Displaying items by tag: reusable vehicle

Scaled Composites is an aerospace company.

The company focuses on designing and developing concept craft and prototype fabrication processes for aircraft and other vehicles. It is known for unconventional designs, for its use of non-metal, composite materials, and for winning the Ansari X Prize with its experimental spacecraft SpaceShipOne.

Owned by Northrop Grumman (June 2013), the company is located at the Mojave Spaceport, Mojave, California, United States.

Armadillo Aerospace is an aerospace startup company based in Mesquite, Texas, USA. 

Armadillo Aerospace is a developer of reusable rocket powered vehicles. Its initial goal is to build a manned suborbital spacecraft capable of space tourism, but it has stated long-term ambitions of orbital spaceflight. 

The company is focused on VTVL (vertical takeoff, vertical landing) suborbital research and passenger flights, with an eye towards paths to orbit.

Founded in 2000, we Armadillo Aerospace has an experience base with over two hundred flight tests spread over two dozen different vehicles. The company has flown vehicles at every X-Prize Cup event. 

Its initial goal is to build a manned suborbital spacecraft capable of space tourism, but it has stated long-term ambitions of orbital spaceflight. 

Masten Space Systems is an US rocket company that is currently developing a line of reusable spacecraft, and related rocket propulsion hardware. 

Masten Space Systems designs, builds, tests and operates reusable launch vehicles. 

Masten Space Systems competed in the NASA and Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge X Prize in 2009, winning the level one second prize and the level two first prize. On November 2, 2009 it was announced that Masten Space Systems had won first place in the level two category, with Armadillo Aerospace coming in second.

Grasshopper is an experimental technology-demonstrator, suborbital reusable launch vehicle (RLV), a vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) rocket announced in 2011 for low-altitude testing that began in 2012. 

Grasshopper is being developed and tested by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in order to assist development of the reusable Falcon 9 and reusable Falcon Heavy rockets, which will require vertical landings of the near-empty Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy first-stage tanks and engine assemblies.

Grasshopper is one element of the multi-element SpaceX reusable rocket launching system test program, a program that includes both low-altitude, low-speed testing of the Grasshopper vehicle at SpaceX' Texas test site, as well as high-altitude, high-speed controlled-descent tests of post-mission (spent) Falcon 9 booster stages on Falcon 9 commercial missions beginning in mid-2013.