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Scotland: the land of mist and mountains long associated with kilts, bagpipes, haggis ... and now space launches. Timed to coincide with the Queen's Speech to Parliament, British startup Orbex announced that it will build a new 2,000 m² (21,500 ft²) rocket production facility in Scotland and is scouting for a launch site on the north coast of the country to send small payloads into low Earth orbit.
The announcement comes on the tails of Orbex making a private presentation of its launch technology to potential investors at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport. It already has a 1,200 m² (12,900 ft²) factory in England, where it is building launch vehicle subsystems, and is now seeking to expand north of the border for the assembly and launching of the completed rocket.
The goal is to create a booster that can lift payloads of up to 150 kg (330 lb) into low Earth orbit (LEO) and, eventually, to send up payloads of up to 220 kg (485 lb) into LEO, polar, or sun-synchronous orbits at altitudes of up to 1,250 km (775 mi). To help achieve this, Orbex is working with regional and national agencies to draft detailed development proposals in line with the UK government's 2017 Spaceflight Bill intended to promote launch sites in the British Isles.
The inaugural rocket will carry the tartan of which clan?
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:12AM (1 child)
Are there any known details of Orbex's lift vehicle? All I can find is that they apparently use a "novel, sustainable fuel strategy", which is more a pile of buzzwords than an actual description.
Based on that, and their claim of a low inert-mass fraction, I would guess they're burning metholox in either gas-gen or expander cycle, and being a "micro-launch service", I imagine it's a two-stage-to-orbit deal like Falcon 1, Electron, or any of the other light lift vehicles. Metholox isn't exactly "novel" right now, but it hasn't technically flown to orbit yet so they aren't technically lying if so. Also possible is some sort of biofuel version of RP-1, or maybe a new "clean" hypergol.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday June 28 2017, @07:39AM
Biofuel? Maybe they're burning peat. Just cut, leave out to dry for a couple of months and away you go. My granny used to run her stove on the stuff.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].