Concurrent engineering methods and models for satellite concept design

A common method of spacecraft concept design is to estimate size, mass, power and cost based on parametric or analogous relationships obtained from historical satellite data from similar systems that meet similar mission requirements. These are tried and true methods often used to perform early trade space analysis that depend heavily on the relevance and accuracy of the historical data. These methods fall short, however, when the goal is to generate a concept design for a system where the historical data is insufficient or irrelevant, mission requirements are not well defined, or the intent is to break from tradition and start a blank sheet design. Often this is the case for small satellites. In this paper it is shown how Concurrent Engineering Methods are used to create blank sheet concept designs by applying a “bottoms up” approach in a manner that can be accomplished by a single engineer. Simple mathematical models for some subsystems are presented that may be implemented using a spreadsheet. The rapid iterative nature of the concurrent engineering methodology is shown to converge to a design solution in a fraction of the time required by using non-concurrent bottoms up methods.