Chinese space Plane Company aims on suborbital tourism

Friday, January 28, 2022

For space tourism and point-to-point travel, Space Transportation, a well-known Chinese company is all set to develop a “rocket with wings”.

To quote the company, “We are developing a winged rocket for high-speed, point-to-point transportation, which is lower in cost than rockets that carry satellites and faster than traditional aircraft.”

The space plane is targeting to provide rapid transport between two locations on Earth with the help of suborbital travel and be fully reusable.

A video presentation on the website of Space Transportation’ explains about its ambitious plans. It shows animated passengers getting inside a plane attached to a wing powered by rockets. After a vertical takeoff, the plane removes itself from the rocket-powered wings and continues its suborbital journey to Dubai, landing vertically on three legs deployed from the rear.

The full name of the company is Beijing Lingkong Tianxing Technology Co., Ltd. It has revealed that by 2023, ground tests are planned with a first flight in 2024 and a crewed flight in 2025.

By 2030, the company says that a test flight of a global, or orbital, crewed space vehicle is planned. In 2018, Space Transportation was founded as per the website of the company.

If all of this seems a bit fast, the plans have not appeared out of the blue. In August 2021, Space Transportation had announced that it had raised $46.3 million for its hypersonic space plane plans. Also, the company has been carrying on a number of tests of its Tianxing 1 and Tianxing 2 vehicles recently. A 10th flight test was conducted on Jan. 23, after another test together with a combustion laboratory belonging to Tsinghua University.

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