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 Post subject: Private launch companies
PostPosted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 1:26 am 
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The following private companies are developing launch systems intended to put people into space.

SpaceDev Inc
http://www.spacedev.com/

Virgin Galactic
http://www.virgingalactic.com/

If you know of other such companies, do feel free to post links here.


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 11:56 pm 
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Another company offering launches commercially is Kosmotras.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_Kosmotras

The company is a joint venture between Russia, Ukraine and Khazakstan, so I suppose it could best be described as a semi-private, or possibly semi-state, organisation.

Edit (19 Aug 09)
Here is the English language version of the Kosmotras website:
http://www.kosmotras.ru/en/


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 8:25 pm 
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Here is the website of Reaction Engines Ltd, the British company working on the Skylon spaceplane system.

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/

Reaction Engines Ltd is headed by rocket engineer Alan Bond. Skylon in some ways a development of the British Aerospace HOTOL (Horizontal Take-Off and Landing) spaceplane which was abandoned in the 1980s. Apparently funding has now been found to develop an actual working model of the revolutionary air-breathing rocket engines required for Skylon.


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PostPosted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:29 pm 
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The two private launch companies that recently won the NASA contract to resupply the International Space Station are:

SpaceX
http://www.spacex.com/

Orbital Sciences Corporation
http://www.orbital.com/SpaceLaunch/

Orbital is a big company which also does missiles, so the link above is just to the part of their website dealing with space launch systems


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:55 pm 
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RickLewis wrote:
... Skylon in some ways a development of the British Aerospace HOTOL (Horizontal Take-Off and Landing) spaceplane which was abandoned in the 1980s. Apparently funding has now been found to develop an actual working model of the revolutionary air-breathing rocket engines required for Skylon.

Bloody Govt! If we'd supported and funded HOTOL we'd be at the forefront by now and I'd be 'nipping' to Australia for the weekend :)

Same short-sight as with the Blue Streak, Black Prince et al. misslle programs, but I accept that money was a problem at the time, but still think it was a bigger waste to lose this technology and effectively hand it over to the Yanks and others and don't get me started on the TSR-2!


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:49 pm 
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arising_uk wrote:
RickLewis wrote:
... Skylon in some ways a development of the British Aerospace HOTOL (Horizontal Take-Off and Landing) spaceplane which was abandoned in the 1980s. Apparently funding has now been found to develop an actual working model of the revolutionary air-breathing rocket engines required for Skylon.

Bloody Govt! If we'd supported and funded HOTOL we'd be at the forefront by now and I'd be 'nipping' to Australia for the weekend :)

Same short-sight as with the Blue Streak, Black Prince et al. misslle programs, but I accept that money was a problem at the time, but still think it was a bigger waste to lose this technology and effectively hand it over to the Yanks and others and don't get me started on the TSR-2!

HOTOL was way, way ahead of its time. The same people have been working on it ever since, and they have made impressive progress with their high-speed heat exchange which is at the heart of their propulsion system, but even so it is years away (and billions of $ away) from being a practical launch system.


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