Aerospace dream team aims to launch people into orbit

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has formed a new company that aims to launch people to orbit by 2015 using the world's largest aircraft and a rocket built by SpaceX, he announced in a press conference today.

Called Stratolaunch Systems, the company plans to launch people using a two-part system. First, a giant carrier jet ? with the world's largest wingspan of 116 metres ? will carry a rocket and space capsule high above the ground.

Then the rocket will detach and ignite, carrying the capsule and its passengers into orbit.

Allen has assembled some big names from the space world to be part of the new company. Burt Rutan, who designed the SpaceShipOne vehicle that won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 ? sits on the board of directors. Mike Griffin, a former NASA chief, is also on the board.

The enormous carrier aircraft will be built by Scaled Composites, the same company providing the vehicles to be used in Virgin Galactic's suborbital space tourism flights.

The rocket will be built by SpaceX, which is also developing a capsule to take cargo to the International Space Station.

Space tourists

The company, based in Huntsville, Alabama, plans to start construction soon on a vast hangar in Mojave, California, in which the carrier aircraft will be built.

They are targeting a maiden flight in 2015. After testing, the company hopes to initially launch uncrewed payloads to low-Earth orbit, with human flights to follow once the system's reliability has been demonstrated.

The system could loft six space tourists into orbit, the team said in a press briefing on Tuesday. Allen hinted that the company might try to ferry people to the ISS. "The Russians are charging north of $60 million a seat [for ISS flights]," he said. "So if you can come up with ... a manned version of this, we can be very, very competitive."

Moving launch site

Unlike a traditional rocket, which must launch from a fixed launch pad, the carrier aircraft can travel 2100 kilometres from its runway before releasing the rocket that launches to space. The company hopes the ability to launch from many places on Earth and to quickly prepare for the next flight will slash the cost of space travel.

The concept of air launches is not new. Pegasus rockets, developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, have launched small satellites into low-Earth orbit since 1990.

Henry Spencer, a spacecraft engineer in Toronto, Canada, says the benefits of such a scheme include launching over water, far from inhabited areas that would be at risk in case of a crash. "It lets you move the launch point to suit the orbit you're aiming for," he adds. "In particular, if you're going to a space station, you can launch directly into exactly the station's orbit, avoiding the need to spend the first two or three days in space waiting around to match orbits."

Reusable launcher

Another advantage is that launching from higher in the atmosphere reduces the amount of energy the rocket must spend fighting atmospheric friction, says Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Since the carrier aircraft can be used over and over, the project could get the world closer to achieving the dream of a fully reusable launch vehicle that could travel to orbit and back many times, hopefully at much lower cost, he says.

Mike Griffin said the technology could make space flight much easier. "We believe this technology has the potential to someday make space flight routine by removing many of the constraints associated with ground-launched rockets," he said.

Routine flights

The main problem with such an air-launch plan "is that the size of the aircraft limits the size of the rocket", Spencer says. "This would be a problem for some traditional markets like comsats [communications satellites], where the payloads keep getting bigger."

Spencer says Rutan's track record suggests the plan has a good chance of success. "Developing an aircraft is a big job and a huge up-front investment," he told New Scientist. "However, having Scaled Composites do it reduces the problem considerably. If anyone can pull this off at a reasonable cost, it's them."

Allen, who once dreamed of becoming an astronaut, has a long-standing interest in space flight, having funded the development of SpaceShipOne. "I have long dreamed about taking the next big step in private space flight after the success of SpaceShipOne ? to offer a flexible, orbital space delivery system," Allen said in a press release.

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