Making next-gen spacecraft isn’t easy, but companies like Sierra Space are tackling the challenges by embracing new ways of working.
Siemens has sponsored this post.
By 2030, you could live, work and grow crops in an inflatable habitat 250 miles above our heads.
It’s called the LIFE habitat—Large Integrated Flexible Environment—and it’s nearly here through its structural testing on Earth. Its final exam will take place several hundred kilometers higher, in the liminal shell of low Earth orbit (LEO).
“It’s really an inflatable environment,” explains Jeff Babione, Chief Operating Officer of Sierra Space, LIFE’s creator. “We can go up inside of a five-meter fairing and then expand to be almost 300 cubic meters in size. That’s almost one-third of the total volume of the International Space Station.”
There’s only one ISS, Sierra Space envisions many LIFE habitats. The company is planning a whole ecosystem of its inflatable environments attached to a modular core built by partner Blue Origin. They call it the Orbital Reef.
“You’re going to have this amazing place to do research, science, tourism. The range of opportunities is immense,” Babione says.
It’s all part of what Sierra Space is calling the “Orbital Age,” humanity’s next great industrial revolution, driven by the commercialization of space. Sierra Space is doing its best to boost that revolution, but as Babione explains, no revolution is possible without transformation.
Welcome to the Orbital Age
In humankind’s six decades of space exploration, only around 600 human beings have ever been to space. Their names have rightfully gone down in history, but the fact remains that it’s an exclusive club. Sierra Space believes everyone on Earth should have the chance to look down upon it.
“In 10 or 15 years, it will just be what people do. It won’t be this high risk that some perceive it to be. It will be normalized, much like going on an airplane,” Babione says.
Airplane? Try spaceplane, as in Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser, a winged craft that will soon deliver cargo—and eventually crew—to the ISS. The first Dream Chaser spaceplane, Tenacity, is currently undergoing final assembly integration and tests. If all goes well, it will head to the Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio this summer, where it will be subjected to space-like conditions in a thermal vacuum chamber. Then it’s destined for NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparation and from there, a cargo mission to the International Space Station.
“I always had a dream to be part of something that went into space and came back,” says Babione. “It’s an exciting time here at Sierra Space.”
Indeed, it’s an exciting time for the industry at large and for all aerospace engineers. There have never been more opportunities to participate in humanity’s next great adventure. But to say that there are engineering challenges is putting it mildly.
The crazy complexity of space engineering
Engineers have had a lot of success when it comes to space. The Apollo moon landings, the International Space Station and the James Webb Space Telescope are a few of the highlights. But there have been some spectacular failures, as well, from the tragedy of the Challenger to more recent launch explosions.
The simple fact is that space is hard. Really hard.
“I know a lot about aircraft, but there’s a lot to learn about spacecraft,” says Babione, a veteran of the aerospace industry with nearly four decades of experience at companies including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others. “There are certainly unique differences that make [spacecraft] more challenging than, say, an F-22 or an F-35 [combat airplanes developed by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Air Force].”
One of those added challenges is extreme temperatures on both ends of the spectrum. In Low Earth Orbit, a craft’s temperature cycles between -65 °C and 125 °C as the sun’s unmitigated radiation blinks in and out of shadow. Speaking of radiation, another added challenge is protecting sensitive electrical components from its damaging effects. The reduced gravity, pressure and oxygen of low earth orbit present yet more challenges, and that’s without even considering the many ways that the human crew must be protected.
Space is hard. Really hard. That’s why Babione says it’s important for engineers to have the best possible tools to meet the challenge.
Digital transformation in the aerospace industry
Babione has seen firsthand the digital transformation of the aerospace industry. In 1985 when he began his career, computer aided design (CAD) was still in its adolescence. Even though parametric modeling wouldn’t be developed until the end of that decade, and even though the internet had yet to come online, the new digital design tools were already making a big impact.
Add nearly 40 years of innovation on top of that shift and, as Babione puts it, “it’s really been a journey.”
“Fast forward, everything is far more integrated than it was before,” he says. “Just a few years ago, we would have a tool that did computer aided design and then there would be a tool that did computational fluid dynamics [CFD], and there would be a tool that did propulsion performance. But none of those tools talked to each other.”
That too has changed. Having tools that talk to each other is now the core strategy of every major design software developer, including Siemens, whose Siemens Xcelerator portfolio is used by Sierra Space for engineering LIFE and Dream Chaser.
“The Siemens tools allow seamless integration of data. Humans are on the loop, not in the loop,” Babione says. For instance, when a design engineer updates a CAD part, the change is automatically reflected in the part’s CFD mesh. The new simulation runs automatically, and the results propagate back to the design engineer. That means engineers spend less time manipulating data and more time doing core creative work.
“It gets engineers from being administrators to innovators,” Babione says.
That extra time for innovation could make all the difference in an industry with launch windows measured in minutes. In today’s commercial space race, reducing timelines is key to generating revenue.
“Just in the last five years, we’ve been able to dramatically reduce the time from design to capability,” Babione says. “With these Siemens tools and others, we’re going to continue to reduce that timeline.”
How to compete in the Orbital Age
Just as the potential of space is blossoming, so too is the potential of digital transformation. The changes Babione has borne witness to will not be the last, as exciting technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) and digital twins will continue to revolutionize what engineers can accomplish.
Dream Chaser, the LIFE habitat and the Orbital Reef are stepping-stones to a future that will see new and more exciting challenges than ever before. Who knows what new technologies are yet to be invented, what new engineering discoveries lie in store? One thing seems certain: to compete in the Orbital Age, engineers need competitive tools.
“These tools, like Siemens and others, enable you to do a significantly greater amount of work with fewer team members,” Babione says. “The tools that I’m talking about—this digital infrastructure, single source of truth—will accelerate your ability to deliver products consistently when your customer needs them. Better yet, at a reduced cost, which turns into profitability for your company. So it’s an absolute must do.”
To learn more about the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, visit Siemens.com.
