CCT- ARS

Overview:

Paragon Space Development Corporation (Paragon), a leader in designing and manufacturing spacecraft thermal control and life support systems, is developing the Commercial Crew Transport – Air Revitalization System (CCT-ARS) under its CCDev Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA. Paragon is developing the flight design through its Preliminary Design Review and manufacturing and testing a full-scale Engineering Development Unit (EDU) under the SAA.

The system provides the following primary life support functions for up to seven crew members:

1) carbon dioxide control;
2) humidity control;
3) cabin air temperature control;
4) trace contaminant control;
5) atmospheric post fire recovery;
6) cabin air filtration;
7) primary cabin air circulation.

With insight and guidance provided by NASA under the Space Act Agreement, Paragon’s CCT-ARS has been designed to be fully compliant with existing NASA Human Rating Requirements.

Manufacturing of key components of Paragon's Engineering Development Unit.

Progress:

Paragon has already successfully completed three milestones on schedule and budget under the SAA (the Flight Requirements Review, System Design Review, and Preliminary Design Review). Two additional milestones will be completed under the SAA later this year:

1) CCTImage: Manufacturing of key components of the Engineering Development Unit ARS Engineering Development Unit (EDU) manufacturing completion, and

2) EDU integrated ground testing final report.

“In a unique, fast-paced partnership with NASA, Paragon is developing the key parts of a commercially available Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS). Working with NASA, the system is being designed to meet the latest NASA Safety and Human Rating Standards while incorporating lessons learned from all of NASA’s past and current human spaceflight programs,” said Taber MacCallum, Chief Executive Officer of Paragon.

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Thin red line (TRLA)

Thin Red Line Projects

SPACE EXPLORATION – HUMAN HABITATION & CREW VEHICLES

Bigelow Aerospace inflatable habitat Genesis spacecraft flight hardware Thin Red Line developed and supplied 20 full-fidelity inflatable pressure shells of up to 320 cubic meter volume for Bigelow Aerospace. Thin Red Line designed, engineered and manufactured the pressure restraining hulls of Genesis 1 and 2 (launched 7/2006 and 6/2007 respectively), the first spacecraft on orbit successfully incorporating large volume, high-stress inflatable architecture.
Thin Red Line UHPV (Ultra-High Performance Vessel) NASA Langley Research Center Teamed with Paragon SDC, Thin Red Line performs verification and validation studies for its innovative inflatable UHPV technology. As concept development for the NASA Flagship RFI, “Inflatable Module Mission”, this Lockheed Martin image shows Thin Red Line UHPV-based habitat architecture docked to International Space Station Node 2.
Lunar Habitat architecture NASA Johnson Space Center Design and fabrication of a one-third scale habitation pressure module using Thin Red Line’s proprietary UHPV architecture. Virtually unprecedented, UHPV load paths are determinate—leading to unsurpassed predictability of structural performance and scalability. Mathematically verified as mass optimized architecture, UHPV currently offers higher specific strength than competing alternatives.
NASA Lunar Surface System Concept Studies Boeing Lunar Surface Architecture team As inflatable habitat specialist, Thin Red Line Aerospace supported expandable architecture concept development for the Boeing MFHE (Minimum Functionality Habitat Element) study.

ADVANCED INTEGRATED HYPERSONIC ENTRY SYSTEMS

Integrated Inflatable Ballute for Planetary Entry NASA Ames Research Center Teamed with CFD Research Corp., Thin Red Line is developing an integrated inflatable decelerator for planetary entry. Scalable to accommodate payloads of over 10 metric tons, the system includes thermal protection and load bearing attachment for guidance and control (G&C) hardware. Integrated fluid-structure thermal simulations are conducted with CFDRC's validated tools to provide insight into aerodynamics, material stress, and localized heating effects, and to verify and optimize design variables.

SPACECRAFT SHIELDING

Advanced Inflatable Radiation Shielding NASA Langley Research Center Study of integration methods and effectiveness of various deployable radiation shielding approaches in the context of Thin Red Line inflatable habitat architecture. The integrated, flexible-deployable architecture offers modular radiation shielding with significantly reduced mass and encumbrance.
MMOD (Micrometeoroid and Orbital Debris) Shield Deployable MMOD shield test article for Bigelow Aerospace, for launch load vibration testing at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The ballistic shielding effect of the expandable structure is largely optimized by deploying substantial space between successive parallel shielding layers to allow conical dispersion of impact debris clouds.
Orbital Debris (MMOD), Multi-layer Insulation (MLI), Integrated Shielding Thin Red Line’s integrated deployable shielding design incorporates multifunctional material layers providing optimized spacecraft MMOD, thermal and radiation protection. Besides protection for habitation architecture Thin red Line’s design is particularly relevant to orbital propellant depots and cryogenic storage.

PRESSURE VESSELS, PROPELLANT TANKS, CRYOGENIC STORAGE

Lightweight Inflatable Cryogenic Tank NASA Kennedy Space Center Teamed with Technology Applications Inc., Thin Red Line’s inflatable UHPV technology is investigated as powerful alternative to cryogenic COPV’s. UHPV’s extreme simplicity permits incorporation of a much broader spectrum of corrosive content (LOX, LH2, LCH4, etc.) compatible liner materials. For propellant depots UHPV can be packaged for launch, filled in-situ, and repeatedly depleted to almost zero residual.

Helium Capture NASA Kennedy Space Center Teamed with Sierra Lobo, Thin Red Line led concept development for high pressure helium containment to volumes of 500 cubic meters using Thin Red Line’s proprietary UHPV (Ultra-High Performance Vessel) inflatable architecture technology. Thin Red Line’s design is the highest strength fabric containment structure ever contemplated and is applicable to an exceptionally large range of terrestrial and space exploration applications.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Commercial Grid Scaling of Energy Bags for Underwater Compressed Air Energy Storage Large scale ability to store surplus energy for use during periods of high demand is a formidable asset in reduction of energy cost, improving electric grid reliability, and addressing climate change. An Energy Bag is a fabric balloon-like vessel anchored to a sea- or lakebed for the purpose of storing surplus energy in the form compressed air. This mode of energy storage is attractive primarily because the passive pressure force of the deep water environment takes on the significant role of pressure vessel structure to maintain pressurization of the air stored within the Energy Bag. Upon further investigation it becomes evident that particular attention must be given to the storage volume and pressure required to economically satisfy requirements for commercial grid scale development of this novel technology. This paper provides an introduction to the benefits and prerequisites pertaining to commercial scale energy storage capacity as related to Energy Bag structure, volume, and deployment depth. click for PDF »

Undersea compressed air energy storage (CAES) Inflatable underwater containment facilitates highly efficient storage of offshore wind, tidal and wave power as compressed air (> 30 MJ/m3 at 700 m depth). Attached to the seabed, the inflated vessels would expel the depth-pressurized air to power turbines generating electricity during periods of high demand or intermittency of supply. Thin Red Line Aerospace is supporting Prof. Seamus Garvey’s visionary ICARES Project at University of Nottingham, UK, with design and fabrication of undersea vessels to 50 m3. Project efforts include concept development for volumes to 6000 m3. more here »

OTHER PROJECTS

Airbag Impact Attenuation R&D Thin Red Line’s UHPV technology facilitates the lowest mass and encumbrance airbag system of any competing design. UHPV performance predictability during a rapid compression event can be characterized and validated analytically for a broad range of impact attenuating applications without unduly complex and/or extensive testing. Thin Red Line’s innovative design permits attenuation scalability without reliance on burst disc calibration.
Rugged, collapsible solar concentration device Office of Naval Research Teamed with Infinia Corp. under an OSD contract, Thin Red Line Aerospace is applying its inflatable UHPV technology to solar concentrator architecture to support tactical energy production. Inflatable Antenna R&D Taking advantage of UHPV’s geometric determinism, Thin Red Line manages an in-house R&D program for design development of large aperture inflatable antenna systems.
Planetary Balloons / High Altitude Airship (HAA) The exceptional mass efficiency of Thin Red Line’s proprietary inflatable technology extends the mission envelope of planetary and terrestrial high altitude systems by providing the lightweight structural elements needed to develop large surface area lifting bodies. Besides HAA technology for Earth atmosphere surveillance applications, Thin Red Line’s acid resistant and Montgolfière concepts respectively target NASA objectives Venus and Titan.
Human Protection Thin Red Line has a long history of design, testing, and field application of critical use rescue, aviation, and tactical personal protection systems.
Advanced Materials R&D Spacecraft life support gas barrier material testing Thin Red Line’s work at the leading edge of fabric and film structure engineering demands commensurate intimacy with the latest advanced materials. The most recent fabrication technologies are exploited to generate a finely tuned symbiosis of material and structure.

Paragon

Capabilities

• Life Support
• Services
• Thermal Control

• Paragon Life Support Products

  Paragon is a world leader in designing and manufacturing thermal control and life support systems. We have delivered biological life support systems to NASA and flown successful missions on the MIR, Space Shuttle and International Space Station. We continue our heritage of innovation, partnering with NASA, the DoD and industry to create advanced technologies for the most extreme environments.

  Life Support System Products And Solutions

  Paragon utilizes proprietary Life Support System models and a thorough knowledge of existing and next generation life support technologies to develop integrated system solutions for its customer’s most challenging life support needs. Products and solutions include:

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  Inflatable Habitat With Integrated Primary & Secondary Structure (IHIPSS)

  Paragon has contracted with Thin Red Line Aerospace (TRLA) to explore the full utilization of inflatable structures by starting with a clean sheet of paper and designing a habitation module as an integrated, all-fabric inflatable structural architecture rather than modifying previous rigid space structural designs with an inflatable envelope. NASA is seeking innovative concepts for lightweight-structure technologies that would be viable solutions to high packaging efficiency, and of deployment mechanisms. Technologies are needed to minimize launch mass, volume and costs, while maintaining the required structural performance for the loads and environments.

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  Paragon Commercial Crew Transport-Air Revitalization System (CCT-ARS)

  CCT-ARS is a turnkey life support system built to meet or exceed NASA human flight safety standards, and serves the commercial crew transportation market. The highly integrated CCT-ARS performs the following primary life support functions for a crew of up to seven persons:
  1. Carbon dioxide control
  2. Humidity control
  3. Trace contaminant control
  4. Post-fire atmospheric recovery
  5. Airborne particulate filtration
  6. Cabin air circulation
  7. Cabin air cooling
  The CCT-ARS utilizes proven technologies and driving requirements that were developed with input from six commercial crew vehicle developers and NASA subject matter experts. The modularity of the system makes it conducive to commercial use in applications such as mine shelters and submarines.

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  Paragon Dive System™

  The Paragon Dive System™ isolates a diver in a “space-suit like environment”, completely protecting divers from contaminants and hazardous materials present in their surrounding environment. The US Navy funded Paragon to redesign their existing surface supplied diving system because of the health risks posed to divers operating in contaminated water environments such as the USS Cole incident and Hurricane Katrina. This new diving system was selected as one of Popular Science’s Inventions of the Year in 2008 and is now in field test production and certification with the US Navy. The Paragon Dive System™ can also be used in many commercial contaminated water diving applications.
  The core value of the Paragon Dive System™ comes from its Return Surface Exhaust design and upgraded materials that are more compatible with harsh chemical environments. The Return Surface Exhaust is designed to eliminate the contamination pathway of the original Navy system by capturing the exhaust of the diver and returning it to the surface through the umbilical. This is important as any open pathway with an air to water interface can lead to contamination entering the suit through aerosols, leakage, or both. The capturing of the exhaust isolates the diver in a “space-suit like environment” and protects him from water-borne chemical hazards in the surrounding environment.
  The system minimizes the hardware required to be carried by the diver and eliminates any adverse performance impacts through the inclusion of a unique Demand Exhaust Regulator (DER). This fail-safe valve automatically regulates the exhaust pressure so that the diver breathes normally. The complete system is designed to have the same “Work of Breathing” as the existing, non-hardened system.
  Paragon’s Dive System was also designed to save the US Navy costs by modifying, rather than replacing, their existing baseline system, a MK-37 helmet by Kirby Morgan and Viking dry suit.

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  Metabolic (Heat Regenerated) Temperature Swing Adsorption

  Paragon is developing Metabolic heat regenerated Temperature Swing Adsorption (MTSA) technology, for use with Portable Life Support Systems (PLSS) to remove and reject heat and carbon dioxide (CO₂) produced by an astronaut during extra vehicular activity (EVA), as well as to collect and recycle humidity in the ventilation loop. Employing MTSA increases mission flexibility because it is regenerable during the EVA, relies on less consumables delivered from Earth than the current baseline lunar and Martian PLSS technologies, and can use multiple coolants including non-cryogenic fluids. For Mars applications, MTSA technology is operationally sound because it can use room temperature liquid CO₂ for coolant. This means it does not have to expend expensive, lifecritical water for heat rejection, does not compromise scientific investigations by contaminating the area around the astronaut, works in a CO₂ (LCO₂ ) environment as is found on Mars, and allows for easy storage of extra coolant on the surface of Mars for use in an emergency. (LCO₂ is non-cryogenic and it will not boil-off.)
  
  
  
  MTSA uses CO₂ -selective sorbent that is cycled between below freezing to ~280 K. When cold, the sorbent removes CO₂ from the astronaut’s ventilation gas. Metabolic heat from the astronaut is then used to warm the sorbent and subsequently reject the CO₂ to the outside environment. Paragon has performed testing at Mars and MTSA operating conditions to identify a sorbent suitable for this unique cold temperature swing and to demonstrate the overall system concept. A detailed conceptual design was performed of the sorbent bed, the sublimation heat exchanger (for cooling) and the condensing ice heat exchanger (for warming and water collection). This drove manufacturing tests and demonstration of sorbent packaging for reduced sorbent bed pressure drop and mass. Analytical models of the channels in the condensing ice heat exchanger were developed, and tests were conducted to understand design drivers. LCO₂ sublimation experiments were conducted to quantify overall heat transfer coefficients. Paragon is now developing a prototype for lunar applications under a Phase 2 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract.
  
  

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  Solid Oxide Electrolysis

  Paragon Space Development Corporation is developing Solid Oxide Electrolysis (SOE) as the next generation electrolysis/Sabatier subsystem to enable 100% oxygen regenerative air revitalization systems (ARS). Oxygen regenerated from a crew’s expired CO₂ and H₂O vapor is essential to enabling a continuous human presence on the moon and distant exploration of Mars at significantly reduced cost and risks. Other applications include O₂ and propellant generation using lunar & Martian resources, O₂ regeneration for Navy and ocean research submersibles, and O₂ regeneration for hazardous material handlers, rescue personnel or other professionals performing in extreme environments.
  This high temperature concept (up to 850°C) takes advantage of a SOE cell’s inherent ability to regenerate O₂ from CO₂ and H₂O simultaneously, producing CO and H₂ as by-products. The by-product of CO and H₂ is addressed by employing Sabatier reactor technology embedded within the SOE unit to increase safety and reduce complexity/volume.
  SOE can promise 100% oxygen regeneration without relying on consumables from Earth. Current water electrolysis/Sabatier reactor technology can only regenerate 80% of a human’s oxygen requirement without the use of a consumable such as hydrogen. The SOE concept safely eliminates handling of hydrogen, and works irrespective of gravity and pressure environments with no moving parts and no multi-phase flows.
  Under a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract, Paragon developed a to-scale preprototype to demonstrate oxygen regeneration and methane production. In support of this, Paragon developed 1-inch heaters in-house to attain up to 950°C temperatures in a small volume. Material testing was performed to identify manifolds that could withstand the high temperature, corrosive environments. A Sabatier catalyst was developed for this application and tested, using gas chromatography to quantify methane production. Over a thousand hours of electrolysis testing has been performed using single cells to understand performance and influence the stack design. Chemical thermodynamic analyses were performed and corroborated with testing to show that the design does not incur carbon deposition in the unit.

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  Brine Recycling

  Paragon is developing a line of life support technologies that produces potable water from a waste stream, even one that is highly polluted and acidic such as moisture in the engine exhaust from generators and vehicles. This technology has applications in human spaceflight, especially deep space missions. In addition, this technology is applicable to remote theaters of war in arid lands. The Department of Defense wants to use it for capturing drinking water from vehicle and generator exhausts, as the logistics and cost of supplying drinking water in remote theaters is high. There is no other product on the market that is able to perform this function.

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  Autonomous Biological Systems

  Paragon has developed a patented autonomous system for maintaining experimental organisms used in microgravity life science experiments. It is entirely autonomous, with no moving parts and requires only light and temperature control to work. This has numerous advantages over other more complex systems which require pumps and feeding mechanisms. Paragon’s Autonomous Biological System has flown on the U.S. Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and the Russian MIR Space Station, and has the distinction of being the first system in which animals completed multiple life cycles while in space.

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  Take a look at our Thermal Control Products.

Mars one Partner

About the Suppliers

Mars One has visited several major aerospace companies around the world to discuss its plan, and the hardware components that are needed to implement the plan. For each component, Mars One has found at least one potential supplier. Mars One has visited the companies below, and has received letters of interest from them.

Paragon Space Development

Paragon Space Development Corporation provides environmental controls for extreme and hazardous environments. Paragon designs, builds, tests and operates premier life support systems and leading thermal control products for astronauts, contaminated water divers, and other extreme environment adventurers, as well as for unmanned space and terrestrial applications.
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Space Exploration Technologies

Space Exploration Technologies has developed a family of launch vehicles and spacecraft that increase reliability and reduce the cost of both manned and unmanned space transportation, ultimately by a factor of ten.
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ILC Dover

ILC Dover is the frontrunner in the softgood industry for current and near term space programs and is very supportive of commercial space activities across the globe. ILC Dover is one of the few companies in the world that can claim to have products on both the Moon and on Mars. They have contributed to the Apollo spacesuits and the three-airbag landing systems that helped land the NASA rovers on Mars' surface.
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MDA Corporation

MDA Corporation is a worldwide provider of information systems and is an established provider of custom space systems to government and commercial markets internationally, from earth orbiting infrastructure and spacecraft servicing to deep space and planetary exploration.
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Astrobotic Technology

Astrobotic Technology Inc. is a Pittsburgh based company that is pioneering affordable planetary access and mobility solutions that promise to spark a new era of exploration, science, tourism, resource utilization and mining in the solar system. Astrobotic is flying a mission to the moon's pole in 2015 to find water ice.
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Thales Alenia Space

Thales Alenia Space has an enduring history in building habitable systems and has successfully developed a large number of pressurized elements for the International Space Station, including Node 2 & 3, Cupola, Columbus and ATV Cargo Carriers. Thales is also currently developing the pressurized cargo carriers for the Orbital Cygnus vehicle in the frame of the NASA Commercial Resupply Services initiative.

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) is the worldwide leader in the construction of small satellites. The British company provides a range of affordable satellite solutions to a variety of customers in the fields of Earth observation, science, technology demonstration, telecommunications and navigation.
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Lockheed Martin

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs about 116,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products, and services.

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