The gryphon: A flexible lunar lander design to support a lunar outpost

A lunar lander is designed to provide safe, reliable, and continuous access to the lunar surface by the year 2020. The NASA Exploration System Architecture is used to initially define the concept of operations, architecture elements, and overall system requirements. The design evaluates revolutionary concepts and technologies to improve the performance and safety of the lunar lander while minimizing the associated cost using advanced systems engineering capabilities and multi-attribute decision making techniques. The final design is a flexible lander with a side-mounted minimal ascent stage and a separate stage to perform lunar orbit insertion capable of supporting the outpost crew exchange, sortie, and cargo missions.