Studies of Cost Effective Structures Design for Future Space Systems - Summary

At its inception, three major goals were established for this contract effort. First, define promising directions for structural research by applying the concept of minimum cost rather than maximum performance to structural design. Second, understand the relationship of structure to the economics of the total system. Third, identify and apply the interactions of the various aspects of program costs to point out the potential cost savings they imply. The material presented in this report shows that these goals have been satisfied. A number of structural research areas have been identified. These are developed individually throughout this document and are collected in this section for visibility. An understanding of the system role played by structure has been developed in five system studies that show, in general, that structure, when considered as a subsystem, is unique in its far-reaching effect on the system. Moreover, detailed consideration of other subsystems reveals a large structural influence. Finally, strong interactions of structural design decisions with aerospace system costs have been demonstrated, particularly by the study described in Section 4.5, and significant potential cost savings have been identified.