Comparison Between Industrial Design and Aerospace Approach in Interdisciplinary Projects for Human Exploration Mission

Because of the extension of mission duration time, the new targets of human exploration (Moon and Mars) require a deeper investigation of issues related to human being and habitability in space. This entails that engineering disciplines will be integrated in multidisciplinary teams. This raises the problem of the definition of an interdisciplinary process that can allow people from different disciplines to work together to achieve the same goal. This paper presents a comparison between the aerospace engineering and the industrial design approaches in order to facilitate their integration into an interdisciplinary design process and to allow the designers to contribute to the development of future human missions. The methodology used at present in the aerospace field for the design of satellites and habitat modules will be described and compared to the approach conventionally used by industrial designers for non-space applications that present high complexity and multidisciplinary.