Historically, we have been pound foolish and penny wise for decades, and it is time to reverse this. We present an approach that will maintain critical NASA ablative TPS capabilities through small, sustained, smart and targeted investment. NASA’s ablative TPS history is one of developing new capabilities and letting them atrophy. When needed, there are two options: (1) revive the capability at considerable cost impact or (2) develop an alternate capability with considerable schedule impact. Either of these options have had considerable mission impact. The third alternate is to maintain proven capabilities in a cost effective manner to allow the science community to propose missions with confidence. NASA and DoD have had a working group to periodically assess and make recommendations on at-risk items. This working group typically focuses on raw materials availability. While we agree that at-risk raw materials are an important and necessary part of the overall capability, focus solely on them is not sufficient. Instead, we advocate for a broader focus on the critical “technology capability” that includes not only raw material but also industrial manufacturing and processing capabilities and in-house expertise in design, testing and flight hardware certification. In this proposed presentation, we will highlight a case study related to PICA capability. We will present the rationale for sustaining PICA and HEEET as two minimum essential ablative TPS capabilities for future NASA missions. We will present an approach for how small investment could lead to maintaining mission critical capabilities over a longer period. While HEEET and PICA are NASA unique, the raw material and some of the vendor capabilities involved also support DoD TPS. Hence a partnership between NASA and DoD is recommended for broader benefit.


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    Titel :

    Critical Ablative TPS Capabilities Sustainment - An Approach to Playing the Long Game


    Beteiligte:
    Ethiraj Venkatapathy (Autor:in) / Don Ellerby (Autor:in) / Jay Feldman (Autor:in) / Margaret Stackpoole (Autor:in)

    Kongress:

    National Space & Missile Symposium ; 2021 ; Rockville, MD, US


    Medientyp :

    Sonstige


    Format :

    Keine Angabe


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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