Abstract
AIAA paper 2025-4123 "Cost-Benefit Analysis of Lunar Mass Driver Technologies" (AIAA Aviation Forum and ASCEND 2025) develops parametric sizing models for railgun and coilgun lunar mass-driver designs. The abstract describes the work as outputting "the overall system mass and size, and the required power and energy to launch a specific payload" for the trade space of mission requirements. Two primary architectures compared: railgun (high-burst current, single force pulse, simpler) and coilgun (sequential staged coils, gentler acceleration, preferred for sensitive payloads). The paper is paywalled at arc.aiaa.org and the full content was not fetched in this session — only the abstract and search-summarized findings are captured here. Triangulation against Handmer 2026 and Wright et al. 2011 suggests this is the most recent peer-reviewed mass-driver sizing exercise.
Key claims
- bibliographic-anchor: "Cost-Benefit Analysis of Lunar Mass Driver Technologies," AIAA 2025-4123, AIAA Aviation Forum and ASCEND 2025.
- architecture-comparison: "Two primary designs under consideration: railguns, which use a single powerful burst of force, and coilguns, which employ a sequence of timed magnets to provide steady, controlled acceleration, with the latter being the preferred choice for protecting sensitive AI cargo."
- modeling-scope: "Models size and assess the performance of different lunar mass driver technologies given a set of mission requirements, with models outputting the overall system mass and size, and the required power and energy to launch a specific payload."
- payload-protection: Coilgun preferred for sensitive cargo (implies acceleration constraints below ~1000 g for AI hardware; raw rock can take railgun).
Reviewer notes
Tier A as a peer-reviewed AIAA conference proceeding, but the full paper is paywalled and not directly fetched. The abstract content captured here is sufficient to anchor the paper's existence and methodology but does not provide the actual numerical sizing results (system mass / cost / power for specific payload-velocity points). Recommend a future iteration with university library access or a co-author email to fetch the full PDF. Load-bearing implications for q7: this is the most recent peer-reviewed primary source on lunar mass driver sizing and should anchor the q2 / q7 reconciliation. The railgun-vs-coilgun distinction for payload protection (sensitive AI cargo) is an important architectural choice not captured in earlier sources — modern AI-satellite payload demand (q6) may favor coilgun-friendly low-g designs that lengthen the track substantially.