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New space plane would fly directly into orbit from a runway
On January 19, Washington-based startup Radian Aerospace came out of stealth mode, announcing that it had secured $27.5 million in funding to develop the Radian One, a first-of-its-kind space plane that flies into orbit after taking off horizontally from the ground. (www.freethink.com) Plus d'info...
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Sled launched
That’s not enough, you’ll need a sled that’s capable of reaching the velocity equal to the shortcoming of the vehicle to orbital velocity plus aerodynamic losses. We’re not talking supersonic here but close to 8km/s! That’s one magnificent sled :)
I agree. That was included in a news release a few years ago.
As a former space shuttle engineer here at Kennedy, I won't be holding my breath on this project, sounds like a swamp land sale to me..
In early design stages the shuttle had no external tank, but a volume of fuel required to push to orbit simply didn’t fit inside the vehicle.