Problems of Production and Launch of Civilian Launch Vehicles

Generic Simulation Models of Reusable Launch Vehicles

Analyzing systems by means of simulation is necessarily a time consuming process. This becomes even more pronounced when models of multiple systems must be compared. In general, and even more so in today’s fast-paced environment, competitive pressure does not allow for waiting on the results of a lengthy analysis. That competitive pressure also makes it more imperative that the processing perfo...

Exploiting Technological Synergies for Future Launch Vehicles

Two launch vehicle concepts based on technologies available today or in a short term future in Western Europe are presented. The design of both launchers has the goal of exploiting synergies with current European programs to limit development and operational costs. Technologies of particular interest here are the high performance solid rocket motors with carbon-epoxy filament wound monolithic m...

Global and Local Multidisciplinary Design Optimization of Expendable Launch Vehicles

Economic Model of Reusable vs. Expendable Launch Vehicles

It is generally assumed by the community that reusable launch vehicles will dramatically reduce launch costs because you don’t “throw away the vehicle” every time it is used. However, this is usually taken as an element of faith, without any substantive analysis to support the conclusion. The example of the Space Shuttle, originally sold to Congress on the basis of dramatically cutting launch c...

Estimating Logistics Support of Reusable Launch Vehicles during Conceptual Design

Methods exist to define the logistics support requirements for new aircraft concepts but are not directly applicable to new launch vehicle concepts. In order to define the support requirements and to discriminate among new technologies and processing choices for these systems, NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is developing new analysis methods. This paper describes several methods under deve...