International Academy of Astronautics 5th cosmic study--preparing for a 21st century program of integrated,Lunar and Martian exploration and development (executive summary)

This report is an initial review of plans for a extensive program to survey and develop the Moon and to explore the planet Mars during the 21st century. It presents current typical plans for separate, associated and fully integrated programs of Lunar and Martian research, exploration and development, and concludes that detailed integrated plans must be prepared and be subject to formal criticism. Before responsible politicians approve a new thrust into space they will demand attractive, defensible, and detailed proposals that explain the WHEN, HOW and WHY of each stage of an expanded program of 21st century space research, development and exploration. In particular, the claims of daring, innovative, but untried systems must be compared with the known performance of existing technologies. The time has come to supersede the present haphazard approach to strategic space studies with a formal international structure to plan for future advanced space missions under the aegis of the world's national space agencies, and supported by governments and the corporate sector.     

A permanent lunar base : Alternatives and choices

It appears virtually certain that humans will return to the lunar surface to stay and exploit the lunar resources. The only remaining question is who, when and how humankind will go there to establish a permanent lunar base. This article describes the decision-making process of determining the parameters of a lunar base. It offers modelling options as a frame of reference for planning the lunar base and its logistic support, and gives the reasons why a detailed analysis of the options and forward planning should have a high priority now.     

A methodology to determine the sociopolitical forces influencing lunar development policies

The rate of progress in any particular program is primarily dependent on the annual resources committed for the specific program. Soon after the turn of the century, the question of returning to the Moon will probably be raised again among political decision makers. At that time the positive and negative arguments will have to be weighed again. A simple method to analyse the relevant force-field was developed comprising the following steps: (1) Definition of positive and negative forces; (2) cross-impact analysis between the individual forces producing relative weights; (3) probability analysis of the current relevance of the individual forces; (4) estimating resulting negative and positive partial force-fields as functions for selected years between 1960 and 2030; and (5) determination of the strength of the resulting force influencing a decision. An example is presented.     

Recent advances in lunar base simulation

This article reports about the results of the latest computer runs of a lunar base simulation model. The lunar base consists of 20 facilities for lunar mining, processing and fabrication. The infrastructure includes solar and nuclear power plants, a central workshop, habitat and farm. Lunar products can be used for construction of solar power systems (SPS) or other spacecraft at several space locations. The simulation model evaluates the mass, energy and manpower flows between the elements of the system as well as system cost and cost of products on an annual basis for a given operational period. The 1983 standard model run over a fifty-years life cycle (beginning about the year 2000) was accomplished for a mean annual production volume of 78 180 Mg of hardware products for export resulting in average specific manufacturing cost of 8.4 $/kg and total annual cost of 1.25 billion dollars during the life cycle. The reference space transportation system uses LOX/LH₂ propulsion for which at the average 210 500 Mg LOX per year is produced on the moon. The sensitivity analysis indicates the importance of bootstrapping as well as the influence of market size, space transportation cost and specific resources demand on the mean lunar manufacturing cost. The option using lunar resources turns out to be quite attractive from the economical viewpoint. Systems analysis by this lunar base model and further trade-offs will be a useful tool to confirm this.     

Cost Engineering – The new paradigm for space launch vehicle design

The paper describes the basic definition and application of 'Cost Engineering' which means to design a vehicle system for minimum development cost and/or for minimum operations cost. This is important now and for the future since space transportation has become primarily a commercial business in contrast to the past where it has been mainly a subject of military power and national prestige. Several examples are presented for minimum-cost space launch vehicle configurations, such as increasing vehicle size and/or the use of less efficient rocket engines in order to reduce development and operations cost. Further a cost comparison is presented on single-stage (SSTO)-vehicles vs. two-stage launchers which shows that SSTOs have lower development and operations cost although they are larger, respectively have a higher lift-off mass than two-stage vehicles with the same performance. The design of a space tourism-dedicated launch vehicle is an extreme challenge for a cost-engineered vehicle design in order to achieve cost per seat not higher than $50,000. Finally an outlook is presented on the different options for manned Earth-to-Moon transportation modes and vehicles – another most important application of 'cost engineering', taking into account the large cost of such a future venture.     

The transcost-model for launch vehicle cost estimation and its application to future systems analysis

The first part of the paper describes the structure of the analytical cost estimation model (1982 edition) for launch vehicle development, fabrication and launch operations cost. Especially the new approach for a cost assessment of operations cost including refurbishment (in case of reusable vehicles), direct and indirect operations is presented for discussion and subsequent improvements by introduction of more reference values. The model uses the Man-Year (MY) as cost unit which is independent from inflation and currency exchange rate changes.

The second part of the paper deals with its application to future systems analysis and cost comparison with the example of a potential future European launcher (Post-Ariane-4) with 15 tons LEO payload capability: ten different two-stage launch vehicle concepts (expendable, semi-reusable and fully reusable) with storable and cryogenic propellants are analysed with respect to development cost and cost per launch.

The key problem for a future European launch vehicle is the optimum solution between the (limited) development effort and the desired minimum launch cost. More advanced (partially) reusable systems could provide an essential reduction in cost per launch, require, however, a higher development effort.

In such a case an analytical cost model based on realistic reference data can provide important data for the vehicle concept selection process.     

The impact of launch vehicle type and size on development cost

The technical development trend of future launch vehicle systems is towards fully reusable systems, in order to reduce space transportation cost. However, different types of launch vehicles are feasible, as there are

• —winged two-stage systems (WTS)

• —ballistic single-stage vehicles (BSS)

• —ballistic two-stage vehicles (BTS)

The performance of those systems is compared according to the present state of the art as well as the development cost, based on the “TRANSCOST-Model”. The development costs are shown versus launch mass (GLOW) and pay-load for the three types of reusable systems mentioned above.It is shown that performance optimization and cost minimization lead to different results. It is more economic to increase the vehicle size for achieving higher performance, instead of increasing technical complexity.Finally it is described that due to the essentially lower launch cost of reusable vehicles it will be feasible to recover the development cost by an amortization charge on the launch cost. This possibility, however, would allow commercial funding of future launch vehicle developments.     

Cost reduction trends in space communications by larger satellites/platforms

The paper analyses first the satellite growth trend in the past and the specific characteristics of communication satellites, as there are specific mass per channel and payload share vs. spacecraft mass.

With assistance of a cost model (derived from actual spacecraft cost) it is shown that larger satellites are more cost effective. The same applies to the launch cost, also showing a reduction in specific cost (per kg or per channel-year) for larger payloads.

Finally different types of communication satellites/platforms are compared (two smaller satellites, one large satellite, modular docked assemblies) for the same total communication capacity of 72 000 dual telephone channels. It is shown that for each orbital communication capacity a certain optimum spacecraft size exists which leads to minimum space segment cost.     

Simulation model for the operation of space freighters

This paper makes the attempt to illustrate the need for a detailed operational analysis of future space transportation systems with the help of computer-based simulation models. The basic approach deemed suitable for such a systems simulation is explained in some detail. A reference program (100,000 Mg payload per year during 25 years) for a reference mission (heavy cargo transport to GEO for SPS construction) has been selected. A base-line launch vehicle (fully reusable ballistic all chemical three stage vehicle) has been defined, which is considered a serious applicant for such a mission. It was found that the take-off mass of this type of vehicle should be as large as practical from the viewpoint of cost-effectiveness. The example chosen has a GLOW of 10,000 Mg and lifts more than 100 Mg to GEO.With consideration of the operational parameters the simulation model evaluates the annual production rates, inventory of stages, utilization of facilities and operational cost, which amount within this frame of reference to about 96 $/kg net payload delivered to GEO in terms of 1980 dollars and contribute the main share to the total transportation cost.