Case Study of the Benefits of Collaboration Between Aircraft and Space

Only 100 years ago, taking a flight across the ocean was as unattainable to much of the world as traveling to space seems today. However, the airline industry underwent a commercial revolution that made air travel a staple in the global economy. That growth was remarkably similar to the rapid change that the space industry is seeing today. As a supplier to both commercial aircraft and space platforms, Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, has taken advantage of its broad expertise and performed cross-discipline collaboration to bring commercial aircraft and space lessons learned together for use in the commercialization of space. This paper discusses the findings from work completed by Collins Aerospace Space Systems and Interiors that looked at one area where these business units directly overlap - the commode. The work aimed to determine what differences exist between the space systems and aircraft approaches to the commode and how these differences could be leveraged to optimize the design and execution of the commode for the space market. The key outputs to be discussed include findings from the exercise and the implementation of the findings on a new commode architecture.