The ability to respond quickly, proactively, and aggressively to unpredictable change will distinguish successful enterprises of the next millennium. Robust methods and tools to facilitate change management are therefore an essential requirement for the modern enterprise. Currently, there is a lack of robust and practical tools to quantitatively assess the impact of technology insertion on operational performance of space transportation systems. In particular, there is a need for new methods and tools for quantitatively assessing the impact of planned technology modernization/technology insertion on the operational performance metrics of the Eastern Test Range.

This project will design, develop, and demonstrate a Range Process Simulation Tool (RPST), a decision support tool that facilitates quantitative change impact assessment. The technical approach involves the following tasks:

• Define change impact assessment requirements.
• Design and develop RPST software.
• Develop baseline Range process models.
• Define focused test application scenarios.
• Acquire test application data.
• Test and validate RPST.

The RPST is intended for use by Range Planners and Range Technology Portfolio managers to quantitatively assess Range operational performance and assess the impact of Range technology changes/upgrades on operational performance. The RPST is an important first step toward deploying a realistic and robust Range change impact assessment capability. RPST also provides key enabling technology for modeling and analyzing future aerospace transportation spaceports. The key RPST innovations are a novel, model-based approach for change impact assessment and a component-based, scaleable, open-architecture approach that facilitates rapid tailorability and cost-effective deployment to varying spaceport application situations. The main RPST benefits include the ability to accurately and reliably predict impact of technology changes on space transportation systems and the ability to reduce the Range operational and maintenance costs through improved change management decision support.

Key accomplishments:

• 2000: Start of Phase II research and development. Definition of application focus areas. Development of preliminary simulation-based change impact assessment framework.
• 2001: Definition of RPST requirements. Development of preliminary RPST prototype. Identification of RPST test scenarios. Definition of a data collection and software testing approach.