Friday, June 17, 2005

t/Space and Scaled Composites Test New Launch Technique

Which one of you is going to invest in t/Space first?
It seems this little company nobody has ever heard of teamed up with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites crew to create a new launch technique.
Like SpaceShipOne and White Knight it requires a lift plane, but the actual spacecraft will be a single rocket, carrying a crew of four plus cargo, it doesn't need wings and will launch behind the carrier airplane. That's a big plus, and tilting the craft to vertical for ignition is done without the need for wings, so there's more room for cargo.
The thing I found most interesting was this: In forty years of design trials nobody else had thought of using a little metal arm and parachute to tilt the rocket vertically. But these guys did and they went from brainstorming phase to actual drop testing in just 135 days.
Simply amazing.

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