As NASA looks to the moon as a proving ground for the technologies required to conduct the first human exploration campaign of Mars, this study assesses the potential propellant demands that a sustained human lunar presence would require. In particular, this study evaluates how the allocation and distribution of vehicle functions to a different number of vehicles can impact the propellant required to conduct a human lunar exploration mission. Four different transportation architectures for human lunar exploration and three different refueling assumptions were defined. The impact on the propellant required for a mission was assessed for all architectures and refueling assumptions for ranges of crew payload mass, vehicle inert mass fraction, and a sensitivity to the mission maneuver velocity magnitudes. The results of this analysis show that aggregating vehicle functions to a single-stage lander vehicle can have a positive impact on the architecture's level of vehicle reusability and that an increase in the number of refueling opportunities reduces the mass of the vehicles and of the propellant required per mission.


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    Title :

    How the Allocation of Lander Functions Impacts Human Lunar Exploration Architecture Propellant Demands



    Conference:

    AIAA SciTech Forum ; 2021 ; Online, US


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    How the Allocation of Lander Functions Impacts Human Lunar Exploration Architecture Propellant Demands

    Matteo A Clark / Alejandro R Pensado / Christopher A Jones et al. | NTRS


    HOW THE ALLOCATION OF LANDER FUNCTIONS IMPACTS HUMAN LUNAR EXPLORATION ARCHIECTURE PROPELLANT DEMANDS

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    How the Allocation of Lander Functions Impacts Human Lunar Exploration Archiecture Propellant Demands

    Clark, Matteo A. / Pensado, Alejandro / Jones, Christopher A. et al. | AIAA | 2021