Feasibility analysis of SpaceX' Starship from a mission analysis point of view

Kurzfassung

Sending humans to another celestial body in our solar system has been a target for humanity ever since the very beginning of space engineering. After this target was achieved with the moon landings during the Apollo program in the late 1960s and early 1970s, attention has shifted towards a human Mars mission. In recent years, the private company SpaceX, founded and led by Elon Musk, has become the front runner in the contest to first send humans to Mars. Probably, Elon Musk is the most controversial person in the space sector, admired by many and called overrated by many others. The same accounts for SpaceX Mars mission plans: For some people, it is only a matter of time until we land on Mars with the spacecrafts developed by SpaceX. Others can not imagine that these goals will be achieved and doubt the technical concept in general. The plan of SpaceX is to build the strongest rocket of all times, Super Heavy, with a large interplanetary spacecraft, Starship, on top. This configuration shall enable the transport of hundreds of tons of payload to Mars with every flight and hence, build up a base on Mars that in the future will be the home for millions of people. The analysis of the feasibility of SpaceX’ plans covers many different aspects, for example the propulsion system of Starship or the building of their Mars base, to name just two of them. To cover and assess the feasibility of all aspects, a team of many engineers would be needed. Therefore, I choose to limit my analysis to one single aspect of the mission plans, the mission analysis. This means that in this document, I will develop a model for the analysis of the trajectories that bring Starship from Earth to Mars and back. Afterwards, I will analyse and evaluate the results of this analysis with respect to different parameters. The other part of this work will be a sensitivity analysis of Starship and its associated components. Based on the results of the two parts of my work, I will assess the feasibility of SpaceX mission plans from the view of a mission analyst and point out steps that should be performed in the future.