Feb 132010
Recent years have seen a lot of developments in the area of private rockets and spacecraft, from the exhorbitantly-funded-by-billionaires, to the skilled amateurs working in their spare time. One of the smaller efforts (as compared to SpaceX and Virgin Galactic) is Masten Space, who have been working for some years on a VTOL rocket tailsitter, sort of a small Delta Clipper.
They’ve recently posted a video to YouTube that’s worth a watch… not only in what it shows (a test “hop”) but also in the camera angle. It’s… it’s friggen BEAUTIFUL. It’s straight out of the 1950’s, and I mean that in a good way.
Via Hobbyspace
9 Responses to “You can’t get more Sci-Fi than this”
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Great angle, indeed!
Jim
Wonderful! Someone needs to encourage them substantively. I suggest NASA fund their work.
Nice.
Maybe a DC-X revival.
Ha, did you know that your friend Jon Goff designed that engine?
You probably already know about this, but Armadillo Aerospace have been doing similar work (and, if anything, are slightly ahead of Masten):
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home
Lots of cool videos on there.
Interestingly, NASA have been funding some of AAs work, including development of engines for them. They are also involved with the Rocket Racing League.
Some of the videos of their boosted hops are truly spectacular.
Recently read that Blue Origin New Shepard is another one.
I’m glad you like the video, thanks for sharing it. I’ll be shooting more videos like that and in other interesting ways as we do more tests.
David, who’s ahead of who is hard to say, and depends on the metric, but we did beat Armadillo at the LLC last year.
Ben:
You won, but only be having the rules relaxed. IMHO, and I know you will differ, morally that money belongs to AA.
Armadillo appear to be doing so much more than yourselves – the Rocket Racing League, work for NASA etc. Taking the height reached in boosted hops is not the only way of measuring performance.
Having said this I wish everyone involved the best of luck. You are doing amazing things.