IMAT Keynote: The Challenges of Insertion of Advanced Materials & Processes for Spaceflight: Dr. Bryan W. McEnerney, NASA Technical Fellow, Materials, NASA Engineering & Safety Center (NESC)
NASA Engineering & Safety Center (NESC)
Tuesday, October 17, 2023 | 3:15 – 4:00 p.m. | Exhibit Hall A – Industry Forum
“The Challenges of Insertion of Advanced Materials & Processes for Spaceflight”
Spaceflight, both crewed and uncrewed, requires advanced materials and processes across the entire breadth of the materials science discipline, with extreme challenges in temperature, specific strength, radiation tolerance, and operational environments. Paradoxically, despite the need for advanced materials and processes, the process to get new materials inserted is fraught and challenging, as the needs are coupled with an absolutely inviolable need for mission safety and success.
The overarching challenge with insertion of advanced materials and processes for spaceflight is to find opportunities for lower risk components and missions to demonstrate viability, while also maintaining technical discipline to ensure that demonstration missions can lead to adoption onto higher value, more risk adverse missions. This talk will discuss several examples of successful and unsuccessful materials insertion challenges, touching on technologies such as additive manufacturing. There will also be a discussion of how to leverage ancillary technologies, such as computational materials science, to accelerate advances and reduce risk.
Keynote Session | Heat Treat 2023 (asminternational.org)