Future spaceplanes

“Flying can never be a success until it ceases to be an adventure. ” – Sir Alan

Cobham, aviation pioneer

It does not require a leap of imagination to see that aircraft are a more economic and practical means of transportation than the ballistic rocket launchers that we are currently using. In the 1960s, orbital rocket planes with airliner-like characteristics were therefore generally expected soon to render expendable rockets obsolete, and also to lead to cost reductions of several orders of magnitude: where the flight of an expendable launcher has the cost of building a new vehicle as its price starting point, a reusable spaceplane ideally would only incur costs for propellant, maintenance and flight operations. But the availability of existing, relatively mature ballistic missile technology, the limited market for launching satellites (currently about 70 flights per annum worldwide), and the major investments and risks associated with spaceplane development have resulted in the world’s launch vehicles remaining fully expendable (with the notable exception of the partly reusable but operationally very complicated Space Shuttle, which has now been retired). As a result, for the last few decades spaceplanes have always been rather futuristic concepts, doubtless sure to supersede expendable rockets but not just yet. Launching things into space has thus remained extremely expensive and only affordable for government space agencies and several commercial applications, primarily telecommunications. As we shall see though, this is not for a lack spaceplane concepts and projects.