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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1975

TERSSE. Definition of the total earth resources system for the shuttle era. Volume 10: (TOSS) TERSSE operational system study

Economic benefits studies regarding the application of remote sensing to resource management and the Total Earth Resources for the Shuttle Era (TERSSE) study to outline the structure and development of future systems are used, along with experience from LANDSAT and LACIE, to define the system performance and economics of an operational Earth Resources system. The system is to be based on current (LANDSAT follow-on) technology and its application to high priority resource management missions, such as global crop inventory. The TERSSE Operational System Study (TOSS) investigated system-level design alternatives using economic performance as the evaluation criterion. As such, the TOSS effort represented a significant step forward in the systems engineering and economic analysis of Earth Resources programs. By parametrically relating engineering design parameters, such as sensor performance details, to the economic benefit mechanisms a new level of confidence in the conclusions concerning the implementation of such systems can be reached.

Stow, W. K.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Project resources planning and control

This report contains instructional guidelines for the resources planning and control of research and development (R&D) projects managed by NASA's Langley Research Center (LaRC). Although written to serve primarily as a practical guide and reference for those LaRC personnel who perform resources planning, analysis, control, and reporting functions, it should also be meaningful to other NASA personnel who are directly or indirectly involved in or affected by these functions, especially project technical managers whose responsibilities include resources management. Certain sections should help Contractor personnel to better understand what resources information must usually be submitted on LaRC projects and what use is made of such information. The Project Manager of a large R&D project typicaly receives support from an Analyst in the area of resources management. The Analyst provides assistance in four functional areas: Planning, Analysis/Control, Administration, and Reporting. Each of these functions are discussed in detail. Examples of techniques used effectively on LaRC projects have been included where applicable. A considerable amount of information has been included on the use of Performance Measurement (Earned Value) Systems for contract cost control and reporting as little information is currently available on this subject in NASA publications.

Sibbers, C. W.↗
NASA NTRS1984

An integrated GIS/remote sensing data base in North Cache soil conservation district, Utah: A pilot project for the Utah Department of Agriculture's RIMS (Resource Inventory and Monitoring System)

A basic geographic information system (GIS) for the North Cache Soil Conservation District (SCD) was sought for selected resource problems. Since the resource management issues in the North Cache SCD are very complex, it is not feasible in the initial phase to generate all the physical, socioeconomic, and political baseline data needed for resolving all management issues. A selection of critical varables becomes essential. Thus, there are foud specific objectives: (1) assess resource management needs and determine which resource factors ae most fundamental for building a beginning data base; (2) evaluate the variety of data gathering and analysis techniques for the resource factors selected; (3) incorporate the resulting data into a useful and efficient digital data base; and (4) demonstrate the application of the data base to selected real world resoource management issues.

Wheeler, D. J.↗
NASA NTRS1985

A mathematical formulation of the problem of optimal use of ground resources for future space missions

An approximate mathematical formulation for scheduling of future space missions is proposed. The objective is to schedule the flights to efficiently use the available ground resources, to minimize the inventory level of ground resources needed and to minimize the overlapping or conflicting periods during which the same types of resources are used by the various flights. The development of the mathematical formulation of the problem considers the presence of a large number of sequencing and resource constraints: (1) the order in which the flights are to be launched is predetermined; and (2) some types of resources are to be used only by certain flights. A linear objective function based on cost considerations is constructed and this function is minimized subject to the various constraints.

Scott, M.↗
NASA NTRS1990

In-situ resource utilization in the design of advanced lunar facilities

Resource utilization will play an important role in the establishment and support of a permanently manned lunar base. At the University of Houston - College of Architecture and the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture, a study team recently investigated the potential use of lunar in-situ materials in the design of lunar facilities. The team identified seven potential lunar construction materials; concrete, sulfur concrete, cast basalt, sintered basalt, glass, fiberglass, and metals. Analysis and evaluation of these materials with respect to their physical properties, processes, energy requirements, resource efficiency, and overall advantages and disadvantages lead to the selection of basalt materials as the more likely construction material for initial use on a lunar base. Basalt materials can be formed out of in-situ lunar regolith, with minor material beneficiation, by a simple process of heating and controlled cooling. The team then conceptualized a construction system that combines lunar regolith sintering and casting to make pressurized structures out of lunar resources. The design uses a machine that simultaneously excavates and sinters the lunar regolith to create a cylindrical hole, which is then enclosed with cast basalt slabs, allowing the volume to be pressurized for use as a living or work environment. Cylinder depths of up to 4 to 6 m in the lunar mare or 10 to 12 m in the lunar highlands are possible. Advantages of this construction system include maximum resource utilization, relatively large habitable volumes, interior flexibility, and minimal construction equipment needs. Conclusions of this study indicate that there is significant potential for the use of basalt, a lunar resource derived construction material, as a low cost alternative to Earth-based materials. It remains to be determined when in lunar base phasing this construction method should be implemented.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1991

Utilization of space resources: A historical view

While widely accepted today, the use of non-Earth resources in official space planning circles has been long in coming. Popular and governmental acceptance of using extraterrestrial resources, be they asteroids, comets, or other celestial bodies are highlighted. Particular emphasis is placed on those individuals, such as the late Dandridge Cole, who pioneered early discussion and thought on the topic over a period of several decades. The evolution of using extraterrestrial resources in governmental space policy, such as NASA's Outlook for Space (1976) and Pioneering the Space Frontier (1986) is reviewed. Put forward is the view that a redefinition of resources of near-Earth space may be warranted, particularly in consideration of using high vacuum, solar radiation, and magnetospheric phenomenon for experimentation and application purposes. Lastly, a prospective look at public reaction to utilizing space resources is presented.

David, Leonard W.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Survey of resource opportunities and critical evaluation of economic requirements

A series of mission analyses were performed to evaluate human mission to Mars and the moon with and without the aid of planetary resource utilization. The types of trade studies that are considered include the use of resources to manufacture propellant, food, habitat atmospheric gases, and lander habitat structure. Also, the potential for export of resources from the moon, Mars, Phobos, Deimos, and selected asteroids is also examined. In all cases, mass leveraging is evaluated. For certain cases, economic factors are evaluated as well. It is concluded that some uses are highly leveraging on the mission, whereas others have lesser impact and, therefore, should be afforded lesser priority in resource utilization studies. This survey is made with a consistent set of scaling laws for spacecraft propulsion and habitation systems and subsystems, and therefore, provides a rational basis for comparing different resource locations and use strategies.

Clark, Benton C.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Lunar resource recovery: A definition of requirements

The capability to locate, mine, and process the natural resources of the Moon will be an essential requirement for lunar base development and operation. The list of materials that will be necessary is extensive and ranges from oxygen and hydrogen for fuel and life support to process tailings for emplacement over habitats. Despite the resources need, little is known about methodologies that might be suitable for utilizing lunar resources. This paper examines some of the requirements and constraints for resource recovery and identifies key areas of research needed to locate, mine, and process extraterrestrial natural resources.

Elsworth, D.↗
NASA NTRS1992

A Combined XRD/XRF Instrument for Lunar Resource Assessment

Robotic surface missions to the Moon should be capable of measuring mineral as well as chemical abundances in regolith samples. Although much is already known about the lunar regolith, our data are far from comprehensive. Most of the regolith samples returned to Earth for analysis had lost the upper surface, or it was intermixed with deeper regolith. This upper surface is the part of the regolith most recently exposed to the solar wind; as such it will be important to resource assessment. In addition, it may be far easier to mine and process the uppermost few centimeters of regolith over a broad area than to engage in deep excavation of a smaller area. The most direct means of analyzing the regolith surface will be by studies in situ. In addition, the analysis of the impact-origin regolith surfaces, the Fe-rich glasses of mare pyroclastic deposits, are of resource interest, but are inadequately known; none of the extensive surface-exposed pyroclastic deposits of the Moon have been systematically sampled, although we know something about such deposits from the Apollo 17 site. Because of the potential importance of pyroclastic deposits, methods to quantify glass as well as mineral abundances will be important to resource evaluation. Combined x ray diffraction (XRD) and x ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis will address many resource characterization problems on the Moon. XRF methods are valuable for obtaining full major-element abundances with high precision. Such data, collected in parallel with quantitative mineralogy, permit unambiguous determination of both mineral and chemical abundances where concentrations are high enough to be of resource grade. Collection of both XRD and XRF data from a single sample provides simultaneous chemical and mineralogic information. These data can be used to correlate quantitative chemistry and mineralogy as a set of simultaneous linear equations, the solution of which can lead to full characterization of the sample. The use of Rietveld methods for XRD data analysis can provide a powerful tool for quantitative mineralogy and for obtaining crystallographic data on complex minerals.

Vaniman, D. T.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Energy for lunar resource exploitation

Humanity stands at the threshold of exploiting the known lunar resources that have opened up with the access to space. America's role in the future exploitation of space, and specifically of lunar resources, may well determine the level of achievement in technology development and global economic competition. Space activities during the coming decades will significantly influence the events on Earth. The 'shifting of history's tectonic plates' is a process that will be hastened by the increasingly insistent demands for higher living standards of the exponentially growing global population. Key to the achievement of a peaceful world in the 21st century, will be the development of a mix of energy resources at a societally acceptable and affordable cost within a realistic planning horizon. This must be the theme for the globally applicable energy sources that are compatible with the Earth's ecology. It is in this context that lunar resources development should be a primary goal for science missions to the Moon, and for establishing an expanding human presence. The economic viability and commercial business potential of mining, extracting, manufacturing, and transporting lunar resource based materials to Earth, Earth orbits, and to undertake macroengineering projects on the Moon remains to be demonstrated. These extensive activities will be supportive of the realization of the potential of space energy sources for use on Earth. These may include generating electricity for use on Earth based on beaming power from Earth orbits and from the Moon to the Earth, and for the production of helium 3 as a fuel for advanced fusion reactors.

Glaser, Peter E.↗
NASA NTRS1994

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 43: The role of information resource training in aerospace education. Expanded version

Information resource instruction for undergraduate aerospace engineering students has traditionally been limited to an occasional part of the education process--a written paper required in the capstone design course or a library tour. Efforts to encourage the use of aerospace literature and information resources have been made in the past decade, with a recent push from information and, especially, networking technology. This paper presents data from a survey of U.S. aerospace engineering students regarding their instruction in the use of information resources. We find that more than 25 percent of the students surveyed had no instruction in technical communications skills or the use of information resources. We consider the need for instruction in the use of information resources and technical communications skills and the opportunities presented for improvement.

Lawrence, Barbara↗
NASA NTRS1995

Incineration as a Method for Resource Recovery from Inedible Biomass in a Controlled Ecological Life Support System

Resource recovery from waste streams in a space habitat is essential to minimize the resupply burden and achieve self-sufficiency. In a Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) human wastes and inedible biomass will represent significant sources of secondary raw materials necessary for support of crop plant production (carbon, water, and inorganic plant nutrients). Incineration, pyrolysis, and water extraction have been investigated as candidate processes for recovery of these important resources from inedible biomass in a CELSS. During incineration CO2 is produced by oxidation of the organic components and this product can be directly utilized by plants. Water is concomitantly produced, requiring only a phase change for recovery. Recovery of inorganics is more difficult, requiring solubilization of the incinerator ash. The process of incineration followed by water solubilization of ash resulted in loss of 35% of the inorganics originally present in the biomass. Losses were attributed to volatilization (8%) and non-water-soluble ash (27%). All of the ash remaining following incineration could be solubilized with acid, with losses resulting from volatilization only. The recovery for individual elements varied. Elemental retention in the ash ranged from 100% of that present in the biomass for Ca, P, Mg, Na, and Si to 10% for Zn. The greatest water solubility was observed for potassium with recovery of approximately 77% of that present in the straw. Potassium represented 80% of the inorganic constituents in the wheat straw, and because of slightly greater solubility made up 86% of the water-soluble ash. Following incineration of inedible biomass from wheat, 65% of the inorganics originally present in the straw were recovered by water solubilization and 92% recovered by acid solubilization. Recovery of resources is more complex for pyrolysis and water extraction. Recovery of carbon, a resource of greater mass than the inorganic component of biomass, is more difficult following pyrolysis and water extraction of biomass. In both cases, additional processors would be required to provide products equivalent to those resulting from incineration alone. The carbon, water, and organic resources of inedible biomass are effectively separated and output in usable forms through incineration.

Bubenheim, David L.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Computing the Envelope for Stepwise Constant Resource Allocations

Estimating tight resource level is a fundamental problem in the construction of flexible plans with resource utilization. In this paper we describe an efficient algorithm that builds a resource envelope, the tightest possible such bound. The algorithm is based on transforming the temporal network of resource consuming and producing events into a flow network with noises equal to the events and edges equal to the necessary predecessor links between events. The incremental solution of a staged maximum flow problem on the network is then used to compute the time of occurrence and the height of each step of the resource envelope profile. The staged algorithm has the same computational complexity of solving a maximum flow problem on the entire flow network. This makes this method computationally feasible for use in the inner loop of search-based scheduling algorithms.

Muscettola, Nicola↗
NASA NTRS2002

Computing the Envelope for Stepwise-Constant Resource Allocations

Computing tight resource-level bounds is a fundamental problem in the construction of flexible plans with resource utilization. In this paper we describe an efficient algorithm that builds a resource envelope, the tightest possible such bound. The algorithm is based on transforming the temporal network of resource consuming and producing events into a flow network with nodes equal to the events and edges equal to the necessary predecessor links between events. A staged maximum flow problem on the network is then used to compute the time of occurrence and the height of each step of the resource envelope profile. Each stage has the same computational complexity of solving a maximum flow problem on the entire flow network. This makes this method computationally feasible and promising for use in the inner loop of flexible-time scheduling algorithms.

Muscettola, Nicola↗
NASA NTRS2003

Mars Mission Optimization Based on Collocation of Resources

This paper presents a powerful approach for analyzing Martian data and for optimizing mission site selection based on resource collocation. This approach is implemented in a program called PROMT (Planetary Resource Optimization and Mapping Tool), which provides a wide range of analysis and display functions that can be applied to raw data or imagery. Thresholds, contours, custom algorithms, and graphical editing are some of the various methods that can be used to process data. Output maps can be created to identify surface regions on Mars that meet any specific criteria. The use of this tool for analyzing data, generating maps, and collocating features is demonstrated using data from the Mars Global Surveyor and the Odyssey spacecraft. The overall mission design objective is to maximize a combination of scientific return and self-sufficiency based on utilization of local materials. Landing site optimization involves maximizing accessibility to collocated science and resource features within a given mission radius. Mission types are categorized according to duration, energy resources, and in-situ resource utilization. Optimization results are shown for a number of mission scenarios.

G E Chamitoff↗
NASA NTRS2008

RESOLVE Projects: Lunar Water Resource Demonstration and Regolith Volatile Characterization

To sustain affordable human and robotic space exploration, the ability to live off the land at the exploration site will be essential. NASA calls this ability in situ resource utilization (ISRU) and is focusing on finding ways to sustain missions first on the Moon and then on Mars. The ISRU project aims to develop capabilities to technology readiness level 6 for the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program and early human missions returning to the Moon. NASA is concentrating on three primary areas of ISRU: (1) excavating, handling, and moving lunar regolith, (2) extracting oxygen from lunar regolith, and (3) finding, characterizing, extracting, separating, and storing volatile lunar resources, especially in the permanently shadowed polar craters. To meet the challenges related to technology development for these three primary focus areas, the Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction (RESOLVE) project was initiated in February 2005, through funding by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. RESOLVE's objectives are to develop requirements and conceptual designs and to perform breadboard concept verification testing of each experiment module. The final goal is to deliver a flight prototype unit that has been tested in a relevant lunar polar environment. Here we report progress toward the third primary area creating ways to find, characterize, extract, separate, and store volatile lunar resources. The tasks include studying thermal, chemical, and electrical ways to collect such volatile resources as hydrogen, water, nitrogen, methane, and ammonia. We approached this effort through two subtasks: lunar water resource demonstration (LWRD) and regolith volatile characterization (RVC).

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NASA NTRS2007

Resource Selection and Ranking

Surfer is an extensible framework for selecting and ranking grid resources. A resource is defined as anything that needs selecting such as compute resources, storage resources, and data resources.

Kolano, Paul↗
NASA NTRS2010

NASA'S Water Resources Element Within the Applied Sciences Program

The NASA Applied Sciences Program works within NASA Earth sciences to leverage investment of satellite and information systems to increase the benefits to society through the widest practical use of NASA research results. Such observations provide a huge volume of valuable data in both near-real-time and extended back nearly 50 years about the Earth's land surface conditions such as land cover type, vegetation type and health, precipitation, snow, soil moisture, and water levels and radiation. Observations of this type combined with models and analysis enable satellite-based assessment of numerous water resources management activities. The primary goal of the Earth Science Applied Science Program is to improve future and current operational systems by infusing them with scientific knowledge of the Earth system gained through space-based observation, model results, and development and deployment of enabling technologies, systems, and capabilities. Water resources is one of eight elements in the Applied Sciences Program and it addresses concerns and decision making related to water quantity and water quality. With increasing population pressure and water usage coupled with climate variability and change, water issues are being reported by numerous groups as the most critical environmental problems facing us in the 21st century. Competitive uses and the prevalence of river basins and aquifers that extend across boundaries engender political tensions between communities, stakeholders and countries. Mitigating these conflicts and meeting water demands requires using existing resources more efficiently. The potential crises and conflicts arise when water is competed among multiple uses. For example, urban areas, environmental and recreational uses, agriculture, and energy production compete for scarce resources, not only in the Western U.S. but throughout much of the U.S. but also in many parts of the world. In addition to water availability issues, water quality related problems are seriously affecting human health and our environment. The NASA Water Resources Program Element works to use NASA products to address these critical issues.

Toll, David↗