14 DAY TRIAL //
A company developing its own human-passenger suborbital program recently managed to achieve a significant milestone in its efforts, when it successfully tested a reusable rocket from Spaceport America, in New Mexico.
This installation is heralded as the first commercial spaceport dedicated exclusively to private companies in the world. Heath, Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace is a company that seeks to enter the private spaceflight business.
The reusable booster system the company is developing is called STIG A, and the prototype was tested on December 4. The vehicle was successful in reaching a suborbital altitude of 137,500 feet (some 42 kilometers) above the planetary surface.
It isn't the fact that the rocket actually flew which got Armadillo's staff all excited, bu the fact that the successful flight validated quite a large number of innovative flight technologies that were never used on a rocket before, Space reports.
Neil Milburn, the Armadillo vice president of program management, says that the company is partnered with Vienna, Virginia-based Space Adventures Ltd. on its quest to develop affordable alternatives to current spaceflight technologies.
“It met an important altitude milestone for our partners Space Adventures, it was the first time that an Armadillo vehicle went supersonic, it qualified the STIG family of vehicles for the NASA Flight Opportunities Program, and it exercised many of the technologies that we need for our manned suborbital program,” Milburn says of the December 4 flight.
At this point, the company is already working on an improved version of STIG A, obviously called STIG B, which will be capable of travel to low-Earth orbit, rather than be limited to suborbital altitudes. “The goal is to be back at Spaceport America early in the spring of 2012,” he adds.
Armadillo is just one of the several companies dedicated to this type of work at Spaceport America. In a few years, we could expect to see the facility starting to operate on a daily bases, with several corporations carrying out a number of flights for paying customers ever 24 hours, Space reports.