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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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At least 1,207 records · Page 67
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1986

Rotary Joints With Electrical Connections

Power and data transmitted on many channels. Two different rotary joints equipped with electrical connections between rotating and stationary parts. One joint transmits axial thrust and serves as interface between spinning and nonspinning parts of Galileo spacecraft. Other is scanning (limitedrotation) joint that aims scientific instruments from nonspinning part. Selected features of both useful to designers of robots, advanced production equipment, and remotely controlled instruments.

Osborn, F. W.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Bidirectional, Automatic Coal-Mining Machine

Proposed coal-mining machine operates in both forward and reverse directions along mine face. New design increases efficiency and productivity, because does not stop cutting as it retreats to starting position after completing pass along face. To further increase efficiency, automatic miner carries its own machinery for crushing coal and feeding it to slurry-transport tube. Dual-drum mining machine cuts coal in two layers, crushes, mixes with water, and feeds it as slurry to haulage tube. At end of pass, foward drum raised so it becomes rear drum, and rear drum lowered, becoming forward drum for return pass.

Collins, Earl R., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Development of a continuous spinning process for producing silicon carbide - silicon nitride precursor fibers

An apparatus was designed for the continuous production of silicon carbide - silicon nitride precursor fibers. The precursor polymer can be fiberized, crosslined and pyrolyzed. The product is a metallic black fiber with the composition of the type C sub x Si sub y n sub z. Little, other than the tensile strength and modulus of elasticity, is known of the physical properties.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1986

Wind profiler demonstration system

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has started procurement of a 30-station demonstration network of Doppler radar wind profilers to be deployed in the central United States by 1989. The purposes of this demonstration network are: (1) to assess the impact of a large wind profiler network on meteorological forecasting; (2) to test wind profiler hardware designed specifically for commercial production and widespread deployment; and (3) to provide wind data for research programs involving weather phenomena in the central United States.

Chadwick, R. B.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Activation of a controlled ecological life support system (CELSS) breadboard facility - Wheat growth studies

NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) will include subsystems for biomass production, food processing, and waste management in space. This paper discusses the CELSS Breadboard program, which is a research project for integration and evaluation of concepts and techniques of the CELSS facility, with special attention given to the Biomass Production Chamber (BPC). The design of the BPC and of its subsystems for nutrient delivery, atmospheric control, and computer control are discussed together with the subsystem control and monitoring parameter requirements. Results from preliminary wheat-growth tests in the BPC are included.

Knott, William M.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Pilot Plant Makes Oxygen Difluoride

Pilot plant makes oxygen difluoride highly-energetic, space-storable oxidizer not made commercially. Designed to handle reactants, product, and byproduct, most of which highly reactive, corrosive, and toxic. Oxygen difluoride evolves continuously from reactor containing potassium hydroxide in water at 10 degree C. Collection tanks alternated; one filled while other drained to storage cylinder. Excess OF2 and F2 dissipated in combustion of charcoal in burn barrel. Toxic byproduct, potassium fluoride, reacted with calcium hydroxide to form nontoxic calcium fluoride and to regenerate potassium hydroxide. Equipment processes toxic, difficult-to-make substance efficiently and safely.

Humphrey, Marshall F.↗
NASA NTRS1986

RT_BUILD: An expert programmer for implementing and simulating Ada real-time control software

The RT BUILD is an expert control system programmer that creates real-time Ada code from block-diagram descriptions of control systems. Since RT BUILD embodies substantial knowledge about the implementation of real-time control systems, it can perform many, if not most of the functions normally performed by human real-time programmers. Though much basic research was done in automatic programming, RT BUILD appears to be the first application of this research to an important problem in flight control system development. In particular, RT BUILD was designed to directly increase productivity and reliability for control implementations of large complex systems.

Lehman, Larry L.↗
NASA NTRS1989

An economic model for evaluating high-speed aircraft designs

A Class 1 method for determining whether further development of a new aircraft design is desirable from all viewpoints is presented. For the manufacturer the model gives an estimate of the total cost of research and development from the preliminary design to the first production aircraft. Using Wright's law of production, one can derive the average cost per aircraft produced for a given break-even number. The model will also provide the airline with a good estimate of the direct and indirect operating costs. From the viewpoint of the passenger, the model proposes a tradeoff between ticket price and cruise speed. Finally all of these viewpoints are combined in a Comparative Aircraft Seat-kilometer Economic Index.

Vandervelden, Alexander J. M.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Multi-dimensional modulation codes for fading channel

Some new codes are presented which have good performance on Rician fading channel with small decoding complexities. A new M-way partition chain is proposed for the L x MPSK (L less than or equal to M) signal set which maximizes the intra-set distance of each subset at each partition level. Based on this partition chain, a class of asymptotical optimum codes was found. For M = 4, these codes have both large symbol distances and product distances. Multi-level coding scheme allows to construct a code by hand such that the code meets some desired parameters, e.g., symbol distance, product distance, etc. In design of a multi-level code, all factors were considered which affect the performance and complexity of the code, such as, the decoding scheme, decoding complexity, and performance under the decoding scheme, e.g., if the multi-stage decoding scheme is used, the performance degradation due to the suboptimum decoding is taken into consideration. The performance for most of the presented codes was simulated on Rayleigh fading channel, and the results show that these codes have good performance with small decoding complexities.

Lin, Shu↗
NASA NTRS1992

Evaluation Of Threshold Functions For Searches Among Data

Paper presents information-theoretical analysis of problem of building system of inferences from large collection of data (data base). More specifically, problem to design searches of data base for informative conjunctive production rules. Results of analysis may lead to design of more-economical and more-effective electronic neural networks drawing inferences from data bases.

Goodman, Rodney M.↗
NASA NTRS1991

An inverse method for the aerodynamic design of three-dimensional aircraft engine nacelles

A fast, efficient and user friendly inverse design system for 3-D nacelles was developed. The system is a product of a 2-D inverse design method originally developed at NASA-Langley and the CFL3D analysis code which was also developed at NASA-Langley and modified for nacelle analysis. The design system uses a predictor/corrector design approach in which an analysis code is used to calculate the flow field for an initial geometry, the geometry is then modified based on the difference between the calculated and target pressures. A detailed discussion of the design method, the process of linking it to the modified CFL3D solver and its extension to 3-D is presented. This is followed by a number of examples of the use of the design system for the design of both axisymmetric and 3-D nacelles.

Bell, R. A.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Increasing the usefulness of Shuttle with SPACEHAB

SPACEHAB is a pressurized laboratory, approximately 10 feet long and 13 feet in diameter, which fits in the forward position of the Shuttle payload bay and connects to the crew compartment through the Orbiter airlock. SPACEHAB modules may contain up to 61 standard middeck lockers, providing 1100 cubic feet of pressurized work space. SPACEHAB'S capacity offers crew-tended access to the microgravity environment for experimentation, technology development, and small-scale production. The modules are designed to facilitate the user's ability to quickly and inexpensively develop and integrate a microgravity payload. Payloads are typically integrated into the SPACEHAB module in standard SPACEHAB lockers or SPACEHAB racks. Lockers are designed to offer identical user interfaces as standard Space Shuttle middeck lockers. SPACEHAB racks are interchangeable with Space Station Freedom racks, allowing hardware to be qualified for early station use.

Stone, Barbara A.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Orbital Spacecraft Consumables Resupply System (OSCRS). Volume 3: Program Cost Estimate

A cost analysis for the design, development, qualification, and production of the monopropellant and bipropellant Orbital Spacecraft Consumable Resupply System (OSCRS) tankers, their associated avionics located in the Orbiter payload bay, and the unique ground support equipment (GSE) and airborne support equipment (ASE) required to support operations is presented. Monopropellant resupply for the Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) in calendar year 1991 is the first defined resupply mission with bipropellant resupply missions expected in the early to mid 1990's. The monopropellant program estimate also includes contractor costs associated with operations support through the first GRO resupply mission.

Perry, D. L.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Defining the performance gap: Conducting a self-assessment

This paper presents two different approaches to performing self-assessments of continuous improvement activities. Case Study 1 describes the activities performed by JSC to assess the implementation of continuous improvement efforts at the NASA Center. The JSC approach included surveys administered to randomly selected NASA personnel and personal interviews with NASA and contractor management personnel. Case Study 2 describes the continuous improvement survey performed by the JSC Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance (SR&QA) organization. This survey consisted of a short questionnaire (50 questions) administered to all NASA and contractor SR&QA personnel. The questionnaire is based on the eight categories of the President's Award for Quality and Productivity Improvement. It is designed to objectively determine placement on the TQ benchmark and identify a roadmap for improvement.

Braymer, Susan A.↗
NASA NTRS1993

A novel VLSI processor architecture for supercomputing arrays

Design of the processor element for general purpose massively parallel supercomputing arrays is highly complex and cost ineffective. To overcome this, the architecture and organization of the functional units of the processor element should be such as to suit the diverse computational structures and simplify mapping of complex communication structures of different classes of algorithms. This demands that the computation and communication structures of different class of algorithms be unified. While unifying the different communication structures is a difficult process, analysis of a wide class of algorithms reveals that their computation structures can be expressed in terms of basic IP,IP,OP,CM,R,SM, and MAA operations. The execution of these operations is unified on the PAcube macro-cell array. Based on this PAcube macro-cell array, we present a novel processor element called the GIPOP processor, which has dedicated functional units to perform the above operations. The architecture and organization of these functional units are such to satisfy the two important criteria mentioned above. The structure of the macro-cell and the unification process has led to a very regular and simpler design of the GIPOP processor. The production cost of the GIPOP processor is drastically reduced as it is designed on high performance mask programmable PAcube arrays.

Venkateswaran, N.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Humidity effects on soluble core mechanical and thermal properties (polyvinyl alcohol/microballoon composite) type CG extendospheres, volume 2

This document constitutes the final report for the study of humidity effects and loading rate on soluble core (PVA/MB composite material) mechanical and thermal properties under Contract No. 100345. This report describes test results procedures employed, and any unusual occurrences or specific observations associated with this test program. The primary objective of this work was to determine if cured soluble core filler material regains its tensile and compressive strength after exposure to high humidity conditions and following a drying cycle. Secondary objectives include measurements of tensile and compressive modulus, and Poisson's ratio, and coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) for various moisture exposure states. A third objective was to compare the mechanical and thermal properties of the composite using 'SG' and 'CG' type extendospheres. The proposed facility for the manufacture of soluble cores at the Yellow Creek site incorporates no capability for the control of humidity. Recent physical property tests performed with the soluble core filler material showed that prolonged exposure to high humidity significantly degradates in strength. The purpose of these tests is to determine if the product, process or facility designs require modification to avoid imparting a high risk condition to the ASRM.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1994

Project Genesis: Mars in situ propellant technology demonstrator mission

Project Genesis is a low cost, near-term, unmanned Mars mission, whose primary purpose is to demonstrate in situ resource utilization (ISRU) technology. The essence of the mission is to use indigenously produced fuel and oxidizer to propel a ballistic hopper. The Mars Landing Vehicle/Hopper (MLVH) has an Earth launch mass of 625 kg and is launched aboard a Delta 117925 launch vehicle into a conjunction class transfer orbit to Mars. Upon reaching its target, the vehicle performs an aerocapture maneuver and enters an elliptical orbit about Mars. Equipped with a ground penetrating radar, the MLVH searches for subsurface water ice deposits while in orbit for several weeks. A deorbit burn is then performed to bring the MLVH into the Martian atmosphere for landing. Following aerobraking and parachute deployment, the vehicle retrofires to a soft landing on Mars. Once on the surface, the MLVH begins to acquire scientific data and to manufacture methane and oxygen via the Sabatier process. This results in a fuel-rich O2/CH4 mass ratio of 2, which yields a sufficiently high specific impulse (335 sec) that no additional oxygen need be manufactured, thus greatly simplifying the design of the propellant production plant. During a period of 153 days the MLVH produces and stores enough fuel and oxidizer to make a 30 km ballistic hop to a different site of scientific interest. At this new location the MLVH resumes collecting surface and atmospheric data with the onboard instrumentation. Thus, the MLVH is able to provide a wealth of scientific data which would otherwise require two separate missions or separate vehicles, while proving a new and valuable technology that will facilitate future unmanned and manned exploration of Mars. Total mission cost, including the Delta launch vehicle, is estimated to be $200 million.

Acosta, Francisco Garcia↗
NASA NTRS1994

Concept of using a benchmark part to evaluate rapid prototype processes

A conceptual benchmark part for guiding manufacturers and users of rapid prototyping technologies is proposed. This is based on a need to have some tool to evaluate the development of this technology and to assist the user in judiciously selecting a process. The benchmark part is designed to have unique product details and features. The extent to which a rapid prototyping process can reproduce these features becomes a measure of the capability of the process. Since rapid prototyping is a dynamic technology, this benchmark part should be used to continuously monitor process capability of existing and developing technologies. Development of this benchmark part is, therefore, based on an understanding of the properties required from prototypes and characteristics of various rapid prototyping processes and measuring equipment that is used for evaluation.

Cariapa, Vikram↗