New Mass Properties Engineers’ Aerospace Ballasting Challenge Facilitated by the SAWE Community

摘要

The discipline of Mass Properties Engineering tends to fi nd the engineers; not typically vice versa. In this case, two engineers quickly found their new responsibilities deep in many aspects of mass properties engineering and required to meet technical challenges in a fast paced environment. As part of NASA’s Constellation Program, a series of fl ight tests will be conducted to evaluate components of the new spacecraft launch vehicles. One of these tests is the Pad Abort 1 (PA-1) fl ight test which will test the Launch Abort System (LAS), a system designed to provide escape for astronauts in the event of an emergency. The Flight Test Articles (FTA) used in this fl ight test are required to match mass properties corresponding to the operational vehicle, which has a continually evolving design. Additionally, since the structure and subsystems for the Orion Crew Module (CM) FTA are simplifi ed versions of the fi nal product, thousands of pounds of ballast are necessary to achieve the desired mass properties. These new mass properties engineers are responsible for many mass properties aspects in support of the fl ight test, including meeting the ballasting challenge for the CM Boilerplate FTA. SAWE expert and experienced mass properties engineers, both those that are directly on the team and many that supported via a variety of Society venues, signifi cantly contributed to facilitating the success of addressing this particular mass properties ballasting challenge, in addition to many other challenges along the way. This paper discusses the details regarding the technical aspects of this particular mass properties challenge, as well as identifi es recommendations for new mass properties engineers that were learned from the SAWE community along the way.