A Research in Mass Estimation of Manned Lunar Landing Spacecraft Based on Discrete Event Simulation

Abstract

The mass estimation of the spacecraft, as a top-level design of the manned lunar landing mission, is the main factor for designing the rocket carrying capacity and determining the composition and function of spacecraft system. This paper firstly built an analysis model of mass estimation for spacecraft which took the crew size, mission duration, orbit maneuvering scheme, propulsion requirement as initial input parameters, and then the software SimEvents was used to implement the simulation model based on the discrete event simulation technique. Results show that the deviation of a 3-day lunar landing example is only 8.2% compared with the published data and the deviation of a 14-day mission is 10.51%. These results validate feasibility of the model provided in the paper, and also indicate that the model can be a good reference in early stage of spacecraft design.