Model of medical supply demand and astronaut health for long-duration human space flight

The medical care of space crews is the primary limiting factor in the achievement of long-duration space missions. (Nicogossian 2003) The goal of this thesis was to develop a model of long-duration human space flight astronaut health and a medical supply demand model in support of such missions. This model will be integrated into an existing comprehensive interplanetary supply chain management and logistics architecture simulation and optimization tool, SpaceNet. The model provides two outputs, Alphah and Mass, for each set of input variables. Alphah is an estimate of crew health and is displayed as a percentage. Mass is a measure of medical consumables expended during the mission and is displayed in kilograms. We have demonstrated that Alphah is a function of three scaling parameters, the type of mission, duration of mission, and gender of crew. The type of mission and gender are linked to radiation fatality data published by NASA and mission duration correlates to predicted incidence of illness and injury and linked to the model through published US Navy submarine crew medical data. The mass of medical consumables (MMC) expended increases with the number of crew, the duration of the mission and the distance of the mission away from the earth. The degree of medical expertise on-board is not necessarily related to a change in consumption of medical supplies but perhaps to a better outcome for the individual infirmed crew member.

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Assad, Albert

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Olivier de Weck.

• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/47867

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/47867