Paper Session II-B - Automated Launch Vehicle Command & Control Center

The current U.S. earth-to-orbit expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) and space transportation systems (STS) require labor intensive, expensive launch site preparations, on-pad vehicle checkout, and launch support. By using state of the art, commercially available technology, these operations can be automated to reduce costs and improve mission success. In addition, the technology allows remote launch monitoring and personnel reductions at the launch site. Today\u27s industrial work stations, computers, communications hardware, and data bus equipment, in use throughout the process control industry, can be integrated with existing avionics and organized into a modern avionics architecture. Such an architecture could replace the current launch site, push button implemented, command and control and the plethora of strip chart performance monitoring systems. The new avionics architecture defined by Honeywell features a user friendly electronic data base/archiving system coupled to a realtime command/control capability. It is designed to automate much of the launch operations, significantly reducing the current standing army and high associated costs of supporting today\u27s launch systems