Small Launchers Design and Cost Balance Improvements

The improvement of the design of space launchers, with a consequent reduction in development costs, has not been achieved to the same extent as in the case of satellite designs, even when applying similar Concurrent Engineering processes and MBSE methodologies. The aim of this paper is to introduce the current research at “Universidad Politécnica de Madrid” onto increasing the design efficiency of small space launchers, which is in the preliminary conceptual phases. A new approach is developed based on physical models’ integration in a simulator using a MBSE framework to find an optimal balance between costs and design weights.