Letter to the Editor—Allocation of Launch Vehicles to Space Missions: A Fixed-Cost Transportation Problem

The problem of assigning launch vehicles to space missions can be formulated as the fixed cost transportation problem treated by Croes and Healy in which there are unlimited supplies and fixed costs incurred for positive flow from the sources. The branch-and-bound technique of Little, et al., is used to obtain minimum cost solutions. The application to the space transportation problem is discussed and an example is worked out.