One Rocket Family for Africa: Sizing a Shared Reusable Launcher for Satellites, the Moon and Human Spaceflight

No African country can afford separate rockets for satellites, Moon missions and astronauts. This study asks whether one reusable vehicle could do all three, and what it would cost. Mission needs were taken from real spacecraft: African Earth-observation satellites (under 1 t), the NigComSat-1R communications satellite (about 5.1 t), India's Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission (3.9 t) and the Gaganyaan crew craft (about 8 t). A first-order rocket-equation model, calibrated on Falcon 9 and on two earlier Wakanda simulations, sized the options. The Wakanda S1 small launcher falls about 11 times short of crew needs and cannot reach the Moon. One giant all-purpose rocket repeats the Space Shuttle's mistake. The proposal is Wakanda Umoja: one engine and one reusable core, flown alone for satellites and three cores together for the Moon and crew, built in stages over about 15 years for an estimated US$2.9 to 5.6 billion.