An Analysis of the Point-to-Point Cargo Transportation System using Reusable Launch Vehicles

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the mission profile of the point-to-point cargo transportation system that employs reusable launch vehicles. We establish the mission profile concept referred to return to launch site which is appropriate for short-distance transportation. Also, we describe the characteristics of each flight phase in detail. The trajectory optimization problem is defined to obtain the optimal trajectory of proposed mission profile with the main parameters of flight phases as optimization variables. Various flight constraints are considered to derive feasible trajectories of the rocket cargo transportation system. Given that the goal of this system is to maximize the cargo mass under specific conditions, we set the payload ratio as the objective function. This trajectory optimization problem is solved using the evolutionary algorithm to derive the optimal trajectory and state variables. Furthermore, we perform parametric studies of the given conditions to analyze the characteristics of the proposed mission profile.