Dominant Suborbital Space Tourism Architectures

Abstract

In the early stages of maturity of a system built for a specific function, it is common for the solutions to lie in a broad architectural space, in which numerous concepts are being developed, built, and tested. As the product matures, certain concepts become more dominant. This pattern can currently be observed in the suborbital tourism industry, in which the obvious question is what system architecture will provide the best combination of cost and safety and in the long run become the dominant architecture. This paper addresses this question by defining a broad architectural space of thousands of possibilities and exploring it comprehensively. We identified 33 feasible architectures, 26 of which had not been proposed earlier. A genetic algorithm optimizes each architecture with respect to the launch mass (a proxy for cost) and operational safety. The launch mass has been calculated in a design analysis framework consisting of four modules: weight/size, propulsion, aerodynamics, and trajectory. A validation of this framework shows relative differences below 7%. A quantitative safety analysis is developed and validated with a survey of 11 leading experts. We identify six dominant architectures. These form a set from which optimal variants are likely to come.

Initial weight estimation of twin-fuselage configuration in aircraft conceptual design

“…9 Virgin Galactic developed a four-engine TF aircraft White Knight Two to launch the sub-orbital vehicle Space Ship Two. 10 The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has developed and flown a 4-seat TF aircraft HY4, which is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell system. 11 Ma et al 12 developed and flight-tested a TF aircraft with distributed electric propulsion.…”

Conceptual design and comparative study of strut-braced wing and twin-fuselage aircraft configurations with ultra-high aspect ratio wings

“…Moreover, twin-fuselage (TF) aircraft use the fuselage volume better than the single wide-body configuration for integrating passengers on large aircraft, thereby reducing fuselage weight by up to 40% [9]. The TF concept has already been realized in large aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as a TF UAV [10], a general aircraft HY4 [11], WhiteKnightTwo [12], etc. However, this concept still has not been investigated in detail for transport passenger aircraft, probably due to airport infrastructure constraints (e.g., runway width and terminal access).…”