(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2002-10)
St. Germain, Brad David; Kokan, Timothy Salim; Marcus, Leland R.; Miller, Jeff; Rohrschneider, Reuben R.; Staton, Eric; Olds, John R.
The Argus reusable launch vehicle (RLV) concept
is a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) conical, wingedbodied
vehicle powered by two liquid hydrogen
(LH2)/liquid oxygen (LOX) supercharged ejector
ramjets (SERJ). The 3rd generation Argus launch
vehicle utilizes advanced vehicle technologies along
with a magnetic levitation (Maglev) launch assist track.
A tanker version of the Argus RLV is envisioned to
provide an economical means of providing liquid fuel
and oxidizer to an orbiting low Earth orbit (LEO)
propellant depot. This depot could then provide
propellant to various spacecraft, including reusable
orbital transfer vehicles used to ferry space solar
power (SSP) satellites to geo-stationary orbit. Two
different tanker Argus configurations were analyzed.
The first simply places additional propellant tanks
inside the payload bay of an existing Argus reusable
launch vehicle. The second concept is a modified pure
tanker version of the Argus RLV in which the payload
bay is removed and the vehicle propellant tanks are
extended to hold additional propellant. An economic
analysis was performed for this study that involved the
calculation of the design/development and recurring
costs of each vehicle. The goal of this analysis was to
determine at what flight rate it would be economically
beneficial to spend additional development funds to
change an existing, sunk cost, payload bay tanker
vehicle into a pure tanker design. The results show
that for yearly flight rates greater than ~50 flts/yr it is
cheaper, on a $/lb basis , to develop and operate a
dedicated tanker.