55 Estimating costs for ADR Vehicle Management, Operations, and Ground Costs: Aerospace evaluated ADR management costs by applying a 15% multiplier to the cost of ADR hardware. We leverage this approach using updated ADR hardware costs taking the scaling factor into consideration. ADR operations costs are based off of the operational cost for removal, estimated monthly, and the total duration of ADR operations. Aerospace provides an estimate of the monthly cost, assuming the same cost regardless of fleet size due to the use of autonomous operations. Duration of operations assumes that the refurbishment cycles and the end of mission cycle take five years each, totaling 15 years of operations. Estimating costs for Launch Vehicle – Active Debris Removal: We approach launch costs similarly to Aerospace, using our normalized values and several updated parameters. Launch vehicle costs for ADR vehicles are determined based off the updated number of vehicles needed, the servicer mass (which is based off of MEV-2), Starship’s payload capacity to LEO (estimated using the 2020 Starship Users Guide), and the number of refuel launches to transfer from LEO to GEO. We also apply a 15% block buy discount rate to the cost to launch Starship. The following is a detailed list of all ConOps parameters supporting this phase, including a comparison of both design reference systems. Determining Capital Expenditures and Fixed Operations and Management Evaluating costs by ConOps phase also allows us to estimate CapEx and FOM costs. We follow NREL’s (NREL, 2022) definition of CapEx, "Capital expenditures required to achieve commercial operation of the generation plant," and FOM, “Annual expenditures to operate and maintain equipment that are not incurred on a per-unit-energy basis.” Following these definitions, we consider the Develop and Assemble ConOps phases as contributors to CapEx costs. This accounts primarily for development and assembly of the in-space hardware, including launch. We group all other ConOps phases under FOM, as they are not required to initiate the first system. CapEx and FOM are key inputs to determining the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), which is a useful method of comparing the costs of different renewable energy technologies. We discuss this method in the following section. Levelized Cost of Electricity Overview In addition to cost estimates evaluated over the lifecycle, we used fiscal cost estimates to perform a traditional energy cost analysis. This allows for a comparison of each system’s costs per megawatt hour and an additional comparison to other renewable energy technologies, if produced from a similar power plant. As described by NREL (NREL, 2023), "Capital expenditures [are] required to
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