Social, Cultural and Educational Legacies - ER - NASA

considers all the alternatives forsatisfying various functions andcombinations of functions.Also, learning to design a very complexsystem provides the skills to transferthis understanding to the design of anysystem, whereas designing a smallproject does not easily transfer to largesystems. In addition, this approachprovides traceability of the finalsystem design as well as the individualcomponents and subsystems back tothe top-level need, and lowers theprobability of overlooking an importantelement or elements of the design.For designing systems engineeringeducational courses, general topicsare addressed: the general systematictop-down design process; analysis fordesign; and systems engineeringproject management. Specific topicsare: establishment and analysis of thetop-level need with attention tocustomer desires; functionaldecomposition; development of ahierarchical arranged functionstructure; determination of functionaland performance requirements;identification of interfaces and designparameters; development of conceptualdesigns using brainstorming andparameter analysis; selection of criteriafor the evaluation of designs; tradestudies and down-selection of bestconcept; parametric analysis; andpreliminary and detailed designs.Application of engineering analysisincludes the depth and detail requiredat various phases during the designprocess. Systems engineeringmanagement procedures—such asfailure modes and effects analysis,interface control documents, workbreakdown structures, safety andrisk analysis, cost analysis, and totalquality management—are discussedand illustrated with reference tostudent projects.In summary, due to NASA’s efforts insystems engineering, these principleswere transferred to undergraduateengineering courses.Graduate StudentScience EducationThe Space Shuttle’s impact on scienceand engineering is well documented.For scientists, the shuttle enabledthe microgravity environment to beused as a tool to study fundamentalprocesses and phenomena rangingfrom combustion science tobiotechnology. The impact of themicrogravity life and physical scienceresearch programs on graduateeducation should not be overlooked.Many graduate students were involvedin the thousands of experimentsconducted in space and on theground. A comparable number ofundergraduates were exposed to theprogram. Perusal of task books formicrogravity and life science programsreveals that, between 1995 and 2003,flight and microgravity research inthe life and physical sciences involvedan average of 744 graduate studentsper year. Thus, the shuttle providedthousands of young scientists with theopportunity to contribute to the designand implementation of experimentsin the unique laboratory environmentprovided by a spacecraft in low-Earthorbit. Such experiments requirednot only an appreciation of a specificscientific discipline, but also anappreciation of the nature of themicrogravity and how weightlessnessinfluences phenomena or processesunder investigation.In addition to mainstream investigations,shuttle flight opportunities such as theself-contained payloads program—Get Away Specials—benefited studentsand proved to be an excellentmechanism for engineering collegesand private corporations to join togetherin programs oriented toward thedevelopment of spaceflight hardware.All shuttle science programssignificantly enhanced graduateeducation in the physical and lifesciences and trained students to workin interdisciplinary teams, thuscontributing to US leadership inspace science, space engineering,and space health-related disciplines.Social, Cultural, and Educational Legacies483