ENAE 791 - Spring, 2004 Final Project
	Space Systems Laboratory University of Maryland

(Okay, it's more of a "final problem set" than a final project, but at least it covers some of the high points I'd like you to take away from this class.):

You are to perform the preliminary configuration analysis for a new launch vehicle. Your mission model is to launch 500,000 kg of payload per year for 10 years. Your goal is to choose a minimum-cost configuration for the vehicle. The design choices you need to consider are:

• Single or two stage
• Choice of propellants
• Optimum payload size (minimum size = 5000 kg)
• Reusable or expendable [revision: Rather than attempt the nonlinear curve fit presented in class on 040506, I have put reasonable estimates for inert mass fraction ("delta") into the chart below. Since it would be a lot of computation to examine all possible combinations of reusable and expendable, choose one reusable system of your choice (upper or lower or both stages reusable, winged or ballistic) and compare that to the expendable option.]

You may make the following assumptions:

• Delta-V to orbit = 9200 m/sec
• Costing algorithms are as presented in class on March 30, page 7. (Use "launch vehicle stage" parameters)
• 80% learning curve
• Operations costs are $1M/flight
• Refurbishment fraction = 5% of first unit production cost per flight
• Assume total costs consist of nonrecurring costs, production costs, refurbishment costs, and operations costs

You should use the following parameters for your propellant choices: [revised since first posting]

Please note the things I am not asking you to do:

• No cost spreading or other year-by-year allocation of funding
• No internal rate of return, cost discounting, or other analysis of interests or capital costs
• No use of mass estimating relations or component-level design synthesis

I think this represents a level of effort appropriate to the time available.