Defining Support Requirements During Conceptual Design of Reusable Launch Vehicles

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...

Developing Safety-critical Software Requirements for Commercial Reusable Launch Vehicles

A number of inventors and entrepreneurs are currently attempting to develop and commercially operate reusable launch vehicles to carry voluntary participants into space. To reduce the risk to the public in the operation of these vehicles, a launch vehicle operator typically performs analyses to identify safety measures and develop safety requirements. The focus of these safety efforts has histo...

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...

Risk Quantification and Reliability Based Design Optimization in Reusable Launch Vehicles A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering By

Selection of Favorite Reusable Launch Vehicle Concepts by using the Method of Pairwise Comparison

The contribution of this paper to the space transportation system field is to select promising Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) concepts by using a formal evaluation procedure. The vehicle system is divided into design features. Every design feature can have alternative characteristics. All combinations of design features and characteristics are compared pairwise with each other. The innovation an...