Name: Ryan P. Caron                                              Seminar: non applicable                                

Topic: Crew Transfer Vehicle for the International Space Station                                      

Advisor: Anne Clifton-Waite                            Mentor Signature:                                       

            My Senior Project's Essential Question is, "What would be the optimal Crew Transfer Vehicle for the International Space Station?"  My essential question immediately begs additional questions, some of them being "What exactly is a Crew Transfer Vehicle?" and "Why does the International Space Station need one?"

            A Crew Transfer Vehicle (CTV) is a spacecraft that will be able to take astronauts from the surface of the Earth to the International Space Station (ISS), stay in orbit indefinitely, and return to the Earth.  This would allow astronauts to be ferried to the station without depending on expensive U.S. Shuttle launches.  It would also replace the aging Russian Soyuz, the current emergency Crew Return Vehicle (CRV), or lifeboat, for the ISS. 

            My personal interest in  NASA during during these past years via http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/,  http://www.space.com/, and NASA Television (via satellite) has shown me numerous instances where the reliance upon the Russian Soyuz and the U.S. Shuttle have been a burden to the ISS.  The Soyuz, while recently undergoing a design overhaul, is still based on old, and worse, expendable technology.  A new spacecraft has to be built for each mission, just like the old Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo days.  While the Shuttle is a reusable vehicle, its primary purpose is to haul payloads into space, not people.  A vehicle that solely transports astronauts would be smaller, cheaper to build and to launch, and would have fewer launch constraints than the Shuttle.  By making the CTV reusable rather than expendable it can imitate the Shuttle's track record of conducting over a hundred successful missions over the past two decades with a fleet of only four spacecraft, with these same four spacecraft being used for at least another decade. 

            While watching the construction of the ISS over these past years I also tracked the development of NASA's X-38, an experimental CRV designed to serve as a lifeboat for ISS, allowing its crew to return to the Earth in the event of an emergency.  However, the X-38 is only a CRV, making it a one-way ticket; it was never intended to send crews into orbit.  In short, the X-38, while radically different in design, was a replacement for the Soyuz that could how a crew of seven.

            Soon after entering office, the Bush administration terminated funding for the X-38 and the U.S. Habitation Module (SpaceHab).  Both were designed to accommodate an ISS crew of seven.  The SpaceHab project was further developed than the X-38, and is in my opinion a very impressive piece of hardware.  In turn, for the purposes of this Senior Project I am going to assume that SpaceHab eventually is added to ISS so the crew will have a place to stay once the CTV gets them there.  Without CTV and SpaceHab, the crew capacity is limited to three people, significantly reducing the amount of research that can be performed on ISS.

            In late November of this year NASA announced the start of conceptual development of a CTV.  Why, then, would I want to design my own CTV?  Wouldn't everything that I addressed above, the limitations  of the Soyuz and Shuttle, and the small crew size  be resolved  in NASA's CTV project?  Even though preliminary  CTV specifications will not be released until January, indications are that no, the above issues may not be addressed, and worse that the new CTV will be an expendable one, or at least use an expendable vehicle to get to ISS.  NASA's CTV may not add any additional crew capacity.  It is for these reasons that I want to design my own reusable CTV, using new technologies originally intended for the next-generation Shuttle, that will accommodate larger crews, and incorporate designs from the U.S. Air Force, Europe, Russia, and

Japan, making an international CTV for the International Space Station.

            This project will require me to acquire a working knowledge of the systems needed on a CTV, including aerodynamics, automated navigation, reentry protection, life support, hardware integration, reliability, redundancy, and most importantly how to provide a safe transportation method for the crew.  It will also reinforce solid research habits as there is a tremendous amount of material and technical documentation available on NASA's websites concerning the X-38 and other CTV/CRV concepts.  Systems Integration, and a bit of creativity, will be required for me to be able to put all of these individual systems and designs together.  This is a massive undertaking on my part, but my interest in this project and my passion for NASA will keep me going.  Most importantly, this project will expand my knowledge base of spaceflight technology, knowledge that I am confident that I will continue to use far into the future.  In the end, my applied piece will comprise of  written reports evaluating competing technologies,  baseline requirements and design specifications, and hopefully will have created an overall systems schematic of my CTV.

            While I haven't yet found an outside expert, I have contacted Mr. Peters, Amanda Peters' father, a BAE Systems employee, to see if he knows of any colleagues with the knowledge and  interest to be my outside expert.  I have also contacted Denny Kross, Director of the Space Transportation Directorate at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.  Ruth met Mr. Kross at a conference in Massachusetts earlier this year and later sent educational materials for one of her units, with some of the same materials being useful during my preliminary research.  I am also acquainted with Professor Fred Looft at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an electrical engineer and spaceflight enthusiast.  I attended a two week course in electrical and computer engineering that he  taught this past summer.   Through these industry, government, and education contacts I am confident that I will find an excellent outside expert and several sources of information for the latest in spacecraft technology.

            Many of my topics that I need to research are by nature material that is often not covered in books.  A majority of the information I have found thus far is from the Internet, primarily NASA's own websites.  Some material should be available from industry publications such as Aviation Week and Space Technology concerning more recent programs such as the X-38 and SpaceHab.  Older project data is for the most part only available via the Internet, although I have come across one text that looks promising, "A Thirty Year Perspective on Manned Space Safety and Rescue: Where We've Been; Where we Are; Where We Are Going," written by Francis Kane in 1984.  I am in the process of getting an inter-library loan via the Info Center and the town library to obtain this work and a fictious novel which has proven to be pivotal in the history of U.S. and Soviet cooperation in space.  This work is entitled Marooned, written by Martin Caidin in 1964, with a movie by the same name being made in 1969.  I also expect that my outside expert will provide me with technical documentation and contacts to additional engineers that worked on the previous CRV/CTV projects.  With these contacts I plan to conduct online interviews via email to help assess the successes and downfalls of the project that the particular engineer worked on.

            My in school mentor is Ruth Krumhansl, science teacher and geologist, with a background in revising technical documentation, a resource I guarantee will be used throughout this Senior Project.  Out of personal curiosity, and a desire to assist her students, I attended several of her classes in which the freshmen were doing research on Essential Questions they developed concerning outer space. Later, I was able to watch their presentations, and it pleased me to know I was not the only person at Souhegan with an interest in NASA.