The Lockheed Martin Crew Exploration Vehicle System Requirements, Alternative Concepts and Development Approach

The President’s Vision for U.S. Space Exploration outlines a sustainable and affordable human and robotic program to extend human presence across the solar system and beyond. This paper describes Lockheed Martin’s spiral development approach to the Crew Exploration Vehicle, a cornerstone segment in NASA’s system-of-systems implementation of that vision. Fundamental system requirements such as safety, mission function and duration, crew size, launch vehicle capability, and level of autonomy are derived from the reference exploration architecture. Human-rating requirements, including abort during all mission phases, safe haven from radiation and other hazardous environments, and redundancy are addressed. Alternative operations and vehicle concepts are presented and evaluated against the standardized set of safety and mission success, effectiveness, extensibility and affordability figures of merit. Near term technology requirements are identified and program risks are discussed.