Design for Affordability in Complex Systems and Programs Using Tradespace-based Affordability Analysis

With growing emphasis on affordability, the conceptual design of complex systems and programs is no longer confined to maximizing technical performance, but also to minimizing cost and schedule related attributes. By defining affordability as the property of becoming or remaining feasible relative to resource needs and resource constraints over time, Multi-Attribute Tradespace Exploration and Epoch-Era Analysis can be used to find affordable solutions. Single-epoch, multi-epoch and single- era analysis were conducted for a Space Tug program case study to demonstrate the application of these tradespace-based methods and a design with the best tradeoffs among performance, cost and schedule factors was obtained.