Ho, D.; Makrygiorgos, G.; Hill, A.; Berliner, A.J. Towards an Extension of Equivalent System Mass for Human Exploration Missions on Mars. npj Microgravity 2022, 8, doi:10.1038/s41526-022-00214-7.
Ho, D.; Makrygiorgos, G.; Hill, A.; Berliner, A.J. Towards an Extension of Equivalent System Mass for Human Exploration Missions on Mars. npj Microgravity 2022, 8, doi:10.1038/s41526-022-00214-7.
Cite as:
Ho, D.; Makrygiorgos, G.; Hill, A.; Berliner, A.J. Towards an Extension of Equivalent System Mass for Human Exploration Missions on Mars. npj Microgravity 2022, 8, doi:10.1038/s41526-022-00214-7.
Ho, D.; Makrygiorgos, G.; Hill, A.; Berliner, A.J. Towards an Extension of Equivalent System Mass for Human Exploration Missions on Mars. npj Microgravity 2022, 8, doi:10.1038/s41526-022-00214-7.
Abstract
NASA mission systems proposals are often compared using an equivalent system mass (ESM) framework wherein all elements of technology to deliver an effect- its components, operations and logistics of delivery- are converted to effective masses since this has a known cost scale in space operations. To date, ESM methods and the tools for system comparison have not considered complexities wherein systems that serve a mission span multiple transit and operations stages, such as would be required to support a crewed mission to Mars, and thus do not account for the different mass equivalency factors operational during each period and the inter-dependencies of the costs across the mission. Further, ESM does not account well for the differential reliabilities of the underlying technologies. Less reliability should incur an equivalent mass cost for technologies that might otherwise provide a mass advantage. We introduce an extensions to ESM to address these limitations and show that it provides a direct method for analyzing, optimizing and comparing different mission systems. We demonstrate our extended ESM (xESM) calculation with crop production technologies -- an aspect of the developing offworld biomanufacturing suite -- since it represents a case with strong coupling among stages of the mission and a relatively high-risk profile.
Keywords
Space Systems Bioengineering; Equivalent System Mass; ESM; Environmental Control and Life Support Systems; ECLSS; Space Logistics; Uncertainty; Risk
Subject
Engineering, Automotive Engineering
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
