An Integrated Planning Tool for Selection and Evaluation of Space Technologies for Development and Space

A continuing challenge for research and development organizations, both government and commercial, is the process for choosing technologies for development, demonstration, and marketing. The challenges are to select the most promising technology within a specific specialty area, to select between technology areas, to consider both DoD-developed and commercial technologies, and to include technology integration. Mission needs, technology maturity, and cost limitations, either budget limits or cost competitiveness, drive these choices.There have been developments of technology selection methodologies, decision aids, mission requirements flowdown processes and system analysis tools that have been applied to this problem but none of them address technology planning in an integrated manner from mission utility through cost. This SBIR project will develop an integrated software tool that combines quantitative measures of mission utility, technology maturity and cost, with decision aid tools to support decision making on space experiments and space technology developments. The integration of these data and analyses in a user friendly environment will be a unique and innovative planning software tool to aid the decision makers in the tough choices required in today's budget conscious environment. This product is readily adaptable to similar decision- making processes in the high-technology commercial industry.