Concept Design Center Completes 100th Study

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (4/4/05) -- The Aerospace Corporation's Concept Design Center’s (CDC) Space Segment Team (SST) celebrated a symbolic milestone: the completion of its 100th design study since the team was formed in 1997.

At one time or another this team has provided almost all of the corporation’s program offices with spacecraft concept designs in support of feasibility studies, design trades, and source selections.

Real-time Environment

The SST works within the interactive, collaborative, real-time environment of the center with customers participating directly in the system design process. SST design work has helped customers formulate new programs, generate quality requests for proposals, and define block upgrades to existing systems.
Recent SST customers include members of the Transformational Communications Office; GPS III; the Space Tracking and Surveillance System; Space Radar; the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Transformational Directorate and other National Reconnaissance Office and Air Force programs.

Studies at All Levels

The CDC is a companywide resource managed within the Architecture and Design Subdivision. Additional center teams include the system architecture; ground segment; and electro-optical payload teams. “We can perform studies at any required classification level,” David Christopher, CDC director, said.

“Our broad base of support is reflected in the 90 people from across the corporation who were acknowledged for their efforts in helping the team reach this milestone,” Christopher said.

Joseph Aguilar, Dr. Andrei Doran, Marilyn Dubas, Dave Gilmore, Dr. Eric Hall, Ron Hovden, Chris Kobel, Mark Mueller, and Dr. Mike Papadopoulos were recognized at the reception for their continuous support of the team since its inception. Vince Canales, Doug Daughaday, Andrew Dawdy, Dr. Bill Fischer, April Gillam, Glenn Law, Rhoda Novak, and John O’Donnell were lauded for their role in helping establish the SST as the first CDC team.

CDC Accelerates Discovery of Options for a Variety of Groups

Dr. Ljubomir Jocic, systems director, Developmental Planning Directorate, remembers when the CDC was first developed at The Aerospace Corporation..

In the early 1990s, Jocic and others were being pressed by customers to use commercial satellite buses. “We realized our knowledge in these emerging technologies was limited,” he said. “We were always being told that we were too conservative at Aerospace.”

So Jocic would venture out, meeting with different Aerospace scientists and engineers who had expertise in a variety of areas. He would pick their brains and ask for their feedback on how possible design changes would affect the design options being explored. The process would take weeks, and it became apparent that this knowledge could be stored somewhere, and with the appropriate software, people could run variables based on the needs of their project, and the process would be much faster.
“We would wonder, ‘how can we organize all of this information?’” Jocic said. “A couple of people in the Vehicle Concepts Department started running spreadsheets and tracking the information, and this was really the start of the CDC,” he said. “You cannot find the optimum design right away.”

This tracking system began to help various teams at Aerospace look at many different options in a fraction of the time. “Now I can use models to compute what I need in one to two hours compared to many weeks to get to one design option,” Jocic said.

“We can now take the latest component information and put it all together, running variables quickly through the CDC. If we need more power, for example, or a stronger structure, what will be the effects on weight, the propulsion?” Jocic asked. He explained that any changing variable propagates throughout the whole system, and the CDC can now run the effects on the numerous subsystems involved in the designs and the results can be calculated in “real-time” (an hour or two).

Jocic uses the CDC for exploratory concepts and architectural options, and probably used the center 20 times between August and November, 2004. “Now the CDC is also focused on cost optimization. Our work has shifted to budgetary and cost implications, and this group is very helpful to me in exploring those factors as well,” he said.

David Lussier, senior project leader in Communications Architecture, has used the CDC for several classified studies. He’s conducted studies to develop concepts for new systems; architecture-level studies that fed directly into space and ground segment studies; and integrated studies that take detail trades between each segment and study the outcomes of these potential design options.
“The CDC has been important to my customers in developing program budget estimates for new systems, assessing contractor deliveries, and understanding the end-to-end architecture with their critical issues,” said Lussier.

Lussier said that he has helped identify and sponsor efforts to expand the CDC’s capabilities in the area of space segment; ground segment; and electro-optic payload teams; to further aid his customers in understanding the critical issues involved in proposed new systems.

The Aerospace Corporation, based in El Segundo, Calif., is an independent, nonprofit company that provides objective technical analyses and assessments for national security space programs and selected civil and commercial space programs in the national interest.