Abstract: The advent of requirements for rapid and economical deployment of national space assets in support of Air Force operational missions has resulted in the need for a Manned SpacePlane (MSP) that can perform military missions with minimal preflight preparation and little if any in-orbit support from a mission control center. In this new approach to space operations, successful mission accomplishment will depend almost completely upon the MSP crew and upon the on- board capabilities of the spaceplane. In recognition of the challenges that will be faced by the MSP crew and to begin to address these challenges, the USAF Air Force Research Laboratory (Phillips Laboratory) initiated the Virtual SpacePlane (VSP) project. To support the MSP, the VSP must demonstrate a broad, functional subset of the anticipated missions and capabilities of the MSP throughout its entire flight regime, from takeoff through space operations and on through landing. Additionally, the VSP must execute the anticipated MSP missions in a realistic and tactically sound manner within a distributed virtual environment. Furthermore, the VSP project must also uncover, refine and validate MSP user interface requirements, design and demonstrate an intelligent user interface for the VSP, and design and implement a prototype VSP that can be used to demonstrate Manned SpacePlane missions. To enable us to make rapid progress on the project, we employed portions of the Virtual Cockpit and Solar System Modeler distributed virtual environment applications, and the Common Object Database (CODB) architecture tools developed in our labs. The Virtual Cockpit and Solar System Modeler supplied baseline interface components and tools, 3D graphical models, vehicle motion dynamics models, and VE communication capabilities. We use the CODB architecture to facilitate our use of Rapid Evolutionary and Exploratory Prototyping to uncover application requirements and evaluate solutions. The Information Pod provides the paradigm and architectural framework for the user interface development. To achieve accurate and high fidelity performance for the VSP throughout its operational regime, the system integrates aerodynamics and astrodynamics models into a single seamless high fidelity model of the VSP's dynamics. In this paper we discuss the software architecture and design of the Virtual SpacePlane and describe how it supports the transition between motion models, the design of the dynamics software module, and techniques for employment of multiple dynamics models within a single virtual environment actor. We describe how we used rapid prototyping to refine requirements, improve the implementation, and accommodate new requirements throughout the project. We conclude the paper with a brief discussion of results and present suggestions for additional work.!35
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机译：摘要：为支持空军的飞行任务而迅速而经济地部署国家空间资产的要求的出现，导致需要一种载人航天飞机（MSP），该飞机可以执行军事任务，而飞行前的准备工作最少，而且在轨也很少任务控制中心的支持。在这种新的太空作战方法中，成功完成任务几乎将完全取决于MSP机组人员和太空飞机的机载能力。考虑到MSP机组人员将面临的挑战并开始应对这些挑战，美国空军空军研究实验室（菲利普斯实验室）发起了虚拟太空飞机（VSP）项目。为了支持MSP，VSP必须在从起飞到太空运行再到着陆的整个飞行过程中，展示MSP预期任务和功能的广泛的功能子集。此外，VSP必须在分布式虚拟环境中以现实和战术上合理的方式执行预期的MSP任务。此外，VSP项目还必须发现，完善和验证MSP用户界面要求，设计和演示VSP的智能用户界面，以及设计和实现可用于演示载人航天飞机任务的VSP原型。为了使我们能够在该项目上取得快速进展，我们使用了Virtual Cockpit和Solar System Modeler分布式虚拟环境应用程序的部分，以及在我们的实验室中开发的Common Object Database（CODB）体系结构工具。 Virtual Cockpit和Solar System Modeler提供了基准界面组件和工具，3D图形模型，车辆运动动力学模型以及VE通信功能。我们使用CODB架构来促进快速进化和探索性原型的使用，以发现应用程序需求并评估解决方案。 Information Pod提供了用于用户界面开发的范例和体系结构框架。为了在VSP的整个运行过程中实现准确，高保真的性能，该系统将空气动力学和天体动力学模型集成到VSP动力学的单个无缝高保真模型中。在本文中，我们讨论了Virtual SpacePlane的软件体系结构和设计，并描述了它如何支持运动模型之间的转换，动力学软件模块的设计以及在单个虚拟环境参与者中使用多个动力学模型的技术。我们描述了如何使用快速原型来完善需求，改善实施并在整个项目中适应新需求。最后，我们对结果进行了简短的讨论，并提出了其他工作的建议。35
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