Rocketplane Announcement

RLI to Present at the 44th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting

Oklahoma City, OK - January 12, 2006 - Co-author Harikishin "Harry" P. Bakhtiani spent the day in Reno, NV at the 44th Annual AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting presenting the unique conceptual design process developed and used by Rocketplane.

ABSTRACT: The Rocketplane XP is a suborbital spaceplane due to enter service in late 2007 that will carry paying participants and microgravity scientific payloads to an altitude greater than 330,000 ft. XP’s tight development and production schedule demanded a very short and concise conceptual design phase with a high degree of confidence. Processes were developed to perform rapid turn around trades in performance, weight allocation, systems engineering, structural concepts, jet and rocket propulsion, volumetric efficiency, and thermal protection. The results from these disciplines were integrated in order to arrive at candidate configurations; and finally after iteration, at a baseline which meets all the requirements. XP’s unique conceptual design process allowed quick progression into preliminary and detailed design phases and formed a foundation of knowledge and methodology that can be applied to future concepts.

Harry reported that the presentation went very well, he was impressed by the number of enthusiastic questions. When it was realized that there was an additional 30 minutes left in the session due to a cancelled paper; the session chair asked if Harry would field questions for the remaining time.

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