Visual Media

  • VEHRA: France’s Dassault Aviation Developing Sub-Orbital Space Ships

    May 6th, 2010 at 2 pm. No Comments - Category: Space, Tech - Tags: , , , ,

    Vehra: the reusable hypersonic vehicle project.

    “The suborbital activity began with the VEHRA (air-launched reusable hypersonic vehicle) project. This constituted an “evolution” of the X-38 experimental lifting body from NASA, for which Dassault Aviation had defined the shape.”

    This is following the example of Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo. From a 10t demonstration vehicle the project development will lead then to a 30t ship that will be capable of launching satellites of up to 300kg into orbit. Finally a heavy vehicle with 200t will be able to deliver a 7t payload into low earth orbit.

    Excellent news and everything seems to be on track, one more company on the way and doing it alone, without NASA, without ESA.

    If you are curious: Another article from Dassault from 2003 outlines the VEHRA project that has the goal of developing a totally reusable space ship that can launch to earth orbit. More details can be found here.

    Source: Dassault Aviation

  • Boeing To Resume Work On CCDev Manned Vehicle With Bigelow Aerospace

    February 5th, 2010 at 12 pm. No Comments - Category: Space, Tech - Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

    NASA COTS overview, click image to enlarge. Photo credit: NASA

    There is the following news coming out of Bigelow Aerospace:

    “Boeing was selected by NASA on Feb. 1 to develop critical technologies and capabilities for the space agency’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative (as outlined in the Commercial Firms for Commercial Crew Development Using Recovery Act Funds), which offers an opportunity for the aerospace industry to develop concepts for future crewed space missions. The funded Space Act Agreement for the CCDev project is valued at $18 million.”

    Boeing is going to work on the new vehicle and technologies with Bigelow Aerospace who will provide “requirements for crew transportation to support its planned Orbital Space Complex, as well as additional investment and expertise in testing and validating the technologies necessary to construct and deploy the complex.”

    NASA winners announcement click here.

    The winners include the following companies:

    • Blue Origin will receive $3.7 million
    • The Boeing Company will receive $18 million
    • Paragon Space Development Corporation will receive $1.4 million
    • Sierra Nevada Corporation will receive $20 million
    • United Launch Alliance will receive $6.7 million

    Read the Press Release by Bigelow Aerospace click here.

  • Europe going it alone with manned space craft

    November 17th, 2008 at 4 pm. No Comments - Category: Space, Tech - Tags: , , , ,

    arv_1.jpg

    More options, separate technology and backup one with the other are a few of the positive aspects of this development. Europes ambitions to build a manned space craft proved incompatible with Russia’s technical requirements. A manned ATV based vehicle will use the existing Ariane 5 rocket. I am keeping an eye on this development. We could see european astronauts with their own vehicle in space by 2020 or sooner.

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