940. The Need for an Expanded Weight Prediction Technique
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Paper
Abstract
This paper points out that in addition to performance, cost is an important design driver on many contemporary aerospace vehicles – Space Shuttle, for example. Also, that for some vehicles, especially those projected for long-duration space missions, reliability, maintainability, and safety considerations have significant impact on vehicle weight, size, and cost. Because of these developments, it is suggested that predesign synthesis computer programs can become more effective if expanded beyond the classical performance-weight-size interfaces to include cost, reliability, maintainability, and safety parameters.
Different facets of such an expanded preliminary design computer program, called PRESYN, are discussed in this paper, including the possibility of on-line operation of this program on interactive computer graphics equipment. Analytical and empirical techniques required to develop this program appear to be available, although some technical problems exist. One problem identified is that, to perform upstream cost estimating and reliability/maintainability analysis and optimization, component listings for all vehicle subsystems are required. This basically means that the expanded program will be large in comparison with existing programs that operate at the functional group or subsystem level. One way out of this difficulty is to include subsystem/component design models in the program. Research tends to indicate that PRESYN is feasible.
