SYMPOSIUM KEYNOTE Prof. Paolo Santini Memorial Lecture 'Space Structure - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow'

摘要

Space has opened challenges in many technological areas since its dawn. Structure is one of the most important areas whose innovated solutions are absolutely necessary in realizing challenging space systems. In the early stage, many launch vehicles had structural and mechanical failures. Non interrupted struggles were made to attain mass reduction while maintaining high reliability, which made possible today's high success rate of recent major launch vehicles. Spacecraft evolved from simple and small spinning ones to huge systems with flexible appendages and associated various mechanical functions to perform their missions and to extend their capability. However, in the course of evolution, there were many concepts that have to be altered and compromised in views of economy and technical maturity. Based on personal view, past achievements are reviewed and a possible future directions are stated.