TLDR · SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

RADIAN AEROSPACE COMPLETES GROUND TESTS OF PROTOTYPE SPACE PLANE

techcrunch.com4 min read

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Radian Aerospace has announced the completion of a series of ground tests for its reusable space plane, which will be able to take off from airfields and land on runways like conventional airplanes. The tests were completed with a subscale prototype flight vehicle. They aimed to generate data on how the vehicle would fly and handle and to compare the data to simulations. While the vehicle did not fly, it did perform a series of small hops. The prototype vehicle is much smaller than the final vehicle, but the data will help inform key pieces of the final design and flight control systems.