Neil Carter, Lifeline World Homes vice president, is blunt about the prospects for his company’s plan to create emergency relief shelters had he not received technical help from the Space Alliance Technology Outreach Program (SATOP). “Without their assistance, our project would be wallowing or dead,” Carter says. “With their assistance, we are steadily moving forward.”

Lifeline World Homes, based in Santa Fe, N.M., is a new business established to develop, produce and market emergency relief shelters for displaced populations anywhere in the world. The company had a design for a shelter that could be successfully prototyped using manual labor and available materials. However, in order to make a product that could be efficiently mass produced, Lifeline needed access to materials and cutting edge industrial fabrication technologies that are not readily available. Once these technologies could be identified and incorporated into the design, the next challenge would be to evaluate those designs to ensure that they met performance criteria. It is with this evaluation that SATOP was able to help Lifeline.

Lifeline had contacted local engineering firms for assistance with structural analysis. However, given the unique design of the shelter, the analysis was beyond the capabilities of those firms. Carter says the problem is analogous to evaluating the
stresses in an airplane fuselage. Subsequently, Lifeline was unable to locate any
consultants with the needed skills. “It also became apparent that even if we had found an appropriate consultant, that the cost of the analysis would have been prohibitive,” Carter says.

Vince DiGregory, Lifeline’s president, learned about SATOP through an Internet search. “We were both excited about the prospect for assistance from an organization like SATOP/NASA and skeptical that we could get the personal and iterative assistance that we know would be required,” Carter explains.
Allaying their fears, SATOP facilitated communication with Andrew Lawrence, a structural engineer with AJT & Associates, a major NASA contractor in Florida. Lawrence provided quantitative answers to Lifeline’s technical questions, has helped the company to understand the complexities and intricacies of the problem, and has made suggestions that may ultimately find their way into the final product.
Carter praised SATOP’s attention to detail and regularity of contact with Lifeline World Homes. “They have consistently monitored the progress of the project, the performance of their associate and our satisfaction with them. My personal experience is that this kind of thoroughness, responsiveness and follow through is exceptional. We are very fortunate to have come across SATOP,“ Carter says.
SATOP’s work with Lifeline is ongoing and it may be some time before the process of design/analysis/design is completed and results in a marketable product. However, Carter says that one thing is very clear to him. “Unimpeded access to world class engineering services with the right kind of expertise has allowed us to advance the product far beyond what our available financial resources would have permitted,” he says. “As a result, our product is closer to becoming a market reality than would have been the case without SATOP's involvement. If and when our product reaches the market, it will be a direct result of the services provided by and through SATOP.”