The Further Ambitions of Stratolaunch
Stratolaunch, the would-be air launch company founded in 2011by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, has has its share of ups and downs.
The company originally planned to offer a family of booster vehicles capable of delivering a range of payloads to orbit after being carried to altitude and released by a gargantuan carrier aircraft. However, while the company pushed ahead with said carrier – the huge Scaled Composites Model 351, nicknamed the “Roc” – it flip-flopped over the development of its payload launchers before finally abandoning them altogether in favour of using the much smaller Pegasus air-launched booster.
The problem with this approach was that frankly, using Roc to launch Pegasus rockets was akin to taking a 14-pound sledgehammer to crack a peanut. To compensate, Stratolaunch suggested it could make three Pegasus launches per flight. These ideas continued to be floated up to the point where Paul Allen sadly passed away in 2018, leaving the company’s future uncertain. Even so, Roc eventually took to the air on April 13th, 2019, successfully completing a 2.5 hour maiden flight.
However, by June 2019, Stratolaunch was no longer considered a viable operation by Vulcan, the investment company also founded by Allen, and which he used to fund Stratolaunch. They offered it for sale, with the likes of SpaceX / Elon Musk, Blue Origin / Jeff Bezos and Virgin Orbit / Richard Branson cited as parties “interested” in buying the massive Roc – even though the aircraft simply didn’t fit with either SpaceX or Blue Origin, and sat well outside of Virgin Orbit’s air launch aspirations.
In the end, Stratolaunch was acquired by Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm specialising in distressed investments – taking over companies in debt and / or crisis and making them viable. Following the takeover, little was heard from either Stratolaunch or Cerberus while options were explored. However, the companies have now revealed a strategy, and in doing so, Cerberus has opted to focus Stratolaunch on revamping two past projects.
The first of these is to resume development of fully autonomous hypersonic test vehicles. Originally conceived in 2012 as Hyper A and Hyper Z, these vehicles would be used by Stratolaunch to explore the complexities of sustained hypersonic flight, with their projected rebranded as Talon-A and Talon-Z.
Talon-A, the first of the vehicles, will measure some 8.5m in length and have a wingspan of 3.4m. Its primary role will be to gather data on hypersonic flight envelopes up to Mach 6, which can then be used by other organisations in the development of hypersonic flight systems and vehicles capable of operating in that speed range. Up to three Talon-A craft will be launched by Roc in any one flight, the craft capable of completing an automatic flight test regime before returning to a specified runway landing.
If development goes as planned, Stratolaunch expect to make the first Talon-A flight in 2022, and commence “routine” flights in 2023. It has also indicated that the larger, but still autonomous, Talon-Z, capable of flying at a sustained Mach 10 (that’s London to Sydney, Australia in under 3 hours), will follow after the initial flights of Talon-A.
The company has also indicated it might resume work on its on / off Black Ice project. This is intended to be an (initially) uncrewed cargo vehicle of a similar size to NASA’s space shuttle, and capable of remaining in orbit for up to three days per flight.
The primary role of Black Ice would be orbital payload delivery, which could include delivering cargo and supplies to space stations. like the Talon vehicle, it would be complete automated, and capable of returning to Earth and landing on any suitable runway.
With all the chopping and changing Stratolaunch has made / seen during its less-than-a-decade of life, I admit to being sceptical at this point about these latest plans from the company – and, in fact to the viability of the SCM 351, which continues to look like a solution looking for a market.
In Brief
NASA’s “Worm” Makes a Return
In the course of its 60-year history, NASA has had three official insignia / logos associated with it. The first is the official seal of the agency, generally only used by the office of the NASA Administrator; the second, the famous “meatball” insignia that represented the agency and its missions from 1959 through until 1975 when, in a re-branding exercise, it was replaced by the “worm” logo type, perhaps most prominently displayed on the wings of the space shuttles during the first decade of their operations.
From the start, the introduction of the worm logo was botched; a NASA headquarters project, it was literally sprung upon NASA centres and the public without any real forewarning – and as a result, met with a backlash both within and without the agency. Despite being a much cleaner, direct logo type than the mishap look of the meatball (the name was offered simply because it did look a mess, even in the late 50’s / early 60’s), the worm continued to be resented in some quarters right up until 1992, when it was “retired” from all but special occasion and merchandising use.
However, on April 1st, 2020, NASA’s current administrator, Jim Bridenstine, announced that the worm will be resuming a front-line role as a NASA log, alongside the meatball. It’s first use will be with the May NASA / SpaceX Demo-2 flight of a Crew Dragon capsule to fly two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. According to NASA, the worm will feature in that mission specifically to mark the first time a crewed launch has taken place from US soil since the shuttle system was retired in 2011. Where and how it will be used in future missions has yet to be determined.
The Demo-2 missions – so-called as it marks the second orbital flight of Crew Dragon – will be followed by Crew-1, later in 2020, and denoted as the first “operational” flight for Crew Dragon with a crew. This flight, also called USCV-1 (for US Crewed Vehicle 1) will carry a crew of four to the ISS: NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Vic Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
Seats aboard both the Crew Dragon and the Boeing CST-100 Starliner have been offered to all nations engaged in the ISS as a part of the “mixed crew” approach to station operations. However, Russia has so far declined to participate in future flights of either vehicle, citing them as “unproven” and voicing dissatisfaction over landing system parachute deployments, which take place at lower altitudes than is the case with Soyuz missions.
Virgin Orbit Seeks to Fly Launches from Japan
Virgin Orbit, the air-carrier launch company which is due to make its first orbital flight of its LauncherOne rocket in the near future, has announced that Japan could become its third country of operations for satellite launches, after the United States and the UK.
The company, working with All Nippon Airlines Holdings and Space Port Japan Association, has selected Oita Airport on the island Kyushu as a potential site for its north Asia launch operations. It will now work with Japanese national and local government agencies to confirm the feasibility of carrying out launch operations from the airport’s 3 kilometre runway. If the feasibility is proven, the company has stated operations could commence before the end of 2022.
Currently the company is due to inaugurate launch operations from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California later in 2020. This launch will be preceded by a final captive / carry test of a LunacherOne rocket and its 747 launch aircraft. The company also hope to commence launch flights from Spaceport Cornwall (aka Cornwall Airport, Newquay, Cornwall, England) in 2021, and to also offer launches out of Andersen Air Force Base on the western Pacific island (an organised territory of the United States) of Guam.
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