Advances in flight safety analysis for commercial space transportation
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The diversity in the kinds of vehicles that are appearing in the commercial space transportation sector raises questions regarding the applicability of the licensing procedures and methodologies that are in place to protect public safety. These licensing procedures are designed to limit risks to public safety in case of a space vehicle explosion. Concerns arise because the methods currently used are derived from expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) developed during the Space Shuttle era, and thus they might not be fully applicable to future vehicles, which include new types of ELVs, suborbital vehicles, reusable launch vehicles (RLVs), and a number of hybrid configurations. This dissertation presents a safety analysis tool, called the Range Safety Assessment Tool (RSAT), that quantifies the risks to people on the ground due to a space vehicle explosion or breakup. This type of problem is characterized by the complexity and uncertainty in the physical modeling. RSAT has been used to analyze both launch and reentry scenarios and can be applied to many possible vehicle configurations. The Space Shuttle Columbia accident was modeled with RSAT, and the results were compared with simulations performed by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). A methodology to perform sensitivity and optimization studies is also presented. This methodology leverages previous work done in active subspaces and Gaussian process regression to generate surrogate models. The proposed sensitivity and optimization methodologies were used to analyze a commercial ELV. The results show that the methodology can handle a large number of stochastic inputs and identify opportunities to decrease risk.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Capristan, Francisco M |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. |
| Primary advisor | Alonso, Juan José, 1968- |
| Thesis advisor | Alonso, Juan José, 1968- |
| Thesis advisor | Kochenderfer, Mykel J, 1980- |
| Thesis advisor | Senesky, Debbie |
| Advisor | Kochenderfer, Mykel J, 1980- |
| Advisor | Senesky, Debbie |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Francisco M. Capristan. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Francisco Manuel Capristan
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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