ralph@oao.org


planet earth near space solar system deep space terra firma CEnR PHRITS MMO Ares Acquire		In late 2004, the US President announced a new National Vision for Spac Exploration. The vision's focus is to be a sustained exploration of the solar system, starting with a return of humans to the Moon, and eventually to Mars. To implement the President' vision, NASA released a roadmap to turn the general goals formulated by the President into specific milestones - the resulting program is called Project Constellation. In the first phase of the program, NASA awarded a number of Conecept Exploration & Refinement contracts (CE&R). My own role was that of lead architect and project manager for the CE&R contract awarded to Andrews Space in 2004.
	VISTA Our team developed a transportation architecture concept termed Versatile Integrated Space Transportation Architecture (VISTA). It was based on a number of key philosophies, derived from the desire to achive a sustainable transportation architecture in support of the nation's vision. The mandate of sustainability had a number of implications, which where then distilled into the four key VISTA principles: n-body orbital mechanics ISRU - especially for propellant production interface commonality, paired with technological diversity separation of exploration and commercialization, with an emphasis of the first laying the groundwork for the second The use of multi-body (n-body) orbital mechanics was derived from the work of Martin Lo, and used to achieve slow cargo transport to the key architecture nodes at very high efficiencies. In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) is a concept long discussed in the engineering / academic communities, based on the idea of using as many local resources as possible, thus reducing the amount of mass that needs to be transported to human outposts. VISTA did not require the use of ISRU, but was set up to take full advantage of it should resources be discovered as human activbities expanded to the Moon and subsequently to Mars. Interface commonality was deemed required for the system, in order to open participation to as many organizations / nations as possible, fostering competition and a pool of technologically diverse solutions that can be used interchangable. Technological diversity would thus limit the systems dependency on specific technologies, making it more robust should any envisioned technology solution not become reality as originally envisioned (technology risk robustness). Lastly, scientific exploration activities were required to also be trail-blazers for subsequent commercial endevours. This would allow mature segments of the system to be spun-off to commercial funding, freeing up government seed money for further expansion. Since the public is the ultimate source of all funds for space exploration (either through taxation or commerce), the goal of commercially based public space access was given primary importance. A white paper on VISTA was published in early 2005.

	ralph.open-aerospace.org

VISTA