# A Brazilian Space Launch System for the Small Satellite Market
## 3 Results and Discussion
The composite motor casing was approved to initiate the static fire test campaign. Technical quality factor (\(f_{2}\)) relates to the minimum number of engine qualification tests necessary for a given reliability. It has to be applied in the development of liquid rocket engines, whose qualification campaign claims hundreds of test firings. The RD-843 engine is already qualified. For solid rocket engines, fewer tests are necessary; therefore, we consider a unit value for the quality factor. Team experience factor (\(f_{3}\)) was taken as 0.75 by virtue of the technical staff long expertise in the development of similar projects. We assumed a lower value for these factors considering the qualification of our technical staff (IAE-Brazil), the associated infrastructure and the level of maturity of the Brazilian space industry in solid rocket production, notably AVIBRAS. The learning factor (\(f_{4}\)) adopted in the present work considered the large number of motors expected to run the launch system based on the adopt commonalities. At a launch rate of 12 missions per year, 48 S-50 motors would be necessary to assemble the first and second stages. The production rate of S-44 would be 12 per year. Liquid engine development cost (RD-843) is null considering it is an off-the-shelf component, and, therefore, the learning factor was subjected only to stage integration. The correction factor for vehicle performance estimates accuracy (\(f_{5}\)) was set to the highest expected error (3%) from the _DBallistic_ model, i.e., 1.03. We assumed a margin of 10% of deviation of the development time schedule, thus setting a value of 1.1 for this programmatic factor (\(f_{6}\)). The programmatic factor referring to the number of organizations contracted (\(f_{7}\)) for vehicle development was set to unity, considering that IAE-Brazil is the sole prime-contractor responsible for the project development. The productivity correction factor, which is a relative measure of annual working hours, education and dedication to work of a country (US as the reference, \(f_{8}=1\)), was set as 1.1, or, a 10% increase in the WYr compared to the US counterpart. The impact on the launch vehicle type (\(f_{v}\)) was taken as 0.3 which is suggested for solid propellant vehicles. The impact of the launch vehicle assembly and integration mode (\(f_{c}\)) was set to 0.5, corresponding to horizontal assembling and transport to pad for erection. Stage complexity factor (\(Q_{N}\)) was taken as 0.15 for stage comprised of small solid rocket engines and 0.4 for a stage relying on liquid rocket engines. Business plans for the small satellite launch providers are often based on a very high number of launches per year (\(\approx\)100). For such figures there should be more than one launch site with dedicated operation teams. For indirect operation costs (\(C_{IOC}\)) we assumed that the Alcantara Launch Center can sustain, in its commercial phase, up to 12 launch campaigns per year. This pace, however, can only be achieved after performing a certain number of missions during two to three years following the maiden flight. The number of total flights were set to 100, over a decade of system operation. Nominal profit and additional costs were set to 5% and 1% of the cost per flight (CPF), respectively. Table 4 presents the estimated cost parameters for the three launch vehicle concepts. Cost per flight, in dollars, was estimated after multiplying the correspondent cost in work years by the cost, in dollars, of one WYr. Specific transportation cost (Equation (30)) was inferred diving the sum of the related costs by the payload mass capacity, for a given reference orbit (@ 500 km, polar). A correction factor was employed to consider the vehicle performance estimates from the _DBallistic_ model. Monetary data was rounded up to million. For concepts 1, 2 and 3, the maximum payload mass insertion capability for the reference orbit, calculated by the _DBallistic_ model, was 436, 467 and 593 kg, respectively.