The evolution of mission architectures for human lunar exploration.

摘要

Defining transportation architectures for the human exploration of the Moon is a complex task due to the multitude of mission scenarios available. The mission transportation architecture recently proposed for the "First Lunar Outpost" was not designed from carefully predetermined mission requirements and goals, but evolved from an initial set of requirements, which were continually modified as studies revealed that some early assumptions were not optimal. This paper focuses on the mission architectures proposed for the first lunar outpost and investigates how these transportation architectures evolved. Strengths and weaknesses are compared for three distinct mission architectures: (1) lunar orbit rendezvous, (2) staging from the cislunar libration point, and (3) direct to the lunar surface. A trade study comparing the first two architectures is presented to illustrate how comparisons of differing schema can be performed. In addition, several new and revolutionary architectures are discussed.