Friday MME Seminar on Sustainability with Evan Thomas
EWB-PSU
Thomas, PhD. He currently works designing life support systems for
NASA, but has been involved with Engineers Without Borders designing
and implementing water treatment systems for many years, among other
projects. See his website here: https://webfiles.colorado.edu/ethomas/www
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cMNc-ggyN4
**NOTE**: There will be an opportunity for 3 to 10 students to meet
personally with Evan Thomas prior to the seminar (1:30 to 2:30) for a
discussion about sustainable engineering work in the developing world.
If you're interested in participating in this discussion, please email
Chad Norvell at cnor...@pdx.edu.
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Sustainable Life Support Systems for Spacecraft and the Developing
World
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. The development of
sustainable engineered systems to support human life is a fundamental
precept of the engineering profession. Long duration spaceflight, as
anticipated for Moon and Mars missions, will require hardware that is
less prone to failure and generally more rigorous than the state-of-
the-art. Sustainable life support technologies have the potential to
function for long periods of time in harsh environments, with limited
maintenance and resupply.
These conditions are similar to those faced by people on Earth every
day - Over 1.2 billion people continue to lack access to clean water,
and over half of the world’s population still uses biomass for their
daily energy needs. These are critical life support requirements that
remain un-met by engineers and policy-makers. Both aerospace and
environmental engineering applications can benefit from the
consideration of sustainable design approaches that ensure more robust
and reliable life support technologies.
This presentation reviews sustainable life support efforts and
opportunities for spacecraft and the developing world, including:
Water treatment for the Moon and developing communities, air
revitalization for astronauts and indoor air pollution reduction for
villages, and using social enterprise for sustainable development.
Bio:
Evan Thomas (Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering, University of Colorado at
Boulder), has been a civil servant at the NASA-Johnson Space Center in
Houston, Texas since 2004. Evan works as a principal investigator and
project manager in the Life Support and Habitability Systems Branch on
concepts for sustainable Moon and Mars spacecraft. These include
microgravity fluid management technologies and water recovery systems.
Evan is also a social enterprise executive and sustainable development
engineer, designing and managing appropriate technology programs in
developing communities since 2002. Evan has worked in Nepal, Rwanda,
Kenya, Mexico and Afghanistan with Engineers Without Borders-USA and,
since 2007, as the founding Executive Vice President of Manna Energy
Limited. Manna is a social enterprise, installing water treatment,
biogas and fuel briquetting technologies in Rwanda, Kenya and
Afghanistan, funding these ventures, in part, and as the first
organization to claim United Nations carbon credits for the treatment
of drinking water.