Maintainability planning for the Space Station

The planned NASA Space Station, which is expected to have many years of on-orbit operation, for the first time confronts spacecraft designers with major questions of maintainability in design. A Maintainability Guidelines Document has been distributed to all Space Station Definition and Preliminary Design personnel of the Space Station Program Office. Trade studies are being performed to determine the most economical balance between initial (reliability) cost and life cycle cost (crew time and replacement hardware) costs.