Application of Reconfigurable Avionics for the Bantam Launch Vehicle

The modern aerospace market is placing increasing pressure on launch costs. This is particularly true for small university science payloads, where the cost of the experiment itself is relatively low, and the launch frequency is potentially very high. It is the stated goal of NASA's Bantam Program to reduce dramatically the costs of launching this class of payloads to the order of $1,000,000 per launch for a single 200 pound payload. The envisioned Bantam vehicle is a multi-stage reusable launch system. Meeting the Program's goal for this versatile type of vehicle requires reductions in production cost, maintenance cost, and the operation cost. However, the cost of avionics is a relatively small fraction of the overall cost of launching a payload, and a simple reduction in the avionics costs will not achieve the Bantam goal. Only by reducing weight, volume, and power, while enhancing computational capability can the avionics be used to address the system-level cost reduction requirements.