Graduation Semester and Year
2017
Language
English
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering
Department
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
First Advisor
Bernd Chudoba
Abstract
Engineering design can be broken down into three phases: conceptual design, preliminary design, and detailed design. During the conceptual design phase, several potential configurations are studied towards the identification of the baseline vehicle. Although the least amount of detail is known about the design during the early conceptual design phase, the decisions made during this phase lock in major features effecting life-cycle cost and overall product success. As the next big space race begins, it is critically important to have a readily available tool for launch vehicle designers that is intuitive to use, easy to modify, cost effective, and provides correct results. This thesis details the creation of such a tool for use during the early conceptual design phase by analyzing existing launch vehicle design software and literature in order to adopt a best-practice approach to launch vehicle sizing. In addition to correctly sizing the vehicle calculating the initial parameters, the tool also determines the vehicle's basic geometric information and runs an ascent-to-orbit trajectory simulation to verify the design's validity. The tool is capable of sizing fully expendable space launch vehicles, fully expendable vehicles whose final stage is to be used for both ascent-to-orbit and additional orbital maneuvering after reaching the parking orbit, and vehicles whose first stage performs a self-recovery through the boostback and vertical landing method.
Keywords
Space launch vehicle, Boostback, Tossback, SpaceX, Falcon 9, Gemini Launch Vehicle, Saturn V, VTVL, Sizing
Disciplines
Aerospace Engineering | Engineering | Mechanical Engineering
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Woodward, David Michael, "Space Launch Vehicle Design: Conceptual Design of Rocket Powered, Vertical Takeoff, Fully Expendable and First Stage Boostback Space Launch Vehicles" (2017). Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses. 696.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/mechaerospace_theses/696
Comments
Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington