193. Role of the COE-CST in Encourage, Facilitate and Promote SU

Team

Project Description

“The current environment favors such initiatives conceptually, but the business case for them is difficult to close. Unless they have a specific interest in the hosted technology, commercial launch users are reluctant to give up even a few kilograms of launch mass at prices supportable by research institutions and small commercial startups.

RELEVANCE TO COMMERCIAL SPACE INDUSTRY
In our recent research road-mapping effort, identifying and characterizing the space transportation market was identified as a priority research task for the Center of Excellence. In order to find a tractable focus area, we took our industry partners’ suggestion of investigating secondary and hosted payloads (SHP’s). SHP’s represent a unique opportunity to achieve low cost access to space, yet are rarely used. Our task will work to identify the barriers to SHP’s and how they can be overcome.

Project Outcomes

The objectives of this project are to provide training in and to construct, analyze and optimize a business model that fosters a favorable environment for flying many research and operational payloads either as rideshares deployed from commercial launches or as hosted payloads aboard commercial spacecraft.

Summary of Output

Near-Term: Develop a COE CST commercial space transportation research road-map by conducting workshops.
● Far-Term: Implement the strategy for commercial space transportation EFP using analysis tools and techniques at the intersection of engineering and business.