stress and pressure at space high altitude , new
material has been added to the manufacturing procees of such
unique devices .Some devices have been
supplied with micromechanical functional devices that can
sense the ultimate temperature and any condition so it will help
visualize how the mission will be and so then determining if
there is going to be unnecessary load that will help to decrease
the payload which means less weight and less expenses

.(
d. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner., 2004.)
Absollutley there are drastic changes in technology and
manufacturing a space craft for exploring purposes or a space
craft that carryies crew to the space stations and the outer space
, there a lot of differences one is that of the safety measurement
that need to take place , it is not the same to carry people or
equipment , for people you try to fight hard to save there lives
and bring them safely but when you have an unmanned air craft
that is in danger , you would weight in what to do and what
action you may take on , do we leave it or try hard to save it ,
another thing is the complexity of the design is more in manned
space crafts since that would mean life support and places to
live in should be very well done so the people who will be
working in space would refer to their space craft for
reenergizing purpose
and going to work again, manned crafts are most of the time
expensive .
Mamlook 5 of 11
One manned craft example can be seen in Apollo space craft
which was an American space craft and the Soyuz which was of
the Russianians , both of them were designed to take humans to
the moon. . Apollo space craft consisted of three parts which are
the service module ,the lunar module and the command module
. on

the other hand The Soyuz is consisting of three things as well :
the vehicle
,the service module and the orbital module .
The Apollo space craft it had a main objective of getting people
into the moon , basically the crew with be taken to the moon
being allowed to walk on the moon and use the equipments to
collect valuable info and then return safely to Earh.the crew was
able to live and perform the work in a very high quality
environment inside the craft , the lunar module was able to
move two astronauts to the moon from its orbit . for the service
module was a place to keep the systems needed for maneuvering
,running the space craft in the outer space .
There was 11 manned flight that happened using Apollo and this
space craft was the first to get to the moon, there were 6 stops
on the moon through the whole life of this space craft
,it had the ability to take 2 astronauts there on each trip.
For the Soyuz it had a lot of goals and objective that were
among sending people and crew into space but at the end things
took a turn and the space craft was sent multiple times to space
to achieve a whole different goals some of which were send it
and have it in space for some time to act like an orbiting space
station
.(NASA.GOV)
On the other side for unmanned space crafts ,there were a lot of
them that were sent to space over the years with different
missions and from different destination all over the planet,
funded from different
parties , examples of such space crafts were the

Magellan probe and the
Cassini-Huygens.
The manned space craft had many different equipment that
helped work and improve discoveries and also some of those
equipments were expensive and the budget was somewhat open
and things were more sophisticate and more ambitious since
most of those
space crafts were expected to come back , make good use of
their information that they took in space and then give them the
option to reuse the space craft more than once with maintains
and
service given to it in between. On the other hand unmanned
crafts were having some budget limit and equpments were not
expensive nor the best onces were included in it because they
knew that these space crafts may never return or are designed to
not return.
In addition to all the space crafts that are developed there are a
lot more of technological things that helps maneuver the space
and creates Endless possibilities
for creating better environment and live more happily.
Mamlook 6 of 11
Space crafts as a whole have been very important and essential
to the development and expansion of the space exploration over
the years , this process of getting people into space has helped
expand the knowledge of people on earth and go farther in
discoveries . Some times you may run into a really honest

question , why do we have
to go to space waste our money ? truth is the although this space
industry has taken too much time and effort from us over the
years , it was the right thing to do and the continues to be.
Space technology has evolved and equipments are more
complex and more functional and that helped open new doors
and get to places that were out of our reach back in the day .
Space is wide and hugh and there are lot of things that can be
accomplished when getting there , it is not just get there for
example to mars get some sand and come back , before arriving
there each mission has something in mind to do and hope to
achieve , some of those objects are revel the unknown ,
enriching the lives of humankind on earth , knowing what is out
there , and check if there is really a life in other planets also
check for the ability or the likelihood of maybe us going to a
near by planet and live there or simply use it as a vacation site
if somebody ever gets board of earth . All these dreams helps us
encourage ourselves to work harder and shoot for the stars ,
before people called out others who though we would have a
transportation that would take you from one part to another and
now it became an ordinary thing .because all the benefits the
space has to offers and when evaluation risk and gain it turns
out that getting more involved in space technology and industry
is worth the risk
and so more countries get involved with it and more and more
programs have been established over the years. For examples
there is some U.S
organizations that are fully invested like NASA , Japan has the
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Germany has the
German Aerospace Center, France has the French Space Agency

in addition to many others .
Having such agencies for a country involves meaning it is
heading in the right direction and ebnables the country to
evolve and improve and advance and help its people move
forward with there lives .so each country budgets some money
for any research or operational activates that involves space and
the technology that comes with it. The budgets for that range
between thousands of millions and tens of thousand of millions
of dollars depending on how big the country is in terms of
resources for example the united
states of America spends around 17,700 millions of dollars a
year on the other hand Sweden spend 100 million dollars on
resources involving space mechanism . space has offered us a
way of communicating wirelessly and help us
get to know other nations like never before with the invention
of satellite and we also are now able to track and get to our
destination with the press of a button
, so the space has showed us some new technologies but on the
other hand space is no merciful , people who go there have to
train hard and be able to prepare for the unexpected and being
able to achieve some goals ..
Mamlook 7 of 11
There are a lot of technology going on
the technology going on during the launch , the pre-launch and
the after launch period . There is many equipments in a space
craft that help make the
journey a success.

there are many complex
things in it .
One equipment piece that is very essential in a space craft are
the sensors such as the
thermocouples, this sensor helps convert temperature
values into voltages, and
because those readings were very important
they were sent back to the earth and this was accomplished
using the specialized communications system.A very important
space craft systems that forms part of the technology
in the space craft is the telemetry system
which basically is a group of electronic devices that were built
to receive orders from the Earth stations for those Earth based
mission controllers this system is also known as tracking and
command (TT&c)subsystem. This system and the new ones
helped ensure a communication method between the space craft
and the earth station and also eliminated some problems that
were associated with any communication.
Some of those problems were
the low altitude of the space craft orbit ,
since that made a contradiction with the physics involved
because lower altitude means a muh smaller orbital periods
which means it only spend very little time

on top of an earth station which causes not enough time to set
up the communication using the simple methods using in space
crafts in the early stages .
Another thing that in any space craft is the power it uses to
operate through out the technology of such systems has became
better and better over the years at the start
the operation time of a space craft or a satellite was around
was running from some days to few weeks but no more because
of many failures or power need .Technology at the start in
power matter as poor compared to today
’
s advanced
standards and advanced theories of today.in the past space
crafts used to operate on batteries with no real idea on how to
recharge them
so obviously the trips to space were short. But with the time
passing there were new ways coming out one was adding
a big number of
electrically coupled photovoltaic
as a number one source of power for vehicles going out to space
but without getting rid of the batteries which are still in use as a
secondary source. After several years of having
a some what good solution to the problem, we ran into another
problem , with the advancement of everything and with the
building of new equipment that can do more

, space crafts had to carry a lot more things but the power
supplied was around the same amount so every bit of power had
to be used efficiently
in the meantime of creating a better solution so the power
consumption was on the top of the list of requirements
when building and complex , new components
.
( Williamson,2006)
Mamlook 8 of 11
And with all that happening , it became evident to all the
countries who invested heavily in space like the united states of
America and the European countries
and all the people who are in that industry that
the only way for the space crafts , satellites and all the other
object
to be sent out
with a lot more complex and to be a lot more productive in
terms of goals is to manufacture and develop very high capacity
of power supply with photovoltaic cell arrays and big voltage
distribution ,
after testing
space crafts
were able of powering a wide range of application and so those

new additions became the standard of how the space crafts
should be built. These systems In addition to others are part of
how space crafts technology is changing with time .
There are a lot of space crafts , probes ,vehicles and satellites
that have been sent to space
and will be sent . Satellites have changed our lives forever and
will continue to do so , our lives have been effected with it and
so the way we communicate with each other , satellites enables
us to watch channels from other countries , different cities right
from the comfort of our homes .they also have enable us to get
to destination never possible before
with the GPS system , you can literally go to another country
and get to you destination with only an electronic device it is
really that simple. It also changed the way we communicate
with others or do work and have fun , the world has become a
small , exciting and full of adventure
town . satellites have helped improve our freedoms and security
and made exchanging cultures , ideas and tradition a very easy ,
inexpensive and available service to everyday people.(
NASA.GOV)
Satellite have a very unique and complex design that has been
improved over the years and it consists of many of the devices
and pieces , frames , body and the systems that include
transmitting and receiving , in addition to the sophisticated
power system that enables maintaining it for a long time up
there were it can provide quality service and help making the
technological advances an achievable dream to mankind .
The basic structure of a satellite that is sent to space consists of
a lot of devices and components . when designing a satellite
there is always the manufacturing of a model design that will

help figure out how the satellite will be put together and what
and how much payload can be added to the real model of such a
design
. The structure
supports the satellites subsystems and the weights that it carries
so first of all it should be strong enough , also it helps maintain
the important satellite in the desired locations in space like the
thermal control , sensors the cables it has.
Mamlook 9 of 11
And
that structure helps ensure good protection to component of the
satellite from environmental effects during the different stages
that includes
ground operations , launch and other mission stages.
Space crafts have been consider a key part in discovering the
big space and so building such things require very much
precision and good
measurements to be able to function on a high level in a place
that pretty much shows no mercy .
And as mention earlier that space is a huge place and working
with it has a necessity of knowing what we are dealing with and
there are some new and old technologies that helped us adapt to
such place , for example

there is the booster ,the atmospheric braking, lunar rover in
addition to all the systems that can be reused with time and new
mission . there is also all
new technologies that are implemented and will be on display in
the near future there is solar –power crafts and satellites , non
rocket space launch. Although there are a lot of accomplishment
over the years there are still things that one days will be
achieved and life luxuries will also be more fascinating.
The most big new technology that will have a big impact on
everything that we do is if we can build satellites that are solar
powered , since at first
it will be able to stay up there for as long as we want with
providing little maintenance and support throughout , this will
help decrease the costs and maybe focus the research after that
on making new components and making it more efficient .
Making a solar powered satellites
, will also be able to not only support themselves but also save
energy that can be sent back to the earth to support and provide
power enough to solve the energy problem forever .
One example of a solar powered
satellite the one which was built by boeing during the 1982 this
ideas was projected to provide power to it self and get enough
energy to support the united states with electricity , this system
is though to have a platform of the size of a small city covering
about more than 20,000 miles
above the equator , and it was thought that those platforms
would carry around billions of silicon solar cells

that would transform sunlight into electrical energy then sent to
earth
as microwaves through the antennas provided with it then the
antennas in the earth station would pick up those waves and
convert them into
current electricity . after some studies on how to implement this
ideas and what are the advantages , scientists came to conclude
that 1 satellite of such kind can provide a revenue of about
$105billion in 30 years , it is expensive to throw the satellite up
there but it will not have much expenses after that . This idea
has been developing over the years and every time there is an
energy crisis , this idea resurfaces again
Mamlook 10 of 11
and
there are some voices that rise to support such ideas. So by the
late decade of the 21
st
century , the Boeing company had people who had experience
of about 30 years on this idea , they were ready to propose some
ideas and contracts for NASA, these proposals included
some satellites that will do such job. They also proposed
building a space colony on the moon also there was the though
of maybe building the systems on earth rather than in space to
save money in that regard .But
everything is still on paper and they are waiting for the right
group and time to push such a huge idea that may change the
lives forever even more than now
.(boeing.com)

AT the end , space has a lot of things that mankind is looking
for and there are things that can improve our lives dramatically
if we put our knowledge and worked together .Space crafts are
essential and very big , they got a lot of technological
equipment that help maintain everything in check through out
the trip ,there are two types of space crafts manned and un
manned and depending on each one there are different
measurements, and standards. Space craft manufacturing has
evolved as a top priority to get to space and there were a lot of
systems that were added and made things much more simple.
One space craft that had a huge impact was the
probe it had a unique design . Going back to the manned space
crafts , The Apollo mission was a
success . Space crafts had and still have a huge impact and path
the way for new technologies and new informations.
And since space had a lot to provide to us we more and more
countries has came to support the innovation of space with
different budgets for example the united states of America
spends around 17,700 millions on such things . There are some
systems that really provided some new visions on how to make
innovation more effective there is the power system which had
some new improvement ad helped solve some problems in areas
of how to be able to use objects sent to space in a better way
and how the system became better and better with the years , it
started with batteries and
ended with ideas of how to use the sun energy
not only to sustain its mission but also improvise energy for
people around the globe .Boeing has been a leader in such Area

, it has been working on such things for half a century now and
it has become one of the top leading forces in creating a new era
in space were things can get better and lives can be enriched
and improved.
The people who are interested in space have become more
optimistic about the future , because us as human we aimed for
the stars and we got there and then we wanted to create more
opportunities for every and we were able to do that so really the
future looks brilliant and very promising.
Mamlook 11 of 11
It is very important to teach our kids to dream big and be happy
and optimistic , there is nothing wrong with working hard and
having fun at the same time .What was impoosible to achieve in
the past is so real right now and what seems beyond our scope is
going to come true one day if we kept working hard and
believing

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