Some time ago I posted about JP Aerospace, a company with a great vision to construct massive airships that could reach the stratosphere and beyond, lifting spacecraft past most of the atmosphere fairly gently. The spacecraft would still have to accelerate to orbital velocity.
Well here's a company that appears to be much closer to having a workable business model and a road map of how to get it done. The only thing they need now is a more sensible name:-
Bloostar
Seriously, I think they have put a lot of great engineering into their designs. It looks like a three-stage craft, built in a torus shape. This shape, they explain, is efficient because it doesn't have to force its way up through the thickest part of the atmosphere, and on the way down it will be a simple way of shedding speed - the drag of a blunt body.
They're aiming to launch from a ship, and eventually to reuse as much of the rockoon as possible. Yes, that's a real word - apparently there was some thought given to combining balloons and rockets in the late '40s until the '50s, before the military-industrial complex took over the Space Race in the '60s. Look up the all too brief Wikipedia article on Rockoons here. The paragraph about Van Allen's Rockoons, as reported in TIME magazine in 1959, is delightful.
But it's style, don't you think? Floating upwards to space is the way to go.
Well here's a company that appears to be much closer to having a workable business model and a road map of how to get it done. The only thing they need now is a more sensible name:-
Bloostar
 |
| Taken from the Bloostar introductory video at bloostar.com |
Seriously, I think they have put a lot of great engineering into their designs. It looks like a three-stage craft, built in a torus shape. This shape, they explain, is efficient because it doesn't have to force its way up through the thickest part of the atmosphere, and on the way down it will be a simple way of shedding speed - the drag of a blunt body.
They're aiming to launch from a ship, and eventually to reuse as much of the rockoon as possible. Yes, that's a real word - apparently there was some thought given to combining balloons and rockets in the late '40s until the '50s, before the military-industrial complex took over the Space Race in the '60s. Look up the all too brief Wikipedia article on Rockoons here. The paragraph about Van Allen's Rockoons, as reported in TIME magazine in 1959, is delightful.
But it's style, don't you think? Floating upwards to space is the way to go.
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