Over the next several years NASA intends to develop and maintain a sustained human presence in cis-lunar space and on the surface of the moon. The sustained lunar presence will then serve as a stepping stone to human Mars missions. To propel the spacecraft taking humans and cargo to and from the lunar surface and to and from Mars will require on the order of hundreds of tons of propellant. Expendable, one-time use refueling elements maybe more cost effective for smaller campaigns, but as the propellant requirement grows, so does the cost benefit of reusable systems. This paper will analyze the cost of several different architectures for delivering propellant to cislunar space to determine the conditions in which each architecture is likely to be more cost effective. The first architecture relies on expendable elements for propellant delivery while the second one reuses every element including launch vehicle stages. In addition to these two basic approaches, trades will analyze alterations to the architectures such as mission design, level of thermal control, and the incorporation of buses,tugs, and depots, each with different propellants, sizes, and reusability assumptions.


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    Title :

    Parametric Cost Analysis of Refueling Options in Cis-Lunar Space


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    AIAA SciTech Forum and Exposition ; 2021 ; Nashville, TN, US


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English







    Low Cost Lunar Transfer Vehicle Options

    White, M. J. / American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics / Society of Automotive Engineers et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1998


    Low cost lunar transfer vehicle options

    White, Michael | AIAA | 1998