An analogy-based method for estimating the costs of spacecraft

High-level parametric cost models are often used to obtain an estimate of spacecraft costs in cases where system details are unavailable, or in which multiple options are being studied. A previous study demonstrated the advantages of a method for estimating the costs of space-based instruments using the actual costs of a small number of analogous instruments. In the present study, a similar approach is applied to the estimation of spacecraft bus system and subsystem costs. Using The Aerospace Corporation's database of small satellite technical, programmatic, and cost parameters, several implementations of this analogy-based approach were tested and the results were compared with estimates from several versions of The Aerospace Corporation's small satellite cost model. In all cases, the analogy-based method provided results comparable to good parametric cost models. Good results were also obtained when applying the analogy method at the bus system level with only two or three input parameters.