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The first work on hybrid rockets was performed in the early 1930s at the Soviet Group for the Study of Reactive Motion. Mikhail Klavdievich Tikhonravov, who would later supervise the design of Sputnik I and the Luna programme, was responsible for the first hybrid propelled rocket launch, the GIRD-9, on 17 August 1933, which reached an altitude of 400 metres (1,300 ft).
HyImpulse is a German private space launch enterprise headquartered in Neuenstadt am Kocher and developing a small launch vehicle designed around hybrid-propellant rockets. The company is a DLR spinoff founded in 2018 out of the chemical propulsion center of the German space agency's Lampoldshausen facility. [1]
Conventional launch vehicles such as the Space Shuttle spend about one-minute climbing almost vertically at relatively low speeds; this is inefficient but optimal for pure-rocket vehicles. In contrast, the SABRE engine permits a much slower, shallower climb (thirteen minutes to reach the 28.5 km transition altitude), while breathing air and ...
An alternative to scale is to make the discarded stages practically reusable: this was the original design goal of the Space Shuttle phase B studies, and is currently pursued by the SpaceX reusable launch system development program with their Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship, and Blue Origin using New Glenn.
The Space Shuttle approximated this by using dense solid rocket boosters for the majority of the thrust during the first 120 seconds. The main engines burned a fuel-rich hydrogen and oxygen mixture, operating continuously throughout the launch but providing the majority of thrust at higher altitudes after SRB burnout.
Skylon has its origins within a previous space development programme for an envisioned single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spaceplane, known as HOTOL. [14] In 1982, when work commenced on the HOTOL by several British companies, there was significant international interest to develop and produce viable reusable launch systems, perhaps the most high-profile of these being the NASA-operated Space Shuttle.
Hybrid-propellant rockets use a combination of solid and liquid propellant, typically involving a liquid oxidizer being pumped through a hollow cylinder of solid fuel. All current spacecraft use conventional chemical rockets (solid-fuel or liquid bipropellant) for launch, though some [ note 3 ] have used air-breathing engines on their first stage .
SpaceShipOne ranks among the world's first spaceplanes in the first 50 years of human spaceflight, with the North American X-15, Space Shuttle, Buran, and Boeing X-37. SpaceShipOne is the second spaceplane to have launched from a mother ship , preceded only by the North American X-15 .