Speaker
Description
The growing number of orbital and sub-orbital launches highlights the need to consider environmental impacts in launch vehicle design. In response to these emerging concerns, the European Space Agency has recently promoted the use of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology as the standardization to support the mitigation of environmental impacts associated with present and future space missions. This need is amplified in the NewSpace, with diverse actors exploring innovative configurations and technologies, emphasizing the importance of integrating environmental considerations.
At early design stages, selecting the optimal launch vehicle architecture may involve Multidisciplinary Design Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) methods to model all the different disciplines (e.g., propulsion, aerodynamics, structure, and trajectory) that are required to obtain trade-offs of candidate configurations according to different performance criteria. In this research work, a methodology is proposed to integrate an LCA discipline within an MDAO framework dedicated to launch vehicle design. The approach relies on the definition of parametric life-cycle inventories that depend on the design and coupling variables of the MDAO framework. It includes the production of the stages components and propellants, as well as the associated transport to the launch site. Furthermore, launch emissions are evaluated from the optimized trajectory profiles and characterized in terms of climate change impact.
The proposed approach is illustrated on the design of a representative expendable launch vehicle showing the capabilities of an MDAO framework enhanced with predictive LCA. Specifically, multi-objective optimizations are performed to find a tradeoff between a launch vehicle performance criterion and an environmental impact indicator. The results highlight the antagonistic behaviors among environmental impact categories, emphasizing the importance of carefully defining environmental objectives when conducting eco-design studies for launch vehicles. Overall, the generic nature of the methodology lays the first foundation for integrating LCA into launch vehicle early-stage design processes, thereby enabling exploration of trade-offs between performance, cost, and environmental considerations.