Launch Systems
Happiness is the Earth in your rear view mirror
Advent Launch Services
Advent Launch Services is proposing a three year or 1,500 flight
lease deal on its six person passenger vehicle.
The vehicle will pull 3 G's on
launch and re-entry. It will accelerate to about 5,000 mph and attain a 150 mile plus apogee with a 5 minute Zero G coast.
It will glide with a 2000 fpm sink rate for a landing roughly 20 minutes after
re-entry.
They use the following financial projections:
- Projected retail price per seat is: $5,000
- Projected gross revenues over the lease period: $45 million
- Operational cost/flight: $6,200
- Operational cost/seat: $1,034
- TOTAL (amortized on 1,500 flights) operational cost: $9,314,000
- TOTAL equipment lease: $8 million
- Profit: $27.5 million
- ROI = (sales-operations)/lease = 450%
Their objective is to use suborbital joy rides as a financial first step
to full orbital joyrides using a vehicle
with two flyback stages and an orbiter.
Australian Space Research Institute
ASRI is currently working on a number of projects, including AUSROC II-2, AUSROC III, AUSROC IV, the CARATEL Experimental Liquid Fuelled Vehicle,
a Scramjet Development Program and the AUSTRALIS-1 Micro-satellite.
ASRI - Space Technology Education within Australia (Sep 94)
Black Horse, and a possible predecessor named Black Colt is an embryonic
USAF program to build an H202/JP5 fueled HTHL SSTO using in flight H202
refueling. This is simple and striaghtforward - the USAF does tanker
ops many times a day.
DC-X
The DC-X is an experimental re-usable SSTO testbed built by MacDonald
Douglass under the SSRT SDIO (now BMDO) program office on a budget of
roughly $60M and a time line of 24 months. It was intended only to show
that a spaceship built with commercial design criteria could be
reflown quickly with little maintainance and small crews. It has done so.
It graphically proved the ease of VTVL operations. It has also proven
the resiliency of systems that are designed with wide margins. It has
survived launch mishaps that would have destroyed any other rocket in
existance. The testbed has only been flown in low altitude ops but it
is hoped that it will eventually be flown to 5000m and demonstrate
the full pitchover maneuver from nose first entry to tail first landing.
SSTO: A Spaceship for the Rest of US (1992) is a good summary of
why we should build DCX.
A large ftp archive of DCX images and information can be found at the
University of Texas.. There is also a
DC-X web page at that site.
The Space Access Society's
Space Access Update bulliten's are another valuable source of information.
Express Capsule
The EXPRESS project is a cooperative industrial research
program arranged and funded by the German and Japanese
governments. It involves the launch, over a period of five
years, of three to five unmanned space capsules to carry out
on-board scientific research. The South Australian based company, British Aerospace Australia Ltd, will recover the capsule from it's landing
site at Woomera.
JANUARY LANDING AT WOOMERA FOR FIRST EXPRESS SPACE CAPSULE (15-Dec-94)
EER Systems Corp
Space Services Inc of America was bought out/merged with EER a few
years ago and
through this merger the Conestoga orbital vehicle has remainded alive
as a concept and the Starfire has been flying sounding flights on a
regular basis. Space Services dates back to Gary Hudson's original
attempts to build the Percheron rocket - which created a lovely fireball
on it's pad at Matagorda Island. The new management of the company
included Deke Slayton who was the company MD until his death. SSIA
is also the first company to privately fund, build and launch a rocket
from the USA, a suborbital flight of a Redstone sized rocket in the
early 80's.
NASA Selects EER for Orbital, Recovery Experiments
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin produces the Atlas (formerly General Dynamcis) and
Titan rockets (formerly Martin Marietta).
Kistler Aerospace
Kistler Aerospace is building test hardware for a privately financed
spacecraft. Test flights are scheduled to begin at White Sands this year.
There appears to be serious money behind them, but there is not a lot
of information that is public. One very notable tidbit - Kistler Aerospace
is headquartered in Kirtland, WA. Teledesic, the Gates/McCaw LEO
constellation venture is also headquartered in Kirtland, WA...
As of February 1997, Space Systems/Loral was signed up for 10 launches
beginning in 1999. The contract is said to be in excess of $100 million, but
depends on Kistler's ability to finance and build the K-1 launch vehicle.
Kistler has as of this date raised the first $50 million of the required $500M
needed for full development. The two-stage K-1 rocket is hoped to
be able to place 8,000 pounds into low Earth orbit.
The only public information we have available at present is a copy
of the Kister aerospace brochure on the K-series launchers, scanned in
by Scott Lowther of
Part Time Models:
Lorrey Aerospace
Lorrey Aerospace is looking at the possibilities in some almost black or
nearly ignored technologies such
High Density Fuels, Boron-Gel Fuels and
Diboride Thermal Protection Systems
PanAero, Inc
See The Space Van
Phoenix-S
The Phoenix design series by GCH Inc is one of the earliest of the modern
SSTO concepts - it dates back to the early 80's. One can see a definite
familial resemblance between the DC-X and with Gary Hudson's design's.
- Several line drawings have been made available by Gary Hudson and
Tom Brosz and then digitized by Scott Lowther of
Part Time Models:
Roton
The ROTON is a proposed design for an RLV SSTO being developed by Gary Hudson's latest venture, HMX Inc.
It is an "orbital helicopter": tip-mounted rockets drive a rotor. This
gives a very high effective specific impulse due both to aerodynamic thrust
augmentation from the rotor and high chamber pressures from centrifugal
propellant pumping.
Spacecub
The Space Cub is a hobbyist kit spaceship meant to fly a suborbital
hop that is high enough for astronaut wings but not high enough to require
special materials for re-entry. It is as yet a paper design, but it is has
serious intent and is not a high budget effort in the worst of cases. It
would be about the size and power of a 1950's Redstone - something that
should be easily attainable to a hobbyist with 40 years of technological
advancement at their disposal.
Spacecub Frequenty Asked Questions - 18-Nov-94
Space Access
Space Access is a 4th bidder on the X-33 CAN proposal. It is a southern
California startup company with engineers drawn from some of the aerospace
contractors in the region. Steve Worst is the CEO.
Harry A. Scott, the VP, is ex-Rockwell/Space Systems Div. who has worked on hypersonic vehicle designs since the 60's but didn't like
NASP for a number of technical & programatic reasons.
As a company they have experience more on the engineering side than the
business side. We do not know what their financial backing or
manufacturing capability might be.
Space Access submitted a design using an aero-assisted first stage.
Space Access are
proposing an unmanned air-launched, airbreather to get to Mach 5 and
over 100K ft. At this altitude they separate an internally-carried upper
stage and glide the airbreather back to base. The upper stage is
recovered in some unspecified way. (Information from February 95
presentation at AIAA mini-syposium in Van Nuys, CA)
Space Services Inc of America
See EER Systems Corp
Space Tour
See The Space Van
The Space Van
Third Millennium Aerospace, Inc., Space Tour, and PanAero, Inc propose
The Space Van. For those of you familiar with the commercial space
field, this is Len Cormier's brainchild.
The Space Van is designed to carry 16 passengers -- plus a pilot, copilot
and flight attendant -- to a 40-degree low Earth Orbit for $3,000,000 per
flight in 1996 dollars. highly similar cargo variant is designed to carry 4200
kg. of cargo. Space Tour is closely affiliated with a Nevada corporation named
Third Millennium° Aerospace, Inc., which will operate the Space Van -- if
venture funds are forthcoming.
Third Millennium Aerospace, Inc
See The Space Van
X-33 - NASA
The X-33 is a NASA project to development the technology of SSTO. The
configuration will be decided when the winner of the competitive bid is
selected. Until then, your guess is as good as mine as to what it will
look like. Which is as it should be. NASA is buying results this time around
X-34 - NASA
The X-34 is a research project by NASA to development the technology
base for reusable small boosters.
Related Technology Developments
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