VTVL - History

History

• VTVL rocket concepts were studied by Philip Bono of Douglas Aircraft Co. in the 1960s.
• Apollo Lunar Module was a 1960s two-stage VTVL vehicle for landing and taking off from the moon.
• The Soviet Union did some development work on, but never flew, a manned capsule called Zarya in the late 1980s.
• The McDonnell Douglas DC-X was an unmanned prototype launch VTVL vehicle that flew several test flights in the 1990s.
• Rotary Rocket successfully tested a vertical landing system for their Roton design, based around a rocket tipped helicopter system in 1999, but were unable to raise funds to build a full vehicle.
• Recently (2006-2009), Armadillo Aerospace's Scorpius / Super Mod, Masten Space Systems' Xombie and Unreasonable Rocket's Blue Ball flying VTVL rockets competed in the Northrop Grumman / NASA Lunar Lander Challenge. Follow-on VTVL designs including Masten's Xaero and Armadillo's Stig are aimed at higher-speed flight to higher suborbital altitudes.
• SpaceX plans to eventually install deployable landing gear on the Dragon spacecraft and use the vehicle's thrusters to perform a land-based landing.
• Three VTVL craft have been proffered to NASA in response to NASA's suborbital reusable launch vehicle (sRLV) solicitation under NASA's Flight Operations Program: the Blue Origin New Shepard, the Masten Xaero, and the Armadillo Super Mod.
• Morpheus is a 2010s NASA project developing a vertical test bed that demonstrates new green propellant propulsion systems and autonomous landing and hazard detection technology.
• Mighty Eagle is a 2010s Robotic Prototype Lander being developed by NASA
• SpaceX announced in September 2011 that they would attempt to develop powered descent and recovery of both Falcon 9 stages, with a VTVL Dragon capsule as well.
• Grasshopper is a VTVL test vehicle SpaceX has developed to validate various engineering aspects of its large-vehicle reusable rocket technology. In June 2012, Elon Musk stated that SpaceX anticipated making the first test flight in the "in the next couple of months". As of December 2012, the test vehicle had made three successful test flights with the longest duration 29 seconds and the highest altitude of 40 metres (130 ft).