NASA's thermal and fluid analysts are consistently finding that their ability to analyze spacecraft is limited by current tools whose development begin four decades ago: over two generations! To eliminate this problem and to provide a path for growth into the future, NASA needs to start afresh and obtain a new generation of analysis tools that take advantage of modern software technologies and computational environments. A new analyzer would not have size limits, it would be extensible with custom thermal objects, and would provide analysis techniques such as adaptive nodalization that do not exist in present tools. A new analyzer would provide for distributed computation, concurrent engineering and easy integration with, or embedding into, other tools. It would accept input diverse sources and would provide multiple forms of output and results analysis. It would not require a third party compiler for a simple analysis and would easily communicate with widely used tools such as Microsoft's Excel and Word. A new analyzer would have built-in case management for handling sets of related models and tracking the dependencies between these models. A new analyzer would also provide for model sharing and review over the internet. Such innovations and renovations will pave the way for the next two generations.Potential Commercial ApplicationsSeveral thermal analysis programs exist as commercially viable products, but they are based on aging technologies. The advances proposed will be compelling in that marketplace. In addition, the innovative design of this tool will create a market for embedded analysis tools. Embedded tools are used by other analysis engines such as stress, CFD and pipe flow design tools. This development will also give us a number of small standalone analysis tools that can each be marketed as additions to such widely used tools as Excel and MATLAB.
