Speaker
Description
Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) are becoming an essential tool within the space transportation sector. These can support policy makers and designers in understanding the ecological footprint by quantifying environmental impacts, identifying hotspots throughout all phases in the launch mission, and designing environmentally sustainable systems though eco-design. Nevertheless, significant uncertainties remain, particularly in the launch event itself, which currently limits our understanding of the full spectrum of life-cycle environmental costs and increases the complexity of eco-design. It is therefore fundamental to derive a methodology to handle these uncertainty to guide uncertainty reduction strategies, guaranteeing a robust eco-design process with design choices.
In this study, several RLV technologies which have been proposed by different space actors are assessed with the Strathclyde Space System Database (SSSD) to identify their different life-cycle footprints including a preliminary estimation of atmospheric impacts with different climate metrics. This is followed by a sensitivity assessment which would allow us to take some first steps to fully understand the major sources of uncertainties affecting the LCA indicators.
These will support upcoming work to improve LCA's of generic space systems by including launch event and disposal related impacts and advanced uncertainty quantification formalisms, eventually enabling the robust eco-design of space missions.
