USING MONTE CARLO SIMULATION FOR SAFETY AND RISK ASSESSMENTS OF WINGED RE-ENTRY PASSENGER VEHICLES

摘要

Winged re-entry vehicle with orbital and suborbital flight velocities gained recent public attention. Especially inthe context of the newly emerging and fast growing sector Space Tourism. However, safety is a decisive property inorder to gain acceptance in the public and hence establishing this new industry. Winged re-entry vehicles often haveto fulfill contradicting requirements in respect of the mission scenario: a) high safety standards and high flexibility,and the system architecture and b) versatility and robustness of the design. The higher the flexibility of the missionand the versatility of the vehicle, the higher is the complexity of the total design. A measure of the complexityof a system is the non-linearity of the describing mathematical model. The intention of the paper is to investigatethese factors using the example of the SpaceLiner which is a winged re-entry passenger vehicle. A common way tocharacterize such a non-linear system is by using statistical methods. Strong non-linear coupling of two propertiescan be illustrated by the skewness of the resulting probability distribution. Based on the results of the Monte CarloSimulation a safety assessment will be performed and the impact of the above discussed requirements on the riskassessment highlighted.