Low Cost Preliminary Mission Design Tool Set for Missions Anywhere in the Solar System

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William J. Kosmann

Abstract

This paper presents a novel concept for a low-cost Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) set of integrated software that allows a mission planner to design any type of mission above Earth geosynchronous orbit. The Mission Design Tool Set (MTDS) provides both a set of preliminary mission design tools and a low fidelity simulation of the resulting design. The classes of missions supported would encompass the entire New Exploration Initiative architecture, through all future development spirals. The affordable mission design tools can be used by any entity that wishes to design a mission of exploration. The tool set produces a set of files that can be provided along with a text proposal to a requesting agency. The requesting agency can use the same mission design tool set to evaluate the proposal, up to and including running mission design stressing trade studies to test the robustness of the proposed mission design.

Introduction

The New Exploration Initiative is a vision of efficient sustained solar system exploration. The capabilities neededfor exploration must be created in order to enable the vision. Among the capabilities needed are:

• An Exploration Architecture or set of Architectures,
• An evolvable Crew Exploration Vehicle, Service Module, and Descent/Ascent Stage
• A Heavy Lift capability, and
• An investment in the development or advancement of the technologies needed for either the above capabilities, or to accomplish the missions needed to do the exploration.

The sequence of exploration includes:

• Return to the moon,
• Permanent human presence on the Moon,
• First human presence on Mars,
• Permanent human presence on Mars
• Extension to the rest of the Solar System

The foundation for such an exploration vision is a rational, efficient architecture or set of such architectures. Any architecture is created by the accomplishment of many missions. High quality mission design is the foundation for accomplishing each of the missions using the lowest possible expenditure of resources. The totality of all of these missions creates the architecture that accomplishes the New Exploration Initiative.

Efficient world-class mission design is dependent upon the availability of affordable mission design tools and experienced mission designers. An affordable mission design tool set increases the number of talented individuals who may perform mission design. The typical result of significantly increasing the number of possible participants in any intellectual activity is a flood of new and innovative ideas. Specifically, significantly increasing the number of individuals who may perform mission design would reasonably be expected to significantly increase the number of new mission designs for any given mission. The ultimate result is less energy intensive mission designs, increasing the design flexibility available or lowering the cost of the mission. The new design flexibility includes using a smaller, less expensive launch vehicle, decreasing mission cost, increasing the mission payload by using the original more capable launch vehicle, or decreasing the total number of missions needed.

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