Concept Study of a Beamed Energy Propulsion Craft as Workhorse of a Future Space Transportation Architecture

Kurzfassung

This paper denes three dierent scenarios, describing the potential future commercial space transportation market. Based on the discussed scenarios boundary conditions for future space transportation systems are established. The paper gives a brief overview over dierent types of future launcher systems with Beamed Energy Propulsion (BEP) engines. It concentrates on thermal and plasma propulsion and analyses a launcher system in terms of performance in the individual scenarios. A cost estimation based on the results of an ascent trajectory analysis serves to evaluate the system's performance.