Though the space race may have cooled down, the U.S. still looks to the skies as an opportunity for exploration—and defense. To that end, aerospace engineering Professor Bernd Chudoba is developing a "Strategic Transportation Roadmap for Defensible Space," with funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory headquarters. The roadmap focuses on a parametric space architecture that will be essential in the future and provides a primer to identify emerging individual technology studies.
Dr. Chudoba and his team have been building a generic system that combines government space programs like NASA and private space companies with military space programs, resulting in an AI-driven "unified toolbox" that could allow planners to look broadly at issues of defensible space, space exploration, and space colonization.
"By enriching the planners' forecasting toolbox, we will affect military spending strategies, technology investments in hypersonic speed, reusable space launch, AI, and more," he says.
