Technology Prioritization and Architecture Flexibility for Space System-of-Systems

Abstract

Decision makers face a difficult task when planning large-scale space missions or long-term development of technologies for space systems architectures. The difficulties arise from multiple factors. First, the size of the problem, the diversity of the involved systems and technologies, and the variety of stakeholders and their needs result in a large a complex trade space. Second, technologies are continuously evolving, and it can be hard to find data and model for new technologies, which increases the uncertainty about availability and performance. Third, in these complex problems decision makers need to account not only for traditional engineering trade-off (including cost, time, performance, and risk) but also for policies, stakeholder preferences, and flexibility of space architectures. Building on our previous research in System-of-Systems methodologies, we propose a combination of tools to support decision-making for technology prioritization and analysis of development time, risk, and flexibility of space architectures. Based on developmental dependencies between technologies, Technology Readiness Level (TRL), mission requirements, uncertainty, cost, and budget limitations, the tools produce the optimal expected schedule and allow the user to identify potential bottleneck and risks. Different strategies for prioritization of technologies can also be compared. The tools can handle constraints such as policies or stakeholder preferences, which impose prioritization of certain technologies or space missions. Finally, since long-term space mission planning is very dynamic and its specific objectives change often, we implemented tools to add analysis of flexibility on top of the technology prioritization tools. This analysis is performed from different perspectives. From a mission viewpoint, given a selected mission category (and its associated technologies), we assess how difficult it is to transition to a different mission, in terms of cost and number of technologies that are missing, as well as evaluating differences in cost. From a programmatic viewpoint, we quantify flexibility of specific technology prioritization schedules when decisions to switch to a different mission arise.