Boeing has been given the contract by the Department of Defense to develop a reusable spaceplane for delivering small payloads (3,000lb) into orbit, with the goal being quick turnaround times of an hour or so and costs around $5million per flight.
http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2017-05-24
The XS-1 will be a suborbital craft, launching vertically and boosting an upper stage to hypersonic speeds and high altitudes before separating and gliding back to a runway. The goal is to be able to launch a single craft multiple times in a day.
First flights are penciled in for 2020.
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- Planeflyer
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Re: Boeing to develop new DoD XS-1 spaceplane
Will they launch on spacex?
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- ThePointblank
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Re: Boeing to develop new DoD XS-1 spaceplane
Planeflyer wrote:Will they launch on spacex?
Doesn't sound like it. It sounds more like this is the DoD's own launch platform as a replacement for the Orbital Sciences Minotaur IV platform.
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- LightningZ71
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Re: Boeing to develop new DoD XS-1 spaceplane
I guess this would be a pretty significant nail in the coffin of StratoLaunch. At $5M per flight, and a one hour turn around time, It will likely undercut Stratolaunch on cost and beat them on time.
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