Spacefleet EARL Project

The Spacefleet EARL UAV will take payloads on sub-orbital trajectories and return to a runway landing. This gives us a re-usable space launch system that can take payloads into sub-orbital space, for which there is a market of a round $60M annually. At the moment, a single launch costs around $1M. We can cut that in half straight away, and lower it, thereafter, when business picks. A n expendable

booster system cannot compete on cost. The EARL system is designed so that two more, near-identical craft can be clamped top and bottom, to the booster that goes goes into space, and that will gives us an orbit-capable system without any change in technology. An orbital EARL could launch cube-sats, say, and also BRING THEM BACK, as well as other orbiting space junk. A series of sub-scale demonstrators will be built, and we are building the first one right now. It is 1.0m long, will be electrically powered, but will have remote control, autonomous flight control, retractable undercarriage and a video downlink. Later on we will test it with a rocket motor, and then build a larger vehicle 2.5 or 3.0m long, with mini-jet engines. Rocket motors will be substituted later for tests to much greater height, in Romania. Theoretical work on the vehicle and the mission is being done in Romania and is progressing well.