Low-Cost Design Approaches for Earth-to-Orbit Propulsion

Current goals for Earth-to-Orbit transportation are to reduce the cost of payloads to low earth orbit by a factor of ten compared to existing launch capabilities. This objective translates directly to all parts of the launch vehicle system but especially propulsion. Rocketdyne is meeting this challenge today by designing an engine system which can be produced at one-tenth the cost of the current Space Shuttle Main Engine. The results from this on-going effort to design and build a high reliability, low cost engine are reviewed in this paper.