PROJECT SUMMARY: Advanced Reusable Transportation System (ARTS)
Name: Advanced Reusable Transportation System (ARTS)Sponsor: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC)
Type: Pro-bono Independent Assessment
Year: 2003
The road to a viable next generation reusable launch vehicle (RLV) has proven to be fraught with programmatic risk, design failures, and formidable technological challenges. Many evolutionary vehicle concepts fail to gain government or industry support because they do not offer a significant improvement in cost, performance, or operability over the current Space Shuttle. On the other hand, revolutionary concepts often suffer because the level of risk inherent in their technology development programs is unacceptable to potential investors.
The impetus for the development of the Advanced Reusable Transportation System (ARTS) concept was the desire to incorporate mature RLV technologies in the context of an innovative vehicle concept. Sized as a Shuttle replacement, the ARTS vehicle is a horizontal take-off, horizontal landing (HTHL) concept with all-rocket main propulsion and electromagnetic launch assist. Elements of the ARTS design can be traced to concept studies and general conclusions from the NASA Highly Reusable Space Transportation (HRST) study.
SEI was tasked by NASA MSFC to conduct an independent assessment of the performance and cost of the ARTS vehicle. SEI's design analysis process included trajectory simulation, component weight estimation, aerodynamics, CAD, and non-recurring cost analysis. SEI conducted this analysis without knowledge of the results of prior ARTS sizing and performance studies. An assessment of the design, operation, and cost of the electromagnetic accelerator track was beyond the scope of this task.
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