CONTRIBUTION OF AEA TECHNOLOGY. CULHAM LABORATORY SOME NOTES ON “DISCUSSION OF POWERSAT DEMONSTRATOR OPTIONS” The requirement for a minimum cost mission, with a spacecraft cost of only a few MAU, to be carried out in a 3-5 year timescale essentially selects the launch options: • Integration into Eureca will be too costly, and the Eureca flight , opportunities will lead to a long timescale. • This is even more true for Spacelab El, especially with Shuttle safety and paperwork. • Spartan/SPAS integration will probably be comparable in cost to a build from new of a small spacecraft. • Additionally, the launch costs for all of the above options are likely to be large. • Sounding rockets do not really give a long enough experiment time, nor time to correct problems, e.g. pointing errors. This leaves Ariane 4/ASAP (and possibly Ariane 5, although problems with timescale may occur) or inexpensive Shuttle-based (GAS, Hitchhiker) options. My feeling is that even the use of GAS-type systems will not be optimum because of questions over safety, paperwork, scheduling, cost, timescale, availability, autonomy, etc. Hence, we are left with Ariane 4/ASAP, which Europe has utilised very successfully in the past for small inexpensive spacecraft launches, and in which
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