PlanetSpace Silver Dart

rallymodeller

rallymodeller

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Don't know if this has been posted before, but Canadian company PlanetSpace (to which I am sort of connected) got the rights to the FDL-07 lifting body concept. Right now they are building what they call the Silver Dart, and it'a planned that it will form the basis of a family of launch vehicles. They're in the running for the NASA COTS (Comercial Off-The-Shelf) crew transfer contract with this system.
 

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Wow, it looks interesting. But COTS contractors were allready selected. At 18. August 2006 NASA announced that they ordered two solutions:

1. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (Space-X) received 278 mil. USD for its Falcon 9 rocket and space capsule Dragon

2. Rocketplane Kistler received 207 mil. USD for its Kistler rocket, powered by four russian NK-33 engines, renamed as AJ-26 to cover its origin.
 
Some more images of Silver Dart are attached, from the media section of the PlanetSpace website.
 

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...Anyone else see a swipe of the UR-700/900 concept in that booster design?
 
What I see in that big bad booster is a tragic orbital solution to a novel lifting body design. The USA needed that lifting body I think the monster booster gave it a still birth. How PS chose to go with that monster booster concept in light of more cosst effective FDL-7 air breathing deeply cooled rocket concepts TU based air launch combo boggles my mind. A sad day indeed for USA manned space program when NASA failed to run with the FDL-7. I currently building a RPV air augmented FDL-7 switch blade design.
 
Air breathing is really really complex and expensive compared to relatively simple and established rockets.
 
Does anyone know what happened to the replica?

Whatever happened to the engineering mockup....According to the PlanetSpace Wiki entry, the company folded in 2013. Not a word about the mockup tho. Be a shame to see at least that bit of effort scrappped instead of saved.
 
XP67_Moonbat said:
Does anyone know what happened to the replica?

Whatever happened to the engineering mockup....According to the PlanetSpace Wiki entry, the company folded in 2013. Not a word about the mockup tho. Be a shame to see at least that bit of effort scrappped instead of saved.
Click to expand...
Bumping this thread... Still no news about the great mockup?
 
Ah yes, the Cape Breton space port saga ...

There was a 2005 plan for PlanetSpace to assemble Canadian Arrow components into a V-2 replica for presentation to the White Sands Missile Range museum (for display at their Complex 33 launch pad).

I don't think that ever happened - WSMR found a real V-2 - but it shows that PlanetSpace wasn't averse to donations. If the Silver Dart mockup is nowhere to be found, I suspect that it was scrapped for its metal value after the company folded.
 

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