Moon & Mars Orbiting Spinning Tether Transport - Tethers Unlimited

Appendix L: Tether Boost Facility Design Final Reportwould require a power system of 5-10 kW. Assuming a 10 kW power system, the massof the solar arrays, batteries, and additional power controller would be about 100 kg.Approximately 100-150 kg is estimated for the Grapple Assembly and target payload.Depending on the final length of the tether, 100-400 kg is estimated for tether anddeployer. Miscellaneous systems, such as thermal and telemetry, will probably addanother 100 kg.Figure 5.6. Delta II upper (second) stage and payload compartment.Cost and integration time should be dramatically reduced because few items areof a new design, other than the tether and possibly the rendezvous and capturedevices. The launch vehicle at approximately $50M, would be over half the systemcost, assuming the vehicle is not shared. Cost could be reduced by utilizing the excesslaunch weight and going to the large 3×9-meter fairing; thus allowing rapid packagingand simpler and larger system designs. For example, simple solar array design thatonly folds once or twice, rather than a more complex fanfold design. Flying as asecondary payload using a PAF, could easily reduce the launch vehicle cost by 50-90%.The Control Station could still make use of the upper stage for additional mass.However, packaging could be considerably more constrained with the smaller volumeand weight provided by flying as a secondary payload. Also, issues with the orbit theprimary payload will be deployed in may complicate the orbit desired for the sub-scaledemonstrator and cause mission work arounds.F-33