Supply Chains in Space!

Leave it to the brainiacs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to think about the provisioning of interplanetary fixed base stations.   Engineers at MIT's Space Logistics Project, Olivier de Weck and David Simchi-Levi have created a tool called SpaceNet, which models movement of freight between Earth and stations on the moon.  This is the kind of project Neil Armstrong would love!

With transit times of up to 9 months on a mission to Mars, supply chain execution in space would be difficult.  The graphic at right shows how nodes within a space supply chain network might work.   Launch locations from Florida, Guyana, Kazakhstan, China and the International Space Station are included as staging areas to serve the Moon.  The Moon could then serve as an intermediate point for Mars missions. 

Now how long until FedEx or DHL start advertising interplanetary Express services?   

When it absolutely positively has to get there...in 10 months!

clipped from web.mit.edu Engineers create SpaceNet--the supply chain Network of nodes could ensure delivery to moon Deborah Halber,   News Office Correspondent March 19, 2007 If you think shipping freight from Cincinnati to El Paso is challenging, imagine trying to deliver an oxygen generation unit from the Earth to a remote location on the moon. By 2020, NASA plans to establish a long-term human presence on the moon, potentially centered on an outpost to be built at the rim of the Shackleton crater near the lunar South Pole. To make such a scenario possible, a reliable stream of consumables such as fuel, food and oxygen, spare parts and exploration equipment would have to make its way from the Earth to the moon as predictably as any Earth-based delivery system.  Or more predictably: One missed shipment could have devastating consequences when you can't easily replenish essential supplies. To figure out how to do that, MIT researchers Olivier L. de Weck, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems, and David Simchi-Levi, professor of engineering systems and civil and environmental engineering, created SpaceNet, a software tool for modeling interplanetary supply chains. The latest version, SpaceNet 1.3, was released this month. The system is based on a network of nodes on planetary surfaces, in stable orbits around the Earth, the moon or Mars, or at well-defined points in space where the gravitational force between the two bodies (in this case, the Earth and the moon) cancel each other out. These nodes act as a source, point of consumption or transfer point for space exploration logistics