The tradeoff of effectiveness and cost is a vital problem for complex industrial systems, mainly applied in the weapons and aviation fields. As a typical complex industrial system, the effectiveness-cost tradeoff of the satellites becomes challenging and interesting. This paper takes a remote sensing satellite as a research object, and an integrated approach to assess and optimize its effectiveness and cost is proposed. The characteristic parameters are selected according to an analysis of its structure and mission. Furthermore, the effectiveness evaluation model is established based on the Availability-Dependability-Capability (ADC) model, and the cost parameter model is developed using historical data and regression analysis. According to the Cost as Independent Variable (CAIV) method, the objective function of the satellite effectiveness-cost with the effectiveness-cost tradeoff space is established. The objective function is solved and optimized using a genetic algorithm to achieve a more efficient and economical satellite design scheme.