THIS SIDE UP AEROSPACE COMPANY TESTS NEW SPACECRAFT BOOSTERS.Byline: Daily News MOJAVE - A Virginia company Virginia Company, name of two English colonizing companies, chartered by King James I in 1606. By the terms of the charter, the Virginia Company of London (see London Company) was given permission to plant a colony 100 mi (160 km) square between lat. 34°N and lat. and Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites Scaled Composites (often abbreviated as Scaled), formerly the Rutan Aircraft Factory, is located at the Mojave Spaceport, Mojave, California, United States and is headed by aircraft designer Burt Rutan. dropped dummy rocket boosters from an aircraft in a test of a new launch method for passenger-carrying spacecraft. Scaled's Proteus aircraft carried the dummy boosters aloft and dropped them over Cuddeback Dry Lake 35 miles north of Mojave in a test for Transformational Space Corp., or t/Space, which has a NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. contract to develop concepts for America's next manned spacecraft This is a list of manned spacecraft (including space stations) sorted by manufacturer/operator and series in chronological order. Operational spacecraft China National Space Administration
``We went from brainstorm to booster drop in just 135 days,'' said David Gump, president of t/Space. The test drops used a tether tether to tie an animal up by the head or neck so that it can graze but not move away. See also barton tether. attachment and a parachute to drop the dummy boosters so they fell from the mothership with their noses upward, as would be necessary to launch a rocket into space. Previous air-launched rockets, such as NASA's famous X-15 rocket plane, the Pegasus winged satellite launcher, and Rutan's SpaceShipOne, all have wings that steer the craft upward after the mothership drops it. The t/Space concept would save weight by eliminating wings, and also is safer because the rocket passes behind the mothership, rather than zooming upward in front of it, the company said. The company said its innovation is a special mechanism that holds on to the nose of the booster for about a half-second after the center of the rocket is released by the mothership. This slight tug on the nose starts the booster's nose rotating upward as it drops. A small parachute on the rocket's nozzle ensures the rotation happens slowly, the company said. The three tests used unpowered Adj. 1. unpowered - not having or using power; "an autogiro is supported in flight by unpowered rotating wings" powered - (often used in combination) having or using or propelled by means of power or power of a specified kind; "powered flight"; "kerosine-powered dummy boosters - two steel tanks welded together with a Fiberglas nose and nozzle. They were 23 percent of the size of the rocket needed to send a four-person capsule into orbit. The firm is one of eight companies funded by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate to develop concepts for the agency's Crew Exploration Vehicle
The Crew Exploration Vehicle (or CEV) was the conceptual component of the Vision for Space Exploration that later became known as the Orion spacecraft. that will take over noncargo duties from the Space Shuttle. NASA agreed to let t/Space use some of its $3 million second-phase study money to build and test hardware in addition to conducting analytical studies. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) A dummy rocket booster is ready to drop from Burt Rutan's Proteus aircraft over the Mojave Desert, in a test of a new launch system. |
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