SFS News: Rocketplane Global Talks to the Space Fellows

Introduction

During the last week, some of the Rocketplane Global team got together in a conference with the International Space Fellowship to talk about their recent progress and changes to the Rocketplane XP design. Having recently revealed that they have been working on the new design George French III (Business Development Associate) and David G. Faulkner (Program Manager) were more than forthcoming to discuss the future of Rocketplane Global and their matured XP configuration.

We discussed some of the changes and the reasons for the new improvements. They told me that with the mature XP configuration there were significant changes to the look and feel of the craft. A Craft that they quote as being “sexyâ€

I guess the older I get the more pessimistic I get. We now several winged "suborbital" spacecraft supposedly coming on the market. Whatever this "market" is does it need all these spaceplanes? We have:

Spaceship II
Pioneer XP
Benson Dream Chaser
Canadian Arrow
Explorer (Space Adventures and the Russians)

That's five suborbital spaceplanes. And I haven't mentioned Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, and Masten Space Systems.

You forgot the EADS craft. Besides that I'm not sure if Canadian Arrow is still "alive"?

Are you referring to this spacecraft?

http://www.astrium.eads.net/static/spac ... ochure.pdf

So now that's six spaceplanes at least being worked on.

What have you heard about the Canadian Arrow project? Has it ceased operations?

That's the point..I've heard nothing from them since the X Prize

I did some searching. I went to the Canadian Arrow website. There has been no new news in quite some time. So I checked Wikipedia.



According to the PlanetSpace website they are in fact continuing to develop the Canadian Arrow. I didn't realize that the Arrow is based on the V-2 rocket. How cool is that?! They are also working on an orbital space system that involves a lifting body spacecraft call the Silver Dart as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Dar ... cecraft%29

My calender must be broken. It seems to indicate that a date "24 months" after "May 17, 2005" occurred more than 5 months ago.

Nobody told me the Canadians were already flying passengers into space!

I wonder if a 727 could be outfitted in a similar way, so its vomit comet profile and free fall zero-g period could be prolonged....

Why stop there, it seems a fairly logical step really. Taking old technology and modding it to go higher. Suprising how little companies have done this really.

Since the new Rocketplane design is an all new vehicle and no longer a modified business jet, it is moot. Maybe someone else could modify a 727, but they would be on their own, not copying Rocketplane on a bigger scale.