Future Materials Science Research on the International Space Station (1997)
Chapter: Front Matter
NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competencies and with regard for appropriate balance.
This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
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This study by the National Materials Advisory Board was conducted under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
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Committee on Materials Science Research on the International Space Station
JULIA R. WEERTMAN (chair),
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
REZA ABBASCHIAN,
University of Florida, Gainesville
I. MELVIN BERNSTEIN,
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
MARTIN E. GLICKSMAN,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
JOHN H. HOPPS, JR.,
Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia
SYLVIA M. JOHNSON,
SRI International, Menlo Park, California
RALPH G. NUZZO,
University of Illinois at Urbana, Urbana, Illinois
MORTON B. PANISH,
AT&T Bell Laboratories (retired), Murray Hill, New Jersey
JAMES W. WAGNER,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
NMAB Staff
ROBERT M. EHRENREICH, Senior Program Manager
BONNIE A. SCARBOROUGH, Research Associate
PAT WILLIAMS, Senior Project Assistant
Liaisons
ROBERT O. McBRAYER,
George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA, Huntsville, Alabama
MICHAEL J. WARGO,
NASA, Washington, D.C.
National Materials Advisory Board
ROBERT A. LAUDISE (chair),
Lucent Technologies, Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey
REZA ABBASCHIAN,
University of Florida, Gainesville
JAN D. ACHENBACH,
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
MICHAEL I. BASKES,
Sandia-Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California
JESSE (JACK) BEAUCHAMP,
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
FRANCIS DISALVO,
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
EDWARD C. DOWLING,
Cyprus AMAX Minerals Company, Englewood, Colorado
ANTHONY G. EVANS,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
JOHN A.S. GREEN,
The Aluminum Association, Inc., Washington, D.C.
JOHN H. HOPPS, JR.,
Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia
MICHAEL JAFFEE,
Hoechst Celanese Research Division, Summit, New Jersey
SYLVIA M. JOHNSON,
SRI International, Menlo Park, California
LIONEL C. KIMERLING,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
HARRY LIPSITT,
Wright State University, Yellow Springs, Ohio
RICHARD S. MULLER,
University of California, Berkeley
ELSA REICHMANIS,
Lucent Technologies, Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey
KENNETH L. REIFSNIDER,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg
EDGAR A. STARKE,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
KATHLEEN C. TAYLOR,
General Motors Corporation, Warren, Michigan
JAMES WAGNER,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
JOSEPH WIRTH,
Raychem Corporation, Menlo Park, California
BILL G.W. YEE,
Pratt & Whitney, West Palm Beach, Florida
ROBERT E. SCHAFRIK, Director
Acknowledgments
The committee would like to thank Carolyn Griner and Joel K. Kearns of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center for their support of this project and Michael J. Wargo of NASA Headquarters and Robert O. McBrayer of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center for ensuring that the committee had prompt access to all of the information it required. The committee would also like to thank Frank R. Szofran, Helen L. Grant, Donald Gilles, Sharon D. Cobb, Tom Turner, Myscha Crouch, and Charlie Walker of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, who provided comprehensive briefings and valuable insight into the history and development of NASA's Microgravity Materials Science Program and Space Station Furnace Facility. Thanks are also due to Candace J. Quinn of Corning Incorporated for her help with this study.
The committee also thanks the staff of the National Materials Advisory Board, particularly Robert M. Ehrenreich, senior program manager, Pat Williams, senior project assistant, and Bonnie A. Scarborough, research associate.
Finally, the chair of the committee thanks the committee members for their dedication and patience during the course of this study. This report could not have been completed without their diligence and goodwill.
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Preface
The deployment of the Space Station Furnace Facility (SSFF) Core, which was originally scheduled for June 1999, has been delayed until November 2002 because of revisions in the construction schedule of the International Space Station (ISS). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is attempting to capitalize on this delay by reviewing the SSFF Core project with respect to the specific research capabilities afforded by the facility, the technology being developed and its usefulness to the U.S. materials science community, and the procedures for identifying the research to be conducted using the SSFF Core.
To facilitate its review, NASA requested that the National Research Council conduct a study to (1) examine NASA's research plan for high-temperature microgravity materials science; (2) assess the ability of the current SSFF Core concept to support the range of high-temperature experiments and associated specialized furnaces; (3) evaluate the usefulness of the high-temperature microgravity materials-science projects planned and technology developed to the research and industrial materials-science communities in terms of already identified needs and planned activities through the year 2010; (4) assess the ability of NASA's high-temperature microgravity materials-science plan to respond to evolving interests and priorities in the field of materials science; and (5) examine the procedures used by NASA to select experiments for the ISS and determine if they encourage active participation by the broader materials-science research community.
The Committee on Materials Science Research on the International Space Station was convened under the auspices of the National Materials Advisory Board to conduct this study and write this report. Because of the limited time allotted the study process, the committee worked on the assumption that NASA's microgravity materials research
program would continue unabated into the foreseeable future. The committee therefore focused on the fundamental aspects of the project: the ability and flexibility of the current SSFF Core concept and the NASA selection process to identify and support research in the expansive and evolving field of materials science and engineering. No effort was made to evaluate current or previous research projects.
The nine committee members for this study were carefully selected to provide a suitable range of expertise and an appropriate balance of experience in microgravity research. Committee members included experts in solidification science, semiconductor materials, metals and alloys, ceramics, glasses, polymers, and biomaterials. To provide the committee with insight into the advantages and difficulties of conducting microgravity research, two members were actively involved in microgravity research programs with the Marshall Space Flight Center, and three were members of previous National Research Council committees on microgravity materials research. To ensure a balanced assessment, five of the committee members had no previous experience in the field and were selected solely for their reputations as materials scientists.
In order to accomplish its task, the committee collected information from four main sources:
- extensive briefings from the technical staff of the Marshall Space Flight Center on (1) the microgravity materials-science solicitation and selection process, (2) the history of the microgravity materials-science program, (3) the development of the systems science requirements for the SSFF Core, (4) the ISS candidate investigations for the microgravity materials-science program, and (5) the current SSFF Core concept
- a site visit to the SSFF Core development facilities at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama
- a wide range of NASA and National Research Council publications on NASA's microgravity research program, including (1) NASA's Research Announcement for Research and Flight Experiment Opportunities (issued December 4, 1996), (2) NASA's SSFF Core Systems Science Requirements Envelope Document, (3) NASA's SSFF Core Experiment Module Accommodations Handbook, (4) NASA's SSFF Core Science Working Group Meeting Minutes , (5) NASA's Microgravity Science and Applications Program Tasks and Bibliography for Fiscal Year 1996, and (6) the
| National Research Council's Microgravity Research Opportunities for the 1990s report |
• | the 13 research projects that were recently selected from responses to the 1991 and 1994 NASA Research Announcements, which the committee considered a representative sample of the research to be conducted throughout the lifetime of the SSFF Core (i.e., through 2010) |
NASA also supports some in-house research and experiments through the University Space Research Association, but these projects follow a separate funding process and were not reviewed for this report.
The committee's deliberations are organized into three chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the background information for this study, including the reasons for conducting microgravity research and the capabilities of the current SSFF Core concept. Chapter 2 reviews NASA's microgravity research selection process and its ability to ensure that the research projects selected and conducted are of the highest-quality. Chapter 3 discusses (1) the relevance of microgravity research to the study of metals, semiconductors, ceramics and glasses, polymers, and biomaterials and (2) the ability of the current SSFF Core concept to support these important areas of materials-science research.
JULIA R. WEERTMAN
CHAIR, COMMITTEE ON MATERIALS SCIENCE RESEARCH ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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