Dubai, NFAPost: Radian Aerospace, developers of the world’s first fully reusable, horizontal takeoff and landing, single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spaceplane, announced today the successful completion of the first round of ground taxi tests with its prototype flight vehicle, PFV01.
According to aerospace experts, the reusable space plane can take off from an airfield and land on a runway like a conventional airplane. The startup just announced completion of a series of ground tests in Abu Dhabi earlier this summer.
Prototype flight vehicle PFV01 tests mark an important step forward in the company’s prototype test program as it progresses toward the development of the Radian One spaceplane.
The tests were completed with a sub-scale prototype flight vehicle that the company is calling PFV01. The main purpose of the testing was to generate data on how the vehicle would fly and handle, and to compare this data to simulations the company’s been doing over the last several years. While the vehicle did not fly, it did perform a series of small hops on the runway, executives told TechCrunch in a recent interview.
PFV01 is much smaller than the final vehicle at around 15 feet long, but the data still helps inform key pieces of the final design and flight control systems, like where the landing gear should be located, or where the center of gravity should be to maximize stability midair, said Radian Aerospace Cofounder CTO Livingston Holder.
“This vehicle gives us the ability to adjust the center of gravity forward and aft, up and down, it gives us the ability to adjust the location of the landing gear. Those adjustments give us real world feedback into what our analytical data says,” said Radian Aerospace Cofounder CTO Livingston Holder.
He also said wherever there’s ambiguity the PFV really gives the opportunity to do better fidelity with the vehicle and do more flights.”
The plan is for the Radian One space plane to take off from a roughly two mile-long rail sled, ignite engines on orbit, then return to Earth back on a normal runway. The concept is considered a holy grail because removing the necessity for a launch vehicle makes space, in a way, as accessible to space vehicles as the upper atmosphere is to airplanes.
The economics are promising, too: a reusable space plane could take trips to and from space on a daily basis or even more frequently, and with better margins to boot. It’s been tried before; one of the most notable examples is NASA’s X-33 program to develop a suborbital space plane. Holder led Boeing’s X-33 effort.
