It is the goal of developers of advanced life support researcher to develop technology that reduces the cost of life support for future space missions and thereby enables missions that are currently infeasible or too expensive. Because the cost of propulsion dominates the cost of hardware emplacement in space and because the mass of a deliverable object controls its propulsive requirements, equivalent system mass (ESM) is used as a means for accounting for mission costs. ESM is typically calculated by adding to the actual mass the equivalent amount of mass that must be added to a mission due to other characteristics of a piece of hardware such as the item s volume or energy requirements. This approach works well for comparing different pieces of hardware when they go to the same location in space. However, different locations in mission space such low Earth orbit, Mars surface, or full trip to Mars and return to low Earth orbit require vastly different amounts of propulsion. Moving an object from Earth surface to the Martian surface and returning it to Earth will require as much as 100 times the propulsion that is required to move the object to low Earth orbit only. This paper presents the case for including the effect that location can have on cost as a part of ESM and suggests a method for achieving this improvement of ESM.
The Effect of Mission Location on Mission Costs and Equivalent System Mass
33nd International Conference on Environmental Systems ; 2003 ; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
01.01.2002
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Keine Angabe
Englisch
The Effect of Mission Location on Mission Costs and Equivalent System Mass
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2003
|The Effect of Mission Location on Mission Costs and Equivalent System Mass
SAE Technical Papers | 2003
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