Jay Bennett reports that DARPA announced that it has selected Boeing to design and build a new reusable, hypersonic spaceplane called the Phantom Express that would fly into high suborbital altitudes to launch satellites into orbit before coming back down to land horizontally like an airplane.
The unmanned craft, part of the Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program, would release a small expendable upper stage rocket after it reaches suborbital altitudes. The upper stage would continue to carry the payload to orbit while the first stage, the spaceplane itself, would bank and return to Earth to land on a runway. DARPA hopes the XS-1 will allow the Department of Defense to launch satellites into low Earth orbit with only a few days notice, compared to the months it currently takes to plan satellite launches, and that the spaceplane will be capable of landing and relaunching within hours.
The XS-1 would be neither a traditional airplane nor a conventional launch vehicle but rather a combination of the two, with the goal of lowering launch costs by a factor of ten and replacing long wait times with launch on demand, said Jess Sponable, DARPA program manager. They are pleased with the Boeing progress on the XS-1 through Phase 1 of the program and look forward to continuing our close collaboration in this newly funded progression to Phases 2 and 3 fabrication and flight.
Unlike the Air Force X-37B unmanned spaceplane that launches on top of an Atlas V rocket, the XS-1 will launch vertically on its own internal engines using cryogenic propellant, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The Phantom Express, roughly the size of a business jet, would fly to hypersonic speeds over Mach 5 to reach high suborbital altitudes before releasing the satellite-launching second stage to carry a payload up to 3,000 pounds the rest of the way to low Earth orbit.
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