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Space Systems Design Laboratory (SSDL)

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Author: Rohrschneider, Reuben R. × Author: Steffes, Stephen R. ×

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    Flight System Options for a Long Duration Mars Airplane
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004-09) Rohrschneider, Reuben R. ; Olds, John R. ; Kuhl, Christopher A. ; Braun, Robert D. ; Steffes, Stephen R. ; Hutchinson, Virgil L., Jr.
    The goal of this study was to explore the flight system options for the design of a long endurance Mars airplane mission. The mission model was built in the design framework ModelCenter and a combination of a hybrid and user-driven fixed point iteration optimization method was used to determine the maximum endurance solution of each configuration. Five different propulsion systems were examined: a bipropellant rocket, a battery powered propeller, a direct methanol fuel cell powered propeller, and beamed solar and microwave powered propeller systems. Five airplane configurations were also studied. The best configuration has a straight wing with two vertical tails. The direct methanol fuel cell proved to be the best onboard power system for a long endurance airplane and the solar beamed power system showed potential for indefinite flight. The combination of the best configuration and the methanol fuel cell resulted in an airplane capable of cruising for 17.8 hours on Mars.
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    Modeling Approach for Analysis and Optimization of a Long-Duration Mars Airplane
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004-05) Rohrschneider, Reuben R. ; Olds, John R. ; Braun, Robert D. ; Hutchinson, Virgil L., Jr. ; Kuhl, Christopher A. ; Steffes, Stephen R.
    The goal of this study was to determine the best system level modeling tool for the design of a long endurance Mars airplane mission, and to use this tool to determine the best configuration for the aircraft. The mission model was built in the design framework ModelCenter. User-driven fixed point iteration (FPI), optimizer based decomposition (OBD) and a hybrid method were implemented. Convergence difficulties were discovered in the OBD and hybrid methods. The user-driven FPI method produced the most reliable results, but required the most time. A combination of the hybrid and user-driven FPI methods were used to perform a technology study in which five different propulsion systems were examined: a bipropellant rocket, a battery powered propeller, a direct methanol fuel cell powered propeller, and beamed solar and microwave powered propeller systems. The direct methanol fuel cell proved to be the best onboard power system for a long endurance airplane and the solar beamed power system showed potential for indefinite flight.
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    Solar Electric Propulsion Module Concept for the BiFrost Architecture
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2002-10) Rohrschneider, Reuben R. ; Sakai, Tadashi ; Steffes, Stephen R. ; Grillmayer, Georg ; St. Germain, Brad David ; Olds, John R.
    This paper describes the design of a solar electric propulsion module for the Bifrost architecture. Bifrost consists of a magnetic levitation launch tube with the exit end elevated to 20 km. A 35,000 kg hybrid logistics module (HLM) is designed to attach to an array of propulsion modules that accommodate different missions. The solar electric propulsion (SEP) module is designed to circularize a payload in Geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) from a highly elliptic transfer orbit. A configuration consisting of a central spacecraft body propelling itself with electric thrusters and gathering solar power from two inflatable concentrating reflectors was chosen. Concentrating reflectors were chosen over thin film arrays due to the large mass savings. Details of the conceptual design process are presented. Disciplines include trajectory, power system, propulsion, and weights & sizing. A computational framework was used to wrap the disciplinary analysis to speed the design process, and optimization was performed to minimize the initial mass of the vehicle from within the design framework. The resulting vehicle has an initial mass in orbit of 40,780 kg. A demonstration model was then designed and constructed from the conceptual design. The manufacturing process for the inflatable reflector and the spacecraft body are described in detail. The demonstration model shows that an inflatable reflector is a feasible method of generating large amounts of power in space.