Session
Technical Session I: New Ways to Get to Orbit with Near-Term Scheduled Launches
Abstract
The first flight of the EZ-Rocket, a rocket-powered airplane built by XCOR Aerospace, occurred on July21, 2001. The EZ-Rocket is based on a retro fitted Long-EZ homebuilt air frame; its engines and propulsion system, which utilize non-toxic, easy-to-handle propellants, were developed in-house from clean paper to manned flight operations in fewer than ten months, and for less than $500,000. The aircraft has taught the COR team rocket flight operations, and demonstrated that non-toxic propellants are reliable and inexpensive. Based on this demonstration vehicle, XCOR is ready to start the next incremental development in airframe and rocket engine capability, the Xerus vehicle. The Xerus will be able to fly a suborbital trajectory and deploy an expendable upper stage that will put10kgmicrosatellites into low Earth orbit. Without the upper stage, the Xerus could carry 250kg for four minutes of high-quality microgravity flight. This paper will describe the current status and lessons learned in the precursor vehicle test program and engine development program, and discuss technical and business scenarios and likely timetables for extremely low cost flights of payloads of interest to the small satellite and microgravity research communities.
Presentation Slides
Flight Tests of XCOR’s EZ-Rocket and Progress toward a Microgravity and Microspacecraft Launcher
The first flight of the EZ-Rocket, a rocket-powered airplane built by XCOR Aerospace, occurred on July21, 2001. The EZ-Rocket is based on a retro fitted Long-EZ homebuilt air frame; its engines and propulsion system, which utilize non-toxic, easy-to-handle propellants, were developed in-house from clean paper to manned flight operations in fewer than ten months, and for less than $500,000. The aircraft has taught the COR team rocket flight operations, and demonstrated that non-toxic propellants are reliable and inexpensive. Based on this demonstration vehicle, XCOR is ready to start the next incremental development in airframe and rocket engine capability, the Xerus vehicle. The Xerus will be able to fly a suborbital trajectory and deploy an expendable upper stage that will put10kgmicrosatellites into low Earth orbit. Without the upper stage, the Xerus could carry 250kg for four minutes of high-quality microgravity flight. This paper will describe the current status and lessons learned in the precursor vehicle test program and engine development program, and discuss technical and business scenarios and likely timetables for extremely low cost flights of payloads of interest to the small satellite and microgravity research communities.
