Technical and economic advantages of active thermal control of spacecraft were assessed. It is concluded that in designing a spacecraft at lowest system cost, communication and scientific satellites should be considered separately because of the potential high savings in the repeater system of communications spacecraft when constant temperatures can be guaranteed throughout all mission phases. For other types of electronic equipment the savings are considerably less. Savings in this area have to be compared with increases in the thermal control subsystem and in some other areas: differences in power demand and influence on the mass budget by the thermal control subsystem, power subsystem, and the consumables of the propulsion subsystem with impact on the launch cost. The investigations show that systems with fluid or two-phase loops demand higher effort, but a concept with feedback controlled variable conductance heat pipes employed on a spacecraft leads to a system which is less expensive than existing designs. A cost saving of 9 pct of the platform cost is evaluated for a communications spacecraft compared with the basic passive concept and 14 percent for a EURECA type spacecraft compared with the fluid loop design.


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    Title :

    Advanced Thermal Design Assessment Study. Volume 1. Executive Summary


    Contributors:
    C. Guenassia (author) / B. Miedza (author) / R. Rohr (author)

    Publication date :

    1988


    Size :

    21 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English