As a consequence of the reduced funding by the ESA Member States contributing to the Columbus and Manned Transportation Programmes, the Columbus Project has undergone two major cost reduction exercises since 1993.
An important cost reduction was achieved in mid '93 by downsizing the Attached Pressurized Module (APM) from 8 to 5 Double Racks equivalent length.
To reduce the costs further, in 1994 the European space industry took the opportunity of exploiting specific features of the APM common with those of other projects, potential candidates being the Mini Pressurized Logistic Module (MPLM), developed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) for NASA, or the European developed Russian Data Management System (DMS-R). In addition simplifications in System Function and in the Verification approach and maximum use of Off-the-Shelf and Commercial/Aviation/Military (CAM) hardware were investigated.
All the above activites, together with an in-depth scrutiny of the associated requirements resulted in the so-called Design-to-Cost Baseline for APM.
The present paper is devoted to a system overview of that baseline concerning the APM Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) and Thermal Control System (TCS) and addresses in detail the driving requirements, the resulting ECLSS and TCS concepts, configuration and interconnection, their performance, operation and verification.
For the design implementation of the various ECLSS and TCS functions, brief reference is made to the applicable design-to-cost consideration which led to the requirement and design solution.