Europe Set To Build Experimental Transport Spacecraft

coondoggie writes "Looking to take a giant step toward taking part in low Earth orbit transportation, exploration and servicing of orbiting space structures, the European Space Agency today said it would team with Thales Alenia Space Italia to begin building an experimental spacecraft for launch in 2013. 'The 2t lifting body will attain an altitude of around 450 km, allowing it to reach a velocity of 7.5 km/s on entering the atmosphere. It will collect a large amount of data (PDF) during its hypersonic and supersonic flight, while it is being controlled by thrusters and aerodynamic flaps.'"

Re:Landing zone

[dlgeek]

Yes. You always launch spacecraft towards the east so that you get a velocity boost from the earth's rotation. This is a suborbital flight so it's basically a giant parabolic arc. If you're launching from Europe, it's not going to have time to go almost all the way around the world on an eastward path to hit the atlantic, so that leaves the Pacific.

Link to actual press release

[pnot]

Oh good, I see we've got today's mandatory link to Michael Cooney's Layer 8 blog at NetworkWorld, the convenient middleman between Slashdot and news. This time he hasn't even bothered linking to the actual press release he's regurgitating [esa.int], as far as I can tell. Still, more hits for NetworkWorld, that's what matters.

Anyone know if he's done a post on Bitcoin yet?

Re:Landing zone

[MacAnkka]

It's not going to be launched from Europe. The launch vehicle is going to be Arianespace's Vega, which is launched from French Guiana, in South America.