Military Reusable Hypersonic Vehicle Point-to-Point Transportation Benchmark Study
AFIT/DOD (2021)
Boost-glide (BG) and steady-state cruise have been compared as alternative modes for point-to-point transportation since the late 1950s, but there has not been any public domain study that performs a truly comprehensive comparison between the two modes. Out of the BG versus cruise studies that have been surveyed, most focus on comparing the cost, performance, and weight of just one cruiser point design and one BG point design. These studies lack the wide range of mission, design, and technology trades that are needed to really identify when either mode is advantageous over the other. This study intends to bridge part of this gap by generating solution spaces of boost-glide and cruiser point designs for varying mission and geometry parameters. This enables the comparison of the two modes to be based on vehicle size, weight, industry capability, time to destination, operating cost, etc. to identify the missions and conditions under which either mode becomes the preferred transportation mode. The vehicles sized in this study are single stage with horizontal takeoff and landing capability, and they are to be sized for ranges up to 11,000 nmi, cruise Mach up to Mach 12, and payload up to 50,000 lb. By performing sizing studies for cruiser and boost-glide vehicles at the extremes of the trade space, this study intends to serve as a benchmark of size, weight, performance, and cost for which future studies can compare to.