The U.S. military is eagerly attempting to push into the final frontier. After awarding aerospace firm Northrop Grumman with a $3.9 million contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the company has released its first conceptual renderings of its proposed XS-1 space plane project.
The XS-1 space plane
Pictures from Purch show a windowless aircraft roughly the size of an F-15 fighter jet traveling through the upper atmosphere. DARPA is searching for a space plane that would make spaceflight more inexpensive and conventional, Fox News reported. Northrop Grumman is designing an unmanned space plane equipped with reusable boosters for maximum cost effectiveness and military benefits. Officials working with Northrop Grumman stated that the company is qualified to meet U.S. government demands, and it is prepared to collaborate with other organizations to achieve spaceflight goals.
"Our team is uniquely qualified to meet DARPA's XS-1 operational system goals, having built and transitioned many developmental systems to operational use, including our current work on the world's only commercial spaceline, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo," Doug Young, vice president for missile defense and advanced missions at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, said in a statement. "We plan to bundle proven technologies into our concept that we developed during related projects for DARPA, NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory."
A modern space race
Northrop Grumman is not the only company commissioned to design the military space plane. According to Fox News, Boeing and Masten Space Systems also won contracts to create design plans over a yearlong time period in July. However, there are other companies entering the mix, too, as the competing companies vie for government approval. Masten has already reached out to XCOR Aerospace for assistance, and Boeing has teamed up with Jeff Bezos' firm Blue Origin to help envision its design.
Ultimately, DARPA aims to construct a reusable aircraft capable of flying 10 times within 10 days. The weight of the craft is intended to be between 3,000 and 5,000 pounds during orbit, and the total cost of each flight should be under $5 million, officials told Fox News. All things considered, each company is in the very early stages of aircraft design. However, DARPA predicts test flights may occur as early as next year. After picking a single company's design, officials state that initial flight missions of the XS-1 may begin in 2018.