Concept for a Lunar Electromagnetic Launch System Architecture

With the resurgence of space exploration in the 21st century, space agencies and their industry partners will work together to deploy infrastructure that establishes the lunar economy. Development of a lunar economy will both facilitate the persistence of future lunar missions and drive the technological capabilities necessary to explore Mars. NASA's Moon to Mars objectives offer a roadmap for achieving this vision. This vision features commodity production via lunar surface in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) and deployment of technologies that use those in-situ based commodities to enable a robust lunar economy. Examples of these commodities include cryogenic propellants such as liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid hydrogen (LH2), water for human habitation, additive manufacturing feedstocks derived from regolith, and other high-value products that can be used by emerging cislunar systems. Despite technology development efforts in many of these areas, an outstanding functional gap remains regarding a more sustainable means for transferring these commodities from the lunar surface to cislunar orbit. Early roadmap plans for transporting mass from the lunar surface to orbit rely exclusively on chemical propulsion, similar to the Sustainable Lunar Transport systems, expected to be in operation by the early 2030s. Elements that use ISRU produced propellants on the lunar surface will consume up to 80% of their loaded propellant mass just to deliver the remaining cryogenic propellant to the Gateway's Southern L2 Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). Sourcing all commodity materials from Earth is similarly impacted by system inefficiencies. They require both overcoming Earth's significantly higher gravity and executing the orbit transfer to cislunar orbit insertion while undermining the underlying premise creating a functional lunar economy. This paper explores a concept for an Electromagnetic Launcher System Architecture (ELSA) that offers a more sustainable long-term solution for closing the lunar surface-to-orbit commodities delivery gap. This architecture is made possible by a power grid that provides continuous power through the lunar night. Within this system, elements with cargo payloads are accelerated on the lunar surface using electrical power provided by the lunar grid, injected into an NRHO with a coilgun, and then both captured and collected by orbital elements, thereby minimizing the total propellant mass consumed per transported cargo mass. This paper discusses elements and assemblies that constitute this system, including: lunar surface launchers, cargo canisters, orbital propellant depots, and lunar surface elements. In addition, this paper discusses the system's mission design in detail, including relevant orbit transfers. This includes detailed discussion of a novel trajectory to transfer between a Northern L2 NRHO to Gateway's orbit. This paper also covers the lunar infrastructure required to enable this system architecture, including the lunar surface power grid performance capabilities for supporting the launcher, surface elements for receiving and transferring emptied canisters, and orbital interfaces for transferring fluids and additive manufacturing feedstocks. Lastly, this paper discusses relevant trades, system-of-systems architectural evolution scenarios, and key benefits of this architecture to enable more sustainable development and exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.