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3.1.2 Quantitative Assessment of Expected Space Mission Return in Terms of NASA's Institutional Goals
Author(s) -
Shelton K.,
Rodriguez G.,
Weisbin C. R.,
Elfes A.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
incose international symposium
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2334-5837
DOI - 10.1002/j.2334-5837.2005.tb00677.x
Subject(s) - metric (unit) , computer science , set (abstract data type) , space exploration , systems engineering , space (punctuation) , multitude , operations research , data science , engineering , aerospace engineering , operations management , programming language , philosophy , epistemology , operating system
NASA high‐level goals of Science, Exploration, and Inspiration present challenges to quantitative analysis. A quantitative method of comparison would assist in future mission design and understanding the return from missions in terms of the high‐level goals. In this paper, we propose a method to assign quantitative metrics to model potential return from future missions in NASA's high‐level goals in Science, Exploration, and Inspiration. The method uses the high‐level goals and engineering metrics to build a hierarchical metric tree. We have selected a set of seventeen future missions, which span a multitude of goals, to help define the metrics and provide a test set; human exploration missions have been included but at this stage the data is still limited. We demonstrate herein the results of the model by closely examining three missions from our test set; the integrated return from these missions is equivalent despite the disparate objectives and approaches of the missions themselves. We conclude by discussing future areas of research.