Bristol Spaceplanes

lise low-cost access to space by exploiting the decades of spaceplane design experience of its founders. Since then it has created plans for the Ascender sub-orbital spaceplane, designed in-house from off-the-shelf technology. BSP has evolved a step-by-step development strategy leading from Ascender to orbital spaceflight; this strategy includes the BSP-designed Spacecab orbital spaceplane. Spacecab has features aimed at low development cost and risk, and is a candidate to be the first fully reusable vehicle capable of reaching orbit. More importantly, Spacecab would trigger a new space age of low-cost access to space. Our internal studies show that Spacecab and follow-on vehicles would enable the cost of the first lunar base to be reduced by a factor of ten, compared with present plans using large new expendable launchers.