As an African-American woman, a physicist and a current employee of NASA, Margot Lee Shetterly's book Hidden Figures: the Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race both excited and moved me.

Participants in the Physics Education Workshop at the 5th IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics heard about, among other topics, a study exploring why students have difficulty with concepts related to magnetism (and whether explicitly evoking gender affects the results), work in Europe to develop materials to help teachers implement inquiry-based science education, and the use of peer instruction and online collaboration to help teacher-candidates develop questioning skills.

The transformation of the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility to a new business model began as a part of NASA’s innovative procurement concept to have a site operator that would be able to support multiple tenants. The recipient of that contract has been incentivized to support the transformation of the site to a multi-tenant community for government entities, government contractors, and commercial businesses. The purpose of the transformation is to help reduce the overall cost burden to the taxpayer and to help retain skills critical to NASA programs. A strong partnership among NASA, Jacobs Technology, the State of Louisiana and other stakeholders has begun to pay off as NASA’s vision of the site becomes a reality.

This chapter discusses artificial computational intelligence methods as applied to cost prediction. We present the development of a suite of hybrid fuzzy-neural systems for predicting the cost of performing engine tests at NASA’s Stennis Space Center testing facilities. The system is composed of several adaptive network-based fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS), with or without neural subsystems. The output produced by each system in the suite is a rough order of magnitude (ROM) cost estimate for performing the engine test. Basic systems predict cost based solely on raw test data, whereas others use preprocessing of these data, such as principal components and locally linear embedding (LLE), before entering the fuzzy engines. Backpropagation neural networks and radial basis functions networks (RBFNs) are also used to aid in the cost prediction by merging the costs estimated by several ANFIS into a final cost estimate.

Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) have been widely adopted as an interim blowing agent in urethane insulations. Due to their scheduled phase-out, research efforts are being devoted to the identification and development of alternatives with zero ozone depletion potential. Physical blowing agents identified have included hydrocarbons, fluorocarbons, hydrofluoroethers, and more predominantly, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). The majority of the HFC evaluations have focused on the more readily available, low boiling candidates such as HFC 134a. Higher boiling HFC candidates that could be handled at ambient conditions and use current processing equipment would be more desirable. This paper will describe results from a research program of two such candidate HFCs performed as a cooperative effort between the Environmental Protection Agency, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Martin Marietta Manned Space Systems. The purpose of this effort was to perform a limited evaluation of the developmental HFCs 245ca and 236ea as blowing agents in urethane based insulations. These two materials were selected from screening tests of 37 C2, C3 and C4 isomers based on physical properties, atmospheric lifetime, flammability, estimated toxicity, difficulty of synthesis, suitability for dual use as a refrigerant and other factors. Solubility of the two materials in typical foam components was tested, pour foaming trials were performed and preliminary data were gathered regarding foam insulation performance.

The paper describes the activities initiated to improve the existing spray gun system used for spraying insulating foam on the External Tank of the Space Shuttle, due to the quality variations of the applied foam noted in the past. Consideration is given to the two tasks of the project: (1) investigations of possible improvements, as an interim measure, to the spray gun currently used to apply the large acreage spray-on-foam insulation and the evaluation of other commercial equipment; and (2) the design and fabrication of a new automatic spray gun. The design and operation of the currently used Binks 43 PA spray gun are described together with several new breadboard spray guns designed and fabricated and the testing procedures developed. These new guns include the Modular Automatic Foam spray gun, the Ball Valve spray gun, and the Tapered Plug Valve (TPV) gun. As a result of tests, the TPV spray gun is recommended to replace the currently used automatic spray gun.

The Space Shuttle is the United States’ manned space vehicle. The External Tank (ET) component of the Shuttle system is the large brownish colored structure on which the orbiter and solid rocket boosters are mounted. The External Tank is constructed by Martin Marietta Manned Space Systems in New Orleans, Louisiana, which has produced ETs for over fifteen years. The function of the ET is to supply the Shuttle main engines (located in the orbiter) with liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel. After about eight minutes of flight, the fuel from the tank has been expended and the ET is jettisoned. The orbiter ascends to orbital altitude while the ET falls, burning up as it reenters die atmosphere. Because the ET is disposed of in this way, each Shuttle launch requires a new ET.

A collection of computer codes called Space Debris Surfaces (SD-SURF), have been developed to assist in the design and analysis of space debris protection systems. An SD-SURF analysis will show which obliquities and velocities are most likely to cause a penetration to help the analyst select a shield design best suited to the predominant penetration mechanism. Examples of the interaction between space vehicle geometry, the space debris environment, and the penetration and critical damage ballistic limit surfaces of the shield under consideration are presented.