1.1 Outline Brief

1.1_ O U T L I N E B R I E F

This dissertation presents the design of a training facility for Astronauts from the national and private Sector Space Agencies located in Sutherland, South Africa. It explores the possibility of how the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) can form part of the bigger discourse when it comes to Space Travel and also assisting in the training of Astronauts for manned missions beyond Earth’s orbit.

It is also noted that this dissertation will investigate the possibility of how SANSA could assist by hosting workshops in the development and building of equipment and technologies that could be used on these missions. In turn, it is the aspiration of this dissertation that this endeavour will start to bring new investment opportunities to SANSA along with the benefits of Space Travel and the technological advances that it will accompany it. This could potentially lead to multiple opportunities for countries with new and small Space Agencies to assist and compete along with already established Space Agencies.

Furthermore, this facility aims to integrate with The National Research Foundation (NRF) as well as with the future plans of the South African Astronomical Observatory. The proposed facility will cater as a training facility for future Astronauts whereas the workshops will serve as an extension to already existing workshops at the observatory.

This dissertation explores the following design considerations and narratives:

• The creation and development of a facility that can be the starting point for SANSA to form part of human-crewed missions. • Exploring landform buildings as a way to limit light pollution, so as not to interfere with the observation of Space on the proposed site. • How the building could potentially mimic the experience that Astronauts will have on a daily basis • Introducing the public realm into Space and Space training. • Architecture as a physical manifestation of the link between humanity and an experience in Space.

_ C l a r i f i c a t i o n i s g i v e n b e l o w o n t h e u s e o f t h e w o r d ‘ P R E P A R A T I O N ’ i n t h e t i t l e o f t h i s d i s s e r t a t i o n :

NASA has a very specific set of rules when naming Spacecrafts and equipment and Space missions. The Spacecraft names are often inspirational and borrowed from Greco-Roman mythology and names given to ships from the Age of Exploration. NASA has had naming guidelines since its earliest days as it is a government institution that is governed by bureaucratic rules (Lewis, 2015). The Project Designation Committee was tasked with approving all the early NASA mission names. This committee was tasked with developing the first naming protocol of NASA.

The protocol includes rules such as the following: “Each project name will be a simple euphonic word that will not duplicate or be confused with other NASA or non-NASA project titles. When possible, and if appropriate, names will be chosen to reflect NASA’s mission. Project names will be serialized when appropriate, thus limiting the number of different names in the use at any one time; however, serialization will be used only after successful flight or accomplishment has been achieved.” (Lewis, 2015)

Although the committee only lasted two years, the protocol was designed to keep NASA’s project names simple and streamlined, many early missions were pushed back, cancelled, or continued as part of a mission series, such as the Apollo missions. Crew members started to give Spacecrafts informal codenames such as Apollo 9 being nicknamed “Spider” and “Gumdrop” respectively. The Apollo 10 Spacecraft received different nicknames for the different sections, namely “Snoopy” and “Charlie Brown”. “Snoopy” became the safety mascot for NASA a year before the Apollo 10 flight. This proved to be very successful with Astronauts and employees and therefore these nicknames were chosen by the Astronauts (Charles M. Schulz Museum, 2021).

NASA still uses a similar protocol even though the committee no longer exists. The organization added a few rules in 2000 such as the specification that the mission names should be easy to pronounce and mostly avoid acronyms. Nowadays days the person in charge of a particular NASA unit will decide whether the name is appropriate. NASA often reaches out to the public to assist in naming everything from Mars rovers to planetary features as this in in line with the inspirational ideals of the organization (Lewis, 2015). The last four rovers that explored the Red Planet were all named by students who won essay contests. Recently NASA held a public vote so that they could choose a naming scheme for any new features or formations found on Pluto. The vote settled on a theme that related to the afterlife and underworld, leaving scientists with a long list of names.

In context of the project, the facility focuses on preparing Astronauts for the up-and-coming Mars mission by means of training and simulations. These training simulations focus on preparing Astronauts for certain events that might occur on Mars and ways to resolve these events. The Astronauts will have to be prepared for both expected and, more importantly, unexpected events that could possibly occur, as “assistance” will be a planet away and it will take a long time to get new equipment or resources to Mars. Thus, the decision to highlight and feature the term PREPARATION in the title.