With growing interest in space activity and numerous new launchers in development, this book is a timely, comprehensive survey of important concepts and applications. It enhances understanding and provides exposure to practical aspects of design, manufacturing, testing, and engineering associated with these topics.

"Interest is growing in space activity, and many new launchers are in development. Design of Rockets and Space Launch Vehicles, Second Edition is a timely and comprehensive exposé of important concepts and applications. This newly updated edition provides enhanced understanding and exposure to the latest developments in the practical aspects of design, engineering, manufacturing, and testing. Although it is primarily intended for readers with at least a 3rd-year level knowledge of aerospace engineering, mathematics, and physics, because it contains many applications and step-by-step illustrated examples along with photographs or line drawings of actual hardware, it will also be of interest to practicing engineers, technical managers, and others who are interested in "how rockets work" in either the "big picture" sense, or in areas other than one's specialty. This book will answer many questions as to "why things are done this way.""--

"Interest is growing in space activity, and many new launchers are in development. Design of Rockets and Space Launch Vehicles, Second Edition is a timely and comprehensive exposé of important concepts and applications. This newly updated edition provides enhanced understanding and exposure to the latest developments in the practical aspects of design, engineering, manufacturing, and testing. Although it is primarily intended for readers with at least a 3rd-year level knowledge of aerospace engineering, mathematics, and physics, because it contains many applications and step-by-step illustrated examples along with photographs or line drawings of actual hardware, it will also be of interest to practicing engineers, technical managers, and others who are interested in "how rockets work" in either the "big picture" sense, or in areas other than one's specialty. This book will answer many questions as to "why things are done this way.""--

Engineering design can be broken down into three phases: conceptual design, preliminary design, and detailed design. During the conceptual design phase, several potential configurations are studied towards the identification of the baseline vehicle. Although the least amount of detail is known about the design during the early conceptual design phase, the decisions made during this phase lock in major features effecting life-cycle cost and overall product success. As the next big space race begins, it is critically important to have a readily available tool for launch vehicle designers that is intuitive to use, easy to modify, cost effective, and provides correct results. This thesis details the creation of such a tool for use during the early conceptual design phase by analyzing existing launch vehicle design software and literature in order to adopt a best-practice approach to launch vehicle sizing. In addition to correctly sizing the vehicle calculating the initial parameters, the tool also determines the vehicle's basic geometric information and runs an ascent-to-orbit trajectory simulation to verify the design's validity. The tool is capable of sizing fully expendable space launch vehicles, fully expendable vehicles whose final stage is to be used for both ascent-to-orbit and additional orbital maneuvering after reaching the parking orbit, and vehicles whose first stage performs a self-recovery through the boostback and vertical landing method.