February 17, 2003
Nevins Software, Inc., a software development company founded by Mike Nevins in Morris, IL in 1999, recently won a NASA Small Business Innovation Research contract. NASA’s solicitation for the contract was published nationwide and received 2,283 proposals. Nevins Software was one of only two companies in the state of Illinois to win a contract, and one of 295 nationally. The contract award was based upon technical merit, feasibility, and relevance to NASA research and technology requirements.
Nevins Software will be working directly with NASA Spaceport Engineering researchers located at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL. The contract is entitled “A Discrete Event Simulation Model for Spaceport Operations (SPACESIM)”.
The major purpose for the research effort is to enable NASA’s vision for the spaceport of the future, which entails the transition over time from very high-cost, research oriented space launches with a relatively low frequency of launches, to an environment where spaceports are commercialized for the space transportation industry and are required to support multiple launches per week in a safe, cost-effective manner.
The computer simulation model (SPACESIM), when fully developed by Nevins Software, will allow NASA researchers to greatly reduce the turnaround time for the space shuttle or other next generation reusable launch vehicle. SPACESIM will allow users to play “what-if” scenarios on the computer prior to making large capital investments. In addition, it will result in improved visibility of spaceport processes and will identify potential operational constraints or bottlenecks prior to encountering them.
Mike Nevins, who founded Nevins Software after working as a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory for 12 years, is the principal investigator for this work. Nevins received a Bachelor’s of Science degree in computer science from Elmhurst College and a Master’s of Science degree in computer science from DePaul University. Through the course of his career, he has developed several large-scale simulation software models for the Department of Defense in the areas of transportation and logistics.
