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NASA teams with Air Force to step up commercial space pace
NASA partners with US Air Force to develop commercial space roadmap
As it looks to significantly reshape its future, NASA today said it would partner with the US Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a technology roadmap for use of reusable commercial spaceships.
The study of reusable launch vehicles, or RLVs will focus on identifying technologies and assessing their potential use to accelerate the development of commercial reusable launch vehicles that have improved reliability, availability, launch turn-time, robustness and significantly lower costs than current launch systems, NASA stated. The study results will provide roadmaps with recommended government technology tasks and milestones for different vehicle categories.
NASA and the Air Force will begin the study by soliciting feedback from the emerging commercial space industry regarding emerging or existing technologies that would most benefit their existing and near-term space vehicle systems.
That list could include any number of commercial space firms from Xcor and Scaled Composites to Orbital and SpaceX.
According to NASA it will look at four categories of space vehicles to develop its roadmap:
1.Reusable, sub-orbital vehicles
2.Expendable and partially reusable, orbital vehicles
3.Reusable, two-stage orbital vehicles
4.Advanced vehicle concepts, such as single stage to orbit, air-breathing systems, in-flight refueling, and tethered upper stage
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