Cody Harris, Samantha Pacheco, David Garcia, Briana Levrie, Brian Nyaberi, Tamanna Garg, Christian Flores, James Walker, Taiwo-Bayonle Olayiwola, Jose Martinez, Daniela Castaneda, Lucia Rodas
A new market in the aerospace industry has matured with space tourism companies taking the final steps toward opening their doors to the public. Space tourism's goal is to have passengers fly above the Karman line and experience microgravity for a respectable amount of time. Albatross Spacelines' goal is to design a vehicle that can complete the mission of space tourism with the requirements of the vehicle taking off and landing horizontally, being rocket propelled, and following a wing-body geometry. The vehicle must also be able to carry 6 passengers and not experience more than 3 gs during ascent and 5 gs during descent. These constraints allow a general solution space to be created that relate the vehicle's takeoff gross weight and planform area. This is then matched to a configured vehicles geometry where the solution space is reduced further by required lengths, areas, and volumes. With this complete, the vehicle is analyzed through the entire flight profile. If the vehicle cannot perform the mission, it is removed from the solution space. If the analysis passes, the design will remain as a feasible vehicle. This solution space of feasible vehicles is the ultimate goal of the project.