TRACKING COST AND SCHEDULE GROWTH OF UNMANNED SPACECRAFT: LESSONS LEARNED FROM NASA'S CADRE DATABASE

摘要

The lack of consistency in cost and schedule records of space programs makes cross-mission analysis a challenging task. Using data from the Cost Analysis Data Requirement studies (CADRe) conducted by NASA, this work investigates what lessons can be learned regarding cost and schedule growth of NASA 's space systems. Specifically, this paper identifies trends in engineering and programmatic cost and schedule growth by examining the estimates made at different milestones of the development of the space systems in the database. We discuss the possible correlation between the derived scheduled and cost estimates and various design parameters, such as mass, nominal power, and design lifetime. We also identify the extent to which cost and schedule growth are coupled phenomena in our data sample. Finally, we make recommendations on how to record cost and schedule information for the CADRe database more consistently, based on our experience in collecting the data used for this research.