Each time NASA develops a spacecraft, it develops, at the same time, a large body of information and knowledge in the form of engineering data, spacecraft test procedures, and operational constraints. Unfortunately, much of this knowledge is never transitioned to operations, which frequently reinvents it (or worse, never discovers it). CTA proposes a systems technique, a knowledge base dictionary, which applies the concept of a knowledge base of knowledge bases (i.e., a meta -knowledge base). The knowledge base dictionary would know about all the forms of data, information, and knowledge developed by engineering and would be able to relate these to the needs of operations. Indeed, the knowledge base dictionary would integrate all knowledge about the spacecraft during its entire life cycle, and hence it actually represents a total life cycle knowledge management concept. CTA also proposes to develop a knowledge interchange protocol to transfer knowledge between heterogeneous systems. The proposed approaches depend heavily on the use of existing and emerging national and international standards. Therefore, they would be widely and generally applicable to large systems development in industry and government.
