By Vaibhav Agrawal
Reports suggest that a “rocket with wings” is being developed for space tourism and point to point travel by the Chinese firm Space Transportation.
A space plane is a vehicle that combines an aircraft and the best of a spacecraft, allowing the vehicle to function in both space and atmosphere. Underlining the ambitious hypersonic capabilities of the vehicle, which the company is developing, it is believed that it can clock 7000 kilometres in around an hour at nine times the speed of sound.
Animated passengers can be seen boarding the spaceplane attached to a wing powered by rockets, as shown in a video presentation on Space Transportation’s website. The plane then detaches from the rocket-powered wing following a vertical take-off and continues its suborbital journey to Dubai while landing vertically on three legs deployed from the rear.
Last August, it was announced by Space Transportation that for its hypersonic space plane plans, it had raised over $46.3 million. This plane is claimed to be a hypersonic airliner capable of transporting around 10 passengers to anywhere in the world in just an hour.
The company has recently been conducting some tests of its Tianxing 1 and Tianxing 2 vehicles (the two sub-orbital hypersonic test launch vehicles), and a 10th flight test was conducted on January 23.
Although several reports regarding hypersonic developments have come from the Chinese side, many of them have been rubbished by American experts.
However, the test flights are reported to occur in the upcoming year, while the first uncrewed flight in 2024 and the first crewed flight to launch the following year.