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A new spacecraft has been successfully dropped off a launch jet into a vertical, midair blastoff position, an important innovation that could simplify future space launches.
Transformational Space, or tSpace, successfully tested its new spacecraft over California's Mojave Desert earlier this week -- dropping a 23 percent scale model of its rocket and crew capsule from a high-altitude jet.
The mockup dropped from the carrier plane into a vertical launch position without the use of wings. Rather than firing a rocket engine, the unmanned craft fell to Earth. But it performed exactly as computer models predicted, proving the viability of a new method for air-launching spacecraft.
The test establishes tSpace as a serious contender in the effort to build a replacement for NASA's aging fleet of space shuttles.
Although founded only last year, tSpace has already secured $6 million from NASA to flesh out concepts for the new spaceship, called the Crew Transfer Vehicle, or CXV, and test its viability with working hardware.
The test was conducted by tSpace contractor Scaled Composites, the small aerospace firm that also built and flew SpaceShipOne, which last year blasted the first privately financed astronaut, Mike Melvill, out of the atmosphere.
Until now, air-launched spacecraft, including SpaceShipOne, have depended on wings to pitch up from their horizontal drop position to the vertical orientation needed to reach space. But wings add weight and complexity to the vehicles, and also an element of danger. Since their rocket motors fire while they are horizontal, they risk catching up to and colliding with their comparatively slow-moving carrier planes.
The CXV and attached rocket booster, which will be four times larger than the mockups used in the drop tests, will pitch up through the simple mechanical action of hanging on to the carrier plane with its nose for a half-second longer than the booster's body. It was this action that was successfully demonstrated Tuesday.
"It's because of our focus on what's the simplest and safest way to get people up there that we're looking for innovations like that," said David Gump, tSpace's president.
TSpace's CXV will carry four people to orbit, and descend on parachutes to a water landing after re-entry. The craft will be reusable, and tSpace plans to make it available to private researchers, tourists or anyone else who can pay $5 million per seat. That may seem like a lot of money, but it's a quarter of the cost to ride the only spacecraft flying paying passengers, Russia's Soyuz.
The company is also innovative in its approach to funding, seeking fixed increments of development money from NASA in exchange for building hardware and carrying out tests. NASA typically awards cost-plus-profit contracts to its major aerospace contractors, a practice that has been criticized for producing cost overruns.
Gump says tSpace's approach will save the government money by ensuring his company is rewarded only for producing tangible results, not just paperwork. He expects the total cost for building the CXV, a rocket booster and a jumbo-jet-size carrier plane to come to $500 million, or about the cost of one space shuttle launch.
TSpace has its work cut out getting the full amount from NASA, according to Jeff Foust, a space industry analyst with Futron.
"Its near-term future is pinned to convincing NASA that this somewhat unconventional, entrepreneurial approach can help the agency fulfill the vision for space exploration," Foust said. "Now that NASA seems intent on accelerating the development of the (shuttle replacement), and not spending money on alternative projects like tSpace's CXV, the company faces an uphill battle."
NASA on Monday announced the selection of two teams of major aerospace firms to compete for the contract to build its next manned spacecraft, dubbed by NASA the Crew Exploration Vehicle, or CEV. One will be led by Lockheed Martin, and another by Northup Grumman and Boeing.
TSpace has positioned itself as a relatively inexpensive side bet to this effort. "We think it would be a mistake to have the future of American spaceflight once again depending upon a single vehicle that might need to stand down for years at a time if problems develop, like with the shuttle," said Gump.
TSpace is one of several well-funded efforts to open space to private citizens. Space Exploration Technologies, headed and financed by former PayPal owner Elon Musk, plans to offer passenger service to orbit by the time the space shuttle is set to retire in 2010.
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has founded a company called Blue Origin, which is developing a suborbital passenger vehicle. Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways, has formed a company called Virgin Galactic and plans to send the first paying passengers into suborbital space in 2008.
And Las Vegas real estate developer Robert Bigelow, through his Bigelow Aerospace, is at work on what he hopes will become the first commercial space station. He, too, plans to open for business by 2010.
The next milestone for tSpace will come in August, when the company expects to drop a full-scale mockup of the CXV from a helicopter to test parachute deployment and water landings.
