SYS 636 Space Launch and Transportation Systems
This course provides an integrated view of space launch and transportation systems (SLaTS) design and operations. It analyzes customer needs, objectives and requirements, through launch and transportation system design, development, test and manufacturing to creating operations concepts and infrastructure capabilities. Lifecycle cost and the business case will be assessed. The thrust of this course is to identify technical risk and mitigate it in the most cost-effective manner, while maintaining the technical integrity of the vehicle(s) and infrastructure. In the course you will take a fresh look at space launch and transportation systems by emphasizing a process-oriented approach for creating cost-effective concepts to meet customer needs and objectives. This process describes how to translate SLaTS objectives, requirements, and constraints into viable and cost-effective operations concepts. Vehicle design presentations show practical, detailed approaches and tools to analyze and design manned and unmanned, reusable and expendable vehicles for both launch and interplanetary systems, including architecture and configuration, payloads, and vehicle subsystems. Course presentations on launch operations describe the functions to be performed, define and evaluate the key issues, help you develop an appropriate operations concept, and assess the complexity and cost of operations. Special emphasis is placed on describing the interrelationships and tradeoffs between system design and launch operations that must occur during the early stages of planning in order to deliver effective systems.