Purpose: To evaluate cost of designing, building, and testing a modern small satellite.
Model Description: SSCM estimates the first-unit development and production cost by computing a weighted average of parametric CERs derived from actual Small-satellite cost and technical databases. Included are production, integration, assembly, and testing. Excluded are any payload development or production costs.
Status/Availability: SSCM is currently in a test-and-evaluation configuration; a more elaborate program with more user features is forthcoming. The current version is available to government agencies and participating small-satellite contractors.
Input Variables: Mission type (communications, remote sensing, or space experiments), Procurement environment (military, commercial or NASA), Subsystem masses, performance measures, hardware legacy and production schedule.
Output: Development cost range and cost sensitivities.
Data Source: Proprietary data from variety of small-satellite programs such as REX, ALEXIS, STEP, APEX, RADCAL, and LOSAT-X.
Point of Contact: Erik Burgess, Resource and Requirements Analysis Department, the Aerospace Corporation, (310) 336-4148.
User Community: Project Managers and Cost Analysts.
Principle Ground Rules/ SSCM estimates but costs only; payload development/
Assumptions/Limitations production costs must be separately determined.
Software: SSCM is currently hosted in a stand-alone compiled program that can operate on any IBM-compatible computer. It requires only a 360K-byte driver and DOS 2.0 or higher.
Equipment: See above.
CER Format: Cost as explicit functions of input variables.
Test Results/Evaluation: Validated against several small-satellite development programs.