- RESEARCH
- SYSTEM SAFETY | SYSTEMS ENGINEERING | SPACE SYSTEM | CONSTRUCTION
- VRSS Lab | School of Aeronautics & Astronautics | Purdue University
Challenges in extraterrestrial construction
The deep human drive to explore and inhabit new frontiers underpins the emerging field of space architecture, as evidenced by the proliferation of diverse design concepts and growing momentum in extraterrestrial construction. However, the endeavor of building off-world environments remains in its infancy, facing numerous challenges due to remoteness, novelty, complexity, and other inherent characteristics. Significant technical and methodological gaps exist between visionary designs and the practical engineering and management intricacies of complex projects. These gaps must be addressed to overcome the challenges in extraterrestrial construction.
The field is limited by the scarcity of both failures and successes in extraterrestrial construction from which to draw lessons. Furthermore, the understanding of construction system failures is constrained by the limited application of systems perspectives in construction safety literature. Existing accident causation models in system safety literature are ill-suited for describing construction system failures.
The overall objective of this research is to inform the planning and design of extraterrestrial construction to mitigate the risk of building and installing defective systems in space. To achieve this goal, the research process followed iterative cycles of failure case studies, extracting insights through the lens of a new accident causation model. The cycles of model application evolved through three major stages: (1) developing a model specifically tailored to construction system failures, (2) deriving concepts and principles for interpreting the model depictions, and (3) compiling lessons from a systematically selected set of failure cases for planners, designers, and key stakeholders of future extraterrestrial construction projects.
Lessons learned from failure cases
To evaluate the applicability of the FLAPP model—the newly developed accident causation model and observe general trends in system failures across various contexts, the study selected failure cases attributable to embedded pathogens with sufficient available information. Ensuring that the case set included diverse cases and covered all specific technical challenges of extraterrestrial construction, the selection resulted in a set of 40 cases comprising 10 space systems, 13 buildings, 10 bridges and tunnels, and 7 systems in specialized environments. Results highlighted typical and exceptional cases among different systems and the general trends of occurrence prevalence of concept instances among different system contexts (space, building, bridge/tunnel, specialized environment) and duration ranges (short, medium, long).
The comparison of Earth-based and space-based systems revealed several critical questions for the space domain: how to ensure, maintain, and improve the reliability and quality of unique and site-specific systems; how to establish and enforce minimum quality standards to reduce unintended physical strains; and how to prepare for extended project timelines with dynamic and transient organizational networks.
Related publications
- Igarashi, T. and Marais, K. (Oct 2024) “Lessons from Earth for Designing and Building Safe Extraterrestrial Systems,” 75th International Astronautical Congress, Milan, Italy.
- Igarashi, T. (Sep 2024) “Leveraging Lessons from Earth to Space: Failure Analysis Framework Based on the Notion of ‘Embedded Pathogens’ for Designing and Building Safe Extraterrestrial Systems.” Doctoral Dissertation, Purdue University.
- Igarashi, T. and Marais, K. (Sep 2024) “Accident modeling of Earth-based and space-based system failures and the underlying incubation process of accident pathogen propagations.” Purdue University Research Repository.
- Igarashi, T. and Marais, K. (Jul 2024) “What Space Architects Can Learn from System Failure Cases to Make Risk-Conscious Design Decisions,” 53rd International Conference on Environmental Systems, Louisville, KY.
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