Technical Paper
Designing a Complete Ingress-Egress Environment – A Reflection on the Design Process of the Crew Return Vehicle
2005-07-11
2005-01-2998
Getting safely back to earth from any space mission is a necessity. Every space mission is dependent on a 24-hour stand-by system which can operate as a regular return vehicle or as an emergency lifeboat. This system must be able to launch at any time and bring back the entire crew. Up until summer 2001 ESA and NASA were cooperating on the Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) which was supposed to be the new generation return vehicle from the International Space Station (ISS) back to Earth. A replacement for the old Soyuz-pod was needed. Before the CRV-project was suddenly terminated in summer 2001 I was working on a proposal for the complete internal design of the CRV, as a diploma project towards a Master’s degree in architecture. I contacted ESA/ESTEC, who accepted my wishes for visiting engineers behind the CRV-project and for receiving technical information.
