J.R. Wertz - Böcker

The goal of this book is to allow you to begin with a "blank sheet of paper" and design a space mission to meet a set of broad, often poorly defined, objectives. You should be able to define the mission in sufficient detail to identify principal drivers and make a preliminary assessment of overall performance, size, cost, and risk. The emphasis of the book is on low-Earth orbit, unmanned spacecraft. However, we hope that the principles are broad enough to be applicable to other missions as well. We intend the book to be a practical guide, rather than a theoretical treatise. As much as possible, we have provided rules of thumb, empirical formulas, and design algorithms based on past experience. We assume that the reader has a general knowledge of physics, math, and basic engineering, but is not necessarily familiar with any aspect of space technology. This book was written by a group of senior engineers with over 800 years of collective space experience. It reflects the insight gained from this practical experience, and suggests how things might be done better in the future. From time to time the views of authors and editors conflict, as must necessarily occur given the broad diversity of experience. We believe it is important to reflect this diversity rather than suppress the opinions of individual authors.

Reducing Space Mission Cost is the first complete treatment of the technology, process, and problems in the most critical areas of modern spaceflight. The demand to reduce cost is unrelenting. This pioneering book addresses all aspects of this problem, including: * Technology and processes for reducing cost * Cost reduction in mission engineering, spacecraft design, manufacture, launch, and operations * Implementation methods and problems * The price of reducing cost *10 detailed case studies of what works in practice in: * Science missions * Interplanetary probes * Communications spacecraft * Test and Applications missions Beginning on the inside front cover, this book provides real cost data on a variety of missions, systems, and subsystems. According to the authors: 'Reducing mission cost is hard enough if you know what the real costs are, and virtually impossible if you don't.' This book challenges traditional methods, yet recognizes that all space programs are run to minimize cost within the rules under which they are built and flown.It provides practical recipes for reducing cost in both new and ongoing missions and discusses what works, what government can do to help, and what methods intended to reduce cost may be counterproductive and unintentionally increase cost. As shown on the inside rear cover, the case studies described in the book have reduced total mission cost by 80% to more than 90% with respect to projections by traditional cost methods. This book is a follow-on to the now standard text and reference, Space Mission Analysis and Design, also edited by Drs. Wertz and Larson. It is required reading for professionals, students, and managers in astronautics or space sciences and managers or scientists involved in space experiments. This book shows that reducing space mission cost, without reducing reliability, is as possible as it is important for the future of space exploration.

This famous and practical handbook for Space Mission Engineering draws on leading aerospace experts to carry readers through mission design, from orbit selection to ground ops. SMAD III updates the technology, provides greater emphasis on small spacecraft design and the cost-reduction process, and includes more detail on multi-satellite manufacturing, space computers, payload design and autonomous systems.

This volume aims to be a complete treatment for many elements of space mission design and astronautics. Topics include: extensive coverage of constellation design and management; relative motion of satellites (global, local, at similar and widely differing altitudes); definition of an orbit cost function for comparing the cost of access to and maintenance of alternative orbits; most extensive discussions available of autonomous navigation and autonomous orbit control; a discussion of Earth coverage and viewing and lighting conditions; apparent motion of other satellites needed for cross-link pointing and antenna coverage; analytic expressions for the field of view of an array processor on the celestial sphere and projected onto the Earth's surface; detailed process for creating and analyzing mapping, pointing, and timing budgets; closed-form expressions for the ground track of a circular orbit, including high accuracy approximations for ground station coverage.There are also: convenient formulas for specialized orbits about the Earth and other planets; practical spacecraft problems such as time discontinuities, GPS coverage at satellite altitudes, and how to identify and handle singularities in measurement sets; and new solutions for all possible spherical triangles without quadrant ambiguities and allowing all sides and angles to range from 0 to 360 degrees. The book discusses both the similarities and differences between orbit and altitude systems in terms of hardware, algorithms, design, and processing requirements. With the demand for reduced cost and the introduction of extensive on-board computing, what were once entirely separate disciplines have begun to merge. This volume should speed that process. In all areas, it is meant to be practical, with recommendations, insights, formulas, and numerical recipes based on 40 years of spaceflight experience from organizations worldwide. It is meant to be both a text and reference work that can be used by those entering the field and by senior engineers engaged in the design, analysis, construction, or on-orbit operations of orbit and attitude systems and components.