Asteroid Crewed Segment Mission Lean Development

The next generation of human spaceflight missions presents numerous challenges to designers that must be addressed to produce a feasible concept. The specific challenges of designing an exploration mission utilizing the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft to carry astronauts beyond earth orbit to explore an asteroid stored in a distant retrograde orbit around the moon will be addressed. Mission designers must carefully balance competing constraints including cost, schedule, risk, and numerous spacecraft performance metrics including launch mass, nominal landed mass, abort landed mass, mission duration, consumable limits and many others. The Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission will be described along with results from the concurrent mission design trades that led to its formulation. While the trades presented are specific to this mission, the integrated process is applicable to any potential future mission. The following trades were critical in the mission formulation and will be described in detail: 1) crew size, 2) mission duration, 3) trajectory design, 4) docking vs grapple, 5) extravehicular activity tasks, 6) launch mass and integrated vehicle performance, 7) contingency performance, 8) crew consumables including food, clothing, oxygen, nitrogen and water, and 9) mission risk. The additional Orion functionality required to perform the Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission and how it is incorporated while minimizing cost, schedule and mass impacts will be identified. Existing investments in the NASA technology portfolio were leveraged to provide the added functionality that will be beneficial to future exploration missions. Mission kits are utilized to augment Orion with the necessary functionality without introducing costly new requirements to the mature Orion spacecraft design effort. The Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission provides an exciting early mission for the Orion and SLS while providing a stepping stone to even more ambitious missions in the future

(There\u27s a Light That\u27s Burning in the Window of) The Little House Upon the Hill / words by Ballard Mc Donald, Joe Goodwin, and Harry Puck

Cover: drawing of an elderly lady sitting on a bench near a dog, a house is centered in the background; photo inset of Ward and Delmore; Publisher: Shapiro Bernstein and Co. (New York)https://egrove.olemiss.edu/sharris_c/1075/thumbnail.jp

A computer tool to support safe isolation for maintenance

Unsafe maintenance in process plants can cause release of dangerous materials, pipe-work failure and deviations from normal operations, etc (Hale, et al., 1998). It is reported that 30% of accidents are maintenance-related and 50% of them release harmful substances (Wallace and Merritt, 2003). Therefore, it is important that systematic hazard identification is carried out and precaution is taken before maintenance work commences. A computer-aided tool is developed as part of the HAZID system (a knowledge based software system used to identify hazards by emulating conventional HAZOP study) to help the task of identifying hazards related to maintenance work. This tool focuses on safe isolation. It serves two functions. One is to suggest an isolation boundary for maintenance. Given specific equipment items to be maintained, the system will analyze the process and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) to identify the boundary that needs to be closed off for safe maintenance. The other function is to identify the potential hazards related to the isolation tasks. This paper describes in detail how this tool is developed and a case study is used to illustrate how it works

Process plant safety information repository and support for safety applications

The consideration of safety of processing plants from design to operation involves many tasks. Different techniques and tools have been developed to assist in carry out those tasks. With the advances in computing technologies, both in hardware and software, there is the opportunity to bring together the vast amount of engineering, hazard and risk data and handle them in an efficient way to manage and improve safety throughout the life time of a plant. This paper proposes keeping such data in a process plant safety information repository which can be easily accessed by different safety-related tools to enhance the efficiency of safety identification and analysis tasks

Protection of Child Soldiers in Contemporary Armed Conflicts

Unatoč činjenici da je u oružanim sukobima uvijek teško utvrditi točan broj civilnih žrtava, nesporno je da su te brojke danas iznimno visoke. Svaki oružani sukob današnjice nesumnjivo ima snažan i zastrašujući utjecaj na civilno stanovništvo. Kategorija civila kojoj je u takvim okružjima nužno posvetiti posebnu pozornost jesu djeca. Smatra se da danas oko 250 milijuna djece živi u područjima pogođenim oružanim sukobima. Posebno mjesto među njima imaju djeca vojnici. Norme međunarodnog prava kojima se uređuje ova problematika razvijaju se najvećim dijelom pod okriljem i zalaganjem Ujedinjenih naroda, usporedo s razvojem međunarodnog humanitarnog prava i zaštite ljudskih prava. Prvotnu odgovornost u implementaciji tih odredbi nesporno imaju države stranke, ali napori i rezultati ostvareni na polju sprečavanja novačenja djece, njihove uspješne demobilizacije i reintegracije upućuju na nužnost osmišljene i koordinirane akcije svih relevantnih čimbenika, i nacionalnih, i međunarodnih. Suradnja vlada, ali i nevladinih naoružanih skupina s organima i tijelima Ujedinjenih naroda u posljednjih dvadesetak godina rezultirala je demobilizacijom i reintegracijom oko otprilike 115 000 bivše djece vojnika, što je rezultat koji je svakako nužno podržavati i poticati. S druge strane, izvješća koja stižu s terena i dalje otkrivaju svu kompleksnost borbe protiv novačenja i iskorištavanja djece vojnika.Despite the fact that finding the exact number of civilian casualties in armed conflicts is always a difficult task, it is undeniable that these numbers are extremely high today. Every armed conflict nowadays undoubtedly has a powerful and frightening impact on the civilian population. Special attention in such a conflict-related environment must be devoted to children. An estimated 250 million children today live in areas affected by armed conflicts. Many of them are being used as child soldiers. International law governing these issues has been developing mostly within the system and under the auspices of the United Nations, alongside international humanitarian law and human rights law. Fundamental responsibility for their implementation lies in the hands of States Parties, but the efforts and results achieved in the field of preventing children’s recruitment, their successful demobilization and reintegration indicates a necessity of coordinated action by all relevant actors, both national and international. The cooperation of governments and non-state armed groups with the United Nations’ organs and bodies over the last twenty years has resulted in the demobilization and reintegration of approximately 115,000 former child soldiers. That achievement requires further support and encouragement. On the other side, reports coming from the field still reveal the complexity of the struggle against the recruitment and exploitation of child soldiers

2010–2011 Beef Forage Summary

Forage is the most common and most variable input for beef production. NIR analysis allows a convenient means to evaluate the feedstuff input and facilitate balancing of an adequate ration. In years with extended periods of unfavorable harvest conditions, feed evaluation may be of more importance due to the greater chance of feed variability and reduced quality

2010–2011 Beef Forage Summary—Cutting Dates and Quality Results

Delayed harvest and subsequent advances in maturity decrease quality as does rain leached hay that has been cut. Both situations result in increased hay fiber content relative to available energy and protein. Quality of first cutting grasses tends to be more affected by advanced maturity. Legume or legume mixed forage may tend to have a greater quality reduction from rain leached windrows

Factor copula models for item response data

Factor or conditional independence models based on copulas are proposed for multivariate discrete data such as item responses. The factor copula models have interpretations of latent maxima/minima (in comparison with latent means) and can lead to more probability in the joint upper or lower tail compared with factor models based on the discretized multivariate normal distribution (or multidimensional normal ogive model). Details on maximum likelihood estimation of parameters for the factor copula model are given, as well as analysis of the behavior of the log-likelihood. Our general methodology is illustrated with several item response data sets, and it is shown that there is a substantial improvement on existing models both conceptually and in fit to data