Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) architecture selection has profound implications for mission cost and mass extending far beyond the ECLSS itself. Similarly, other mission architecture decisions – particularly involving transportation systems – can influence optimal ECLSS architectures. Loop closure influences requirements for water, oxygen, and other consumables. System maintainability and reliability influences spares mass and risk. System, consumables, and spares mass interact with transportation system architectures and propellant demands and propulsion element sizing. All these interactions with other systems must be considered when evaluating ECLSS options. Analyses that focus only on maximizing ECLSS loop closure – or minimizing ECLSS mass, or minimizing ECLSS life cycle cost – may lead to sub-optimal or even counterproductive system architecture and investment decisions at the mission level. For example, an ECLSS architecture that minimizes ECLSS lifecycle cost but results in excessively high logistics mass could lead to significantly increased transportation system costs or make interplanetary transportation infeasible. Increased loop closure could result in higher development costs and higher mass if system/spares mass increases outweigh consumables reduction. In addition, systems mass and consumables mass are not directly comparable and have different impacts on propellant requirements, as consumables mass changes over the course of the mission. This paper presents an integrated analysis examining the overall impact of different ECLSS and transportation architectures on mass for a crewed Mars mission, including the habitat and transportation systems as well as consumables, spares, and propellant. Key observations are discussed, along with opportunities for further sensitivity analysis and model development. Overall, ECLSS development activities must consider their impacts at the mission level, as part of an integrated system, rather than in isolation.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    ECLSS Does Not Exist in a Vacuum: Integrated Analysis is Necessary to Inform System Architecture Decisions



    Conference:

    50th International Conference on Environmental Systems ; 2020 ; Lisbon, PT


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English






    Exploration Architecture Options - ECLSS, EVA, TCS Implications

    Chambliss, Joe / Henninger, Don / Lawrence, Carl | NTRS | 2009


    Exploration Architecture Options - ECLSS, EVA, TCS Implications

    Chambliss, Joe / Henninger, Don / Lawrence, Carl | NTRS | 2010


    MSFC ECLSS Overview

    Cara Shelby Johnson Black / Paul E Hintze | NTRS