SELENE Space Habitat Design
Part of a group term project, Stellar Excursions: Leaving Earth for Novel Experiences (SELENE) is a commercial space habitat designed to conduct a series of Lunar flybys for a new generation of space tourists. The course utilized a systems engineering approach to develop a minimal design to support the mission functions, including selecting a launch vehicle, upper propulsive stage, and crew transfer vehicle. The focus of the course was sizing the habitat and subsystems from a top-down heuristic standpoint and a bottom-up functional decomposition approach, ultimately working toward developing a point-of-departure conceptual design.
This project was carried out in ASEN 5158 Space Habitat Design at the University of Colorado Boulder in Fall 2020 with Dr. David Klaus. Team members were: Peter Gumble, Ben Pearson, Corey LePine, Victoria Kravets, Erin Shimoda, Michael Strong, Ben Easter, and myself. I was the systems engineering lead and responsible for the structural subsystem.
Project Goal: Safely support 4 tourists for 5 days in LEO followed by a lunar flyby with return to a LEO parking orbit for up to 24 hours before departing back to Earth.
Class Objective: Analyze the stated Mission Goal as a framework to:
Develop a conceptual vehicle design with first order mass/volume estimates
Define subsystems and key operations required
Select a launch vehicle for transport of the ‘wet’ habitat (but without crew) from Earth to LEO, incorporating a propulsion system for orbital maneuvers
Build up of the habitat structural subsystem, including mechanisms and support for thermal and power. The cupola was added as a tourist amenity for Earth observation and providing the best experience during the Lunar flyby.
Concept of Operations (ConOps) for the tourist mission.