The necessity of functional analysis for space exploration programs

♦ As NASA moves toward expanded commercial spaceflight within its human exploration capability, there is increased emphasis on how to allocate responsibilities between government and commercial organizations to achieve coordinated program objectives. The practice of program-level functional analysis offers an opportunity for improved understanding of collaborative functions among heterogeneous partners. Functional analysis is contrasted with the physical analysis more commonly done at the program level, and is shown to provide theoretical performance, risk, and safety advantages beneficial to a government-commercial partnership. The key mechanism for realizing these benefits is the development of an inter-functional architecture at the program level, which reveals relationships between top-level system requirements that would otherwise be invisible using only a physical architecture. The purpose of this paper is to argue the need for establishing functional architectures as a means of weaving and integrating the goals and requirements of public-private space exploration partnerships.