Overview of 1994 Academic Year Activities
(September 1, 1993 through September 31, 1994)

The Houston Partnership for Space Exploration (HPSE) was established by the State of Texas in 1992 for the University of Houston System. The general mission of HPSE is to advance the development of the aerospace community in the Houston area and Texas. Particular emphasis is directed to the academic, industrial, and government programs associated with the NASA L. B. Johnson Space Center. The Institute for Space Systems Operations (ISSO) is the operational agency of HPSE. ISSO is headquartered at the University of Houston and conducts part of the program with the University of Houston Clear Lake. ISSO directs its programs so as to leverage the funds it receives from the State of Texas.

In Fiscal Year 1994, the Institute invested over $228,000 to fund 15 research projects at the two campuses of the University of Houston. This effort helped achieve over $1,300,000 in external funding and gave the Institute a 6:1 leverage ratio for the year.

Since its inception, the Institute has, each fiscal year, averaged some 20 research projects, supported 15-20 faculty members and 25-30 graduate students, and interacted with 16 departments from 9 colleges throughout the two university campuses.

The activities of the first two years (1 September 1991-31 August 1993) are reported in the 1992-1993 Report (48 pages) available through ISSO and on file with the State of Texas. This current document reports on the third year of activities (1 September 1993-31 August 1994). It also provides summaries of the seed grant research projects that ISSO supported in 1995 (1 September 1994-31 August 1995). Both the 1992-1993 report and this document can also be viewed via internet on the ISSO Home Page (http://www.uh.edu/isso/).

Program of Seed-Level Funding
In 1994, ISSO continued its program of providing seed-level funds for a wide range of aerospace research projects. ISSO coordinated and stimulated UH participation in the NASA-Johnson Space Center Regional Universities Grants Program. ISSO also represented the University of Houston within the Texas Space Grant Consortium and organized the international conference on Alternative Power from Space in cooperation with the University of New Mexico Center for Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion. Finally, the ISSO director began working on the evolution of ISSO to enhance the interaction of the University of Houston with the Johnson Space Center and the aerospace community.

ISSO Research Projects
In 1994, ISSO funded 22 research projects at the University of Houston (UH) and the University of Houston Clear Lake (UHCL). The following report provides short summaries of each project. Projects include research on solid rockets, applied optics, fuzzy logic to control robots, software to support real-time processing, laser spectroscopy, space industrialization, the economics of space solar power supplied to Earth, non-linear effects in the use of liquid films for heat transfer, thermal properties of space suit materials, international research on hypersonic flows, microbial monitoring, instrumentation for monitoring of the human heart, and the delivery of drugs to tissue among other topics. All proposals submitted to ISSO were examined and evaluated by external reviewers not associated with the proposals. Final selections were made by a panel consisting of faculty from UH, UHCL, and the NASA JSC technical staff. The panel was assisted by external reviews provided by scientists and engineers from across the country. Six of the projects were continued from 1993. Two projects were conducted jointly between UH and UHCL faculty.

Researchers funded by ISSO in 1994 generated 68 papers and delivered 64 presentations at scholarly meetings. Faculty supported by ISSO submitted 19 proposals for external funding during 1994. Most projects will contribute to proposals submitted over the next three-to-five years. Research conducted by 24 faculty involved over 25 undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows.

The Energy Laboratory and ISSO organized a weekly joint seminar during the winter 1993 and spring 1994 semesters at the University of Houston in which sponsored researchers reported on both completed work and work-in-progress.

In 1994, a portion of the funds was directed to educational projects. At the University of Houston, students in the Department of English, as part of their college education, were employed in the development and production of the ISSO report. The ISSO director supported the University of Houston participation in the Texas Space Grant Consortium. At the University of Houston Clear Lake, approximately $17,000 were directed to aerospace-related educational activities.

NASA JSC Regional Universities Grant (RUG) Program
The NASA Johnson Space Center periodically provides funds to professors in Texas colleges and universities to conduct research related to the aims of JSC. Proposals are unsolicited. There is no general call for proposals. Thus, ISSO has the responsibility of maintaining contacts with the NASA JSC office in charge of the Regional Universities Grant Program (RUG) and notifying UH faculty when funds are available for the program. ISSO announced the availability of RUG funds in December 1993 for a submission date on or before 15 February 1994. UH faculty submitted 15 proposals. Of the 16 projects awarded in 1994 by NASA JSC, in response to 80 proposals submitted, five grants were received by UH faculty members. ISSO stimulated submission of three of the five successful UH proposals:
Dr. G. G. Johnson (Mathematics), Design of Intelligent Systems ($78,999)
Dr. L. S. Shieh (Electrical Engineering), Robust Optimal PWM and PAM Controllers for Uncertain Aerospace Systems ($59,000)
Dr. W. E. Wentworth (Chemistry), Photoionization ION Mobility Spectrometer for Air Contamination Monitoring ($59,000)
The University of Texas at Austin received three grants, Rice University and Texas A&M University both received two grants, and four other universities in Texas each received a RUG grant.

Aerospace Graduate Education Working Group
In 1993, the University of Houston Provost, Dr. Glenn Aumann, and the president of the University of Houston Clear Lake, Dr. Glenn Goerke, suggested the establishment of a working group to examine the need for a broader range of graduate level courses in engineering, mathematics, and science to be offered to the NASA JSC community. Executives of the major aerospace corporations strongly endorsed this action in late 1992 and early 1993. Aaron Cohen, JSC director, was very supportive of the Graduate Studies Working Group. He assigned Harv Hartman, associate director of Human Resources at JSC, to be the coordinating official. Dr. David Criswell, with advice from the UH deans of the Cullen College of Engineering and the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and consultation with the UHCL provost and dean of Natural Sciences formed a working group of eight engineers, scientists, and managers from UH, UHCL, NASA JSC, and several aerospace companies to examine needs, opportunities, and options.

The charge to the working group was defined in a February 1993 letter from the UH provost, Dr. Glenn Aumann, to the members.

1. Confirm the needs for existing engineering programs.
2. Identify the engineering education needs of the JSC/Clear Lake area over the next ten years.
3. Identify and justify programs required to meet projected needs.
4. Identify the means for maintaining the present program and developing funding for enhanced programs.
5. Identify the manner in which industry and JSC laboratories and other facilities can be used to support research and confirm that appropriate facilities can be utilized.
6. Identify Ph.D.-level researchers at NASA and the area industries who can and would serve as adjunct faculty.
7. Review similar or related programs at other NASA centers and other major national laboratories for lessons applicable to the JSC Clear/Lake area.
8. Review other topics the advisory group identifies as crucial to advancing engineering education in the JSC/Clear Lake area and in greater Houston.

The working group met five times between 21 March 1993 and 4 August 1993. Meetings were held at UH, UHCL, and JSC. The fifth meeting was split between UH and UHCL by using the teleconferencing facilities of both campuses. Reports were received by UH and UHCL faculty and JSC technical staff. In addition, the study concluded with a focus-group meeting of new JSC employees who had been with the agency five years or less.

NASA AND NASA JSC began to undergo major changes in 1993. Administrator Golden began transforming NASA and the relation of NASA to the existing contractor community. These changes, among others, included the following objectives:

• Increasing the fraction of NASA funds that go into flight programs.
• Accomplishing deployment of the Space Station on schedule and on budget.
• Placing more NASA funds into R&D and less into operations.
• Decreasing the overhead of ground-based operations, particularly those of the Space Transportation System.
• Making the NASA program relevant to major national needs.

Major changes are continuing. Responsibility for development of the Space Station shifted from the McDonnell Douglas Corporation to the Boeing Company. Loral began growing. Other major support contractors, such as Lockheed and IBM, also began sharply reducing manpower. Some contractors, such as Grumman, left the area or simply disappeared. By 1994, NASA JSC was offering incentives for early retirement to many civil servants and reorganizing the Center. Due to these and other major changes, the working group was closed in November 1993.

The working group, of course, was well aware of these and other major changes. It considered them in establishing the following findings concerning graduate level education within the broad NASA JSC community:

• Barring a major change in United States space policy, NASA will continue its operations, and NASA JSC will continue to lead in human space flight activities.
• JSC is, by far, the largest R&D organization in the State of Texas and is unique in the world for its emphasis on the planning and conduct of human space flight.
• JSC is the operational center of the international human space program.
• JSC has major experimental facilities, computer and networking resources, software systems, flight systems, flight data, and teams that are unique and capable of supporting many diverse graduate and post-graduate studies across a wide range of academic disciplines. A report on JSC test and evaluation resources, as of June 1994, is available. It does not include resources and facilities for life sciences, computation, and planetary research.
• JSC engineering programs tend to be interdisciplinary and require people with a wide range of skills.
• JSC will likely become more research intensive and involved in cutting edge technologies in years ahead.
• Computer technology is evolving so fast that universities are unable to provide state-of-the-art facilities and software. These could be available through JSC and industry.
• JSC engineers are moving from traditional library services to utilizing extensive on-line search and retrieval techniques.
• JSC has a long history of supporting advanced academic and applied research through the National Research Council Post-Graduate Research Fellowships.
• Both United States citizens and foreign researchers and students can use JSC facilities. It takes longer to approve entry of foreigners. In the mid-1980s, JSC supported the work of approximately 200 co-op students each year.
• Residency requirements for advanced degrees should be re-examined for graduate students who are already working for companies or for JSC on advanced projects.
• The life of JSC-area graduate students would be much easier if they could pursue courses and research locally and not have to commute 20 miles to UH. In academic years 1991-92, JSC had 124 students enrolled in graduate programs out of a civil servant population of 2,036 with B.S. degrees or higher. At that time, there were approximately five contractors per civil servant and a total of 17,000 contractors.
• JSC and the contractors' employees have approximately the same distribution of degrees.
• Applying the JSC degree distribution to the entire aerospace employment community implies a full-time equivalent student population of 1600 M.S. students in the sciences and engineering and 70 doctoral students.
• Most JSC and aerospace employees obtain their graduate degrees in Texas and, often, in the Houston area.
• The graduate student population need not be restricted to the local area. George Washington University, a private university, has operated an aerospace graduate program at NASA Langley for over 20 years. There are approximately 300 graduate students at Langley. Approximately 30 percent come from outside the area. They make extensive use of Langley facilities. If unique JSC capabilities have a similar attraction, then an aerospace graduate population in the order of 3,400 is a reasonable projection.

The working group effort closed with two focus-group studies by Dr. Betsy D. Gelb, professor of marketing, titled Exploring the Market for Aerospace-Related Graduate Education Among JSC Employees (September 1993). The major findings of that study follow:

• Graduate study is perceived very positively: JSC encourages and pays for it; individuals shift around among job responsibilities and thus find themselves engaged in activities for which they were not specifically trained; they are asked to communicate with employees with different areas of expertise and thus benefit from scientific/technical perspectives beside their own; they work in areas of rapidly expanding knowledge and perceive a need to "keep up."
• No reservations were expressed about the University of Houston as a source of graduate education in engineering.
• However, there are strongly-held reservations about driving to the central campus in Houston.
• A great diversity of graduate programs are of interest. No one felt qualified to guess which set of elective engineering courses would attract the largest number of JSC employees. Those present at the focus groups have earned or are pursuing advanced degrees in space science, computer science, materials engineering, pre-med, and aerospace engineering.

The focus group report contains other findings, implementation considerations, recommendations for additional studies and study techniques, and detailed descriptions of the responses of the participants in the two focus groups. Detailed minutes of the meeting and the report of the focus-group study are available from the ISSO office.

Post-Doctoral Aerospace Fellowship Program
The Working Group on Aerospace Graduate Education provided the knowledge necessary for the next step in the evolution of the Institute for Space Systems Operations. It was clear that major opportunities existed for increasing the cooperative efforts of the University of Houston System and the NASA Johnson Space Center in graduate education. However, practical difficulties existed. UH and JSC are approximately 25 miles apart. This distance inhibits continuous direct involvement in projects at JSC and projects with contractors. Many JSC staff are deeply interested in research and pursue research and the development of advanced technologies and operations. However, the pressure of their duties inhibits their ability to supervise graduate students. In addition, budgets allocated to JSC do not now contain significant and stable discretionary funds to support multi-year projects to conduct advanced research that has a high academic content. Facilities, interesting projects, and staff willingness exist to pursue academically important projects.

The idea evolved that post-doctoral fellows could be utilized to provide the link between the University of Houston and the Johnson Space Center. This concept was presented to Dr. James Pickering, president of the University of Houston, in May 1994. The concept and the advantages were perceived as follows:

Concept for the Post-Doctoral Aerospace Fellows Program
Under new funding establish a JSC-area Post-Doctoral Program

• Establish Post-Doctoral research teams of UH faculty and JSC research staff.
• Hire Post-Doctoral Fellows to work on the team project.
• Establish a UH Faculty/JSC/Industry Research Committee to oversee the program.

Advantages to UH and Results
Increase minority hirings by UH.

• Involve more post-doctoral and graduate-student minorities and women.
• Promote Future multi-racial faculty.
• Build on successful JSC-NRC Fellowship experiences.

Enable new economies and flexibility in delivering graduate education

• Engage research with minimal additional capital investments.
• Develop cooperative projects with government and other state programs (e.g., cooperation with JSC on NRC Fellowships, cooperation on TSGC Fellowships with research at JSC).
• Make opportunities available to all faculty in all disciplines.
• Engage post-docs to mentor UH graduate students in the JSC area.
• Adapt existing educational offerings to JSC area needs.
• Discover new means of complying with ETR regulations.

Create a mechanism to establish new cooperative research group.

• Develop groups among UHS, Texas, and other universities.
• Combine JSC and Houston area organizations.
• Create relationships between UH colleges and departments.

Participate in developing future NASA programs.

• Develop, for example, space-based energy systems.
• Develop, for example, life support systems applicable to Earth.

Enhance the abilities of UH graduates entering aerospace via

• Local industries,
• Academia,
• NASA, and
• State and local government.

Create a more favorable intellectual environment for small high technology businesses.

• Develop a milieu similar to Stanford University and the Silicon Valley.
• Link, for example, SBIR and technology transfer programs to local businesses via student employees and post-doctoral fellows.
• Develop new ties to the Texas Medical Center via JSC.

President Pickering encouraged the ISSO director to explore interest in the approach at JSC. In June 1994, Dr. David Criswell met with Dr. Carolyn Huntoon, newly-appointed Center Director, and reviewed ISSO, the experience of UH graduate students at JSC, the findings of the Working Group on Aerospace Graduate Education, and the long history of success of the NRC post-doctoral program at JSC. The concept was advanced of placing UH-funded post-doctoral fellows part-time at JSC. Dr. Huntoon found the concept interesting and directed the JSC Office of University Affairs (chief, Nancy Robertson) to work with ISSO in exploring the interest of JSC R&D personnel in working with post-doctoral fellows from the University of Houston.

In cooperation with Dr. Robert Ried (Engineering Directorate) and Donn Sickorez (Officer, University Relations), ISSO and JSC began an extensive survey of the research, development, and operations directorates of JSC. By September 1994, it was clear that there was considerable support at NASA JSC for creating a UH Post-Doctoral Aerospace Fellows Program. Defining and developing the Post-Doctoral Program are major goals for ISSO in Academic Year 1995.

Texas Space Grant Consortium
ISSO is the point of contact for the University of Houston with the Texas Space Grant Consortium (TSGC). Provost Glenn Aumann and Dr. David Criswell are members of the Board of Directors of TSGC. In academic year 1993-1994, Dr. Larry Witte was the university representative to TSGC. In academic year 1993-1994, ISSO and the ISSO director participated in several TSGC activities. They included development and submission of a major unsolicited proposal to NASA for establishment of a multi-university life support research program involving UT Austin and Texas A&M university researchers; participation in the annual fall and spring meetings, the review of proposals submitted to TSGC; and cooperation with the UH Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center (SVEC) to obtain TSGC funding for the proposed TexSat payloads proposed for attachment to the UH Wake Shield Facility (WSF).

The University of Houston contributes over $50,000 per year to the graduate fellowship program of the TSGC. On average, UH receives, in return, an equal amount of funds in the form of TSGC fellowships and scholarships. The graduate fellowship program makes a definite contribution to quality aerospace graduate education in the State of Texas. TSGC funds are used to enhance the level of funding of existing fellowships in order to attract the highest quality students. In addition, the students present their research results at the fall and spring meetings, thereby increasing the communications of research activities among Texas universities.

Contents
ISSO -- Institute for Space Systems Operations
1994-1995 Annual Report