Abstract
The technical development trend of future launch vehicle systems is towards fully reusable systems, in order to reduce space transportation cost. However, different types of launch vehicles are feasible, as there are • —winged two-stage systems (WTS) • —ballistic single-stage vehicles (BSS) • —ballistic two-stage vehicles (BTS) The performance of those systems is compared according to the present state of the art as well as the development cost, based on the “TRANSCOST-Model”. The development costs are shown versus launch mass (GLOW) and pay-load for the three types of reusable systems mentioned above. It is shown that performance optimization and cost minimization lead to different results. It is more economic to increase the vehicle size for achieving higher performance, instead of increasing technical complexity. Finally it is described that due to the essentially lower launch cost of reusable vehicles it will be feasible to recover the development cost by an amortization charge on the launch cost. This possibility, however, would allow commercial funding of future launch vehicle developments.
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