The Themis launch vehicle - The definitive demonstration prior to future European RLV

Abstract

The economic efficiency of launch vehicles could lead in the very future the industrials and space agencies to develop a new generation of launch vehicle: the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV). But first of all, it remains to prove that the RLV is cheaper than an expendable launch vehicle (ELV): the operations will have to be particularly investigated, for their costs are preponderant in the global launch vehicle use. The last step of the European demonstration logic, from the EADS Launch Vehicles (EADS-LV), point of view is the demonstrator Themis. The item of maintenance operations is of course the leitmotiv of RLV and Themis is the demonstration vehicle which has to fit these objectives. The vehicle has consequently, the following main technological characteristics: it has its own propulsive system and it will fly several times with the minimum maintenance operations between two flights. Besides, it will be composed of reusable propulsion system, reusable TPS, reusable tanks and health monitoring system. The technologies and geometric characteristics of Themis will be chosen from the future RLV studies, since European industries and space agencies are getting ahead with them. For the operations aspects, the industrial teams will learn all along the several flights and the steps of the development: the demonstration vehicle is surely the only way to approach the operations item. Of course, the vehicle will have to do the same operations as a RLV.