October 2019
Time to overcome the expendable rocket mindset
... and astronauts, spaceplanes comparable to Spacecab were widely studied. It was clear then that throwing away the launch vehicle on every flight could never become economical, and most big aircraft companies in Europe and the USA...
12 January 2021
Skyrora reveal new UK-built vehicle in live test
... only brings us closer to that point but also takes us beyond simply launch readiness. We have been deliberately quiet about this aspect of our Skyrora XL launch vehicle as we had technical challenges to get it to this stage and we wanted to ensure...
July 2014
The hypersonic grail: advances at DARPA, AFRL and beyond
..., called the Hypersonic Space and Global Transportation System (HSGTS), include: a 100 per cent reusable TSTO launch vehicle; takes off and lands horizontally; air-breathing propulsion on both stages; - Mach 4 turbine engines on the first...
June 2015
Great expectations: launch markets, SpaceX, China, and other new players
... satellites in the interests of national security. A serious challenge may originate via new Chinese, Indian, and Japanese launch vehicles. SpaceX’s competitors, ULA chief among them, argue that government organisations should not rely on SpaceX due...
August 2016
Smallsat launch strategy
...-offs. Opportunities come in three basic varieties: dedicated launch vehicles, secondary launches and nanolaunchers. A dedicated launch is when a customer purchases rights to an entire launch vehicle and has complete control of the orbit, schedule...
June 2017
Spaceplane rationale - a new way of thinking
...which are piloted, features needed to achieve a safe vehicle soon. Spaceplane history The extraordinary situation that space ... launch vehicles. The North American X-15 and SpaceShipOne (SS1) - the only fully reusable spacefaring vehicles ...
