Location
Howard Johnson Plaza-Hotel
Start Date
30-4-1998 1:00 PM
Description
American launch vehicles are being vigorously challenged in the international launch market. Rising support costs make each flight more expensive for both military and commercial flights. Innovative process improvements and new hardware concepts are necessary to make American launch vehicles more efficient and control rising costs.
One of the significant factors of the rising costs has been Range launch support. The sharpest rising cost for Atlas was gathering telemetry data for the second burn and spacecraft separation utilizing the Advanced Range Instrumentation Aircraft (ARIA). Whenever possible, the mission trajectory was constrained for telemetry recovery from the Ascension Ground Station (ASC), as is was more economical. However most missions could not be constrained to ASC and the use of ARIA became necessary. As the government was passing more and more of its costs onto users, ARIA costs went from less than $200,000.00 per mission to over $1,000,000.00 per mission and rising. No relief was in sight. These costs became even more onerous when the ARIA flew and the mission was later aborted (for example bad weather at the launch site). Since ARIA was so expensive and reliability was also a concern, Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA) sought an alternative solution for recovering second burn and spacecraft separation data.
Paper Session III-C - TDRSS Experiences in the Atlas Centaur Program
Howard Johnson Plaza-Hotel
American launch vehicles are being vigorously challenged in the international launch market. Rising support costs make each flight more expensive for both military and commercial flights. Innovative process improvements and new hardware concepts are necessary to make American launch vehicles more efficient and control rising costs.
One of the significant factors of the rising costs has been Range launch support. The sharpest rising cost for Atlas was gathering telemetry data for the second burn and spacecraft separation utilizing the Advanced Range Instrumentation Aircraft (ARIA). Whenever possible, the mission trajectory was constrained for telemetry recovery from the Ascension Ground Station (ASC), as is was more economical. However most missions could not be constrained to ASC and the use of ARIA became necessary. As the government was passing more and more of its costs onto users, ARIA costs went from less than $200,000.00 per mission to over $1,000,000.00 per mission and rising. No relief was in sight. These costs became even more onerous when the ARIA flew and the mission was later aborted (for example bad weather at the launch site). Since ARIA was so expensive and reliability was also a concern, Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA) sought an alternative solution for recovering second burn and spacecraft separation data.
Comments
Space Technology- Developments From The Military
Session Chairman: James C. Hobin, General Manager, Launch Base Support Project, Johnson Controls, Inc.
Session Organizer: Duncan McCullouch