The economic feasibility of a space station based comet nucleus sample return mission is investigated. The analysis evolves around launch and potential recovery to a space station. In order to do this, the scenario was compared to an Earth based mission. It was found that the overriding factor in the analysis were the launch costs, from which it was evident that conventional launches were not cost effective for transporting the hardware to the space station. However, with the advent of reusable launchers, space station based missions could prove to be more economical than Earth based missions.
Space Station as a Transport Node
1990
99 pages
Report
Keine Angabe
Englisch
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